I have a colleague who has been offered a job at the U of M in MSP. He and his wife are both fairly serious cyclists and do a bit of tandem racing. They are considering the position, but they are East coast folks, so the thought of Minnesota has never really been on their radar.
They are looking for a nice safe neighborhood within 20 minutes of the U with good schools and the opportunity to ride from their house. Any thoughts on where they should look for housing?
They’ll have to learn how to inline speed skate. It seems like Minnesota is a hot spot for skating. The biggest skate marathon in the US (4000+ skaters) is in Duluth and St. Paul has a very popular skate marathon a few weeks before.
Here is a link to a Mpls-St.Paul cycling team that has a website that you can post on. I believe they even fielded a couple of tandem teams for a race or two:
There’s not a shortage of cycling club/teams and places to ride. “Minnesota” roads are typically wider to allow for snow removal…which makes for tons of routes. In addition, there are several cycling paths (some of which are paved, others are crushed rock).
As for places to live…depends on budget, but most any neighborhood is safe. Relatively low crime rate.
I would look to the north… Roseville, Shoreview, North Oaks(yuppyville), even White Bear Lake or Mahtomedi are within 20 min if you get a spot near 35E. Roseville probably has the best school in the area, Monds View is very big, but decent. White Bear schools are not the greatest, Mahtomedi’s are tip top. (these school rankings are by suburbs’ standards, by the way, not inner city)
The northern 'burbs are nice for cyclists because it’s easy and fun to get out towards Hugo/Stillwater/Marine for some killer 20/40/60/80/100-mile loops, plus a lot of TCBC (twin cities bike club) rides meet around these areas. The Twin cities also just scored some major, major federal $$$ for bike commuting development.
I should also mention the Tri scene is stellar. With so many lakes, and the growing sport, I would bet that you can race 3-4 times a weekend all summer within a 50-mile radius if you wanted to.
Oh, and we don’t actually take like the movie Fargo… at least not in the cities. If you want that, you can go to Fargo or Duluth.
If they’re looking to buy a house in the city, now is the time - prices are down for once.
The best places in the city (both for cycling and quality of life) are the lakes area south of downtown, and the Highland Park/south Snelling area near the river. Both would be within 20 minutes of the U.
Lots of the burbs are nice, but traffic is a nightmare. The U borders downtown, so driving through the rush hour mess would get old in a hurry.
Thanks for the input. They currently looking at Edina as well.
We keep teasing his wife that their two year old daughter is going to talk like female sheriff in Fargo…as an aristocrat from the East she fails to see the humor.
Edina is an upperclass suburb, but not very cyclist friendly. All the good riding is pretty far away from that area. Also, it may be within 20 min of the U without traffic, but on a bad day, that could take over an hour.
I lived in South-West minneapolis bordering Edina for 10 years, I have never had a problem with traffic getting anywhere. I moved out to big lake for about a year which is a western suburb. Now talk about a traffic nightmare. Bikeing was good, but since I was spending 15 hrs a week in the car I didn’t have much time for it.
Seriously? I got stuck in Edina repeatedly on summer commuting to work. It sucked big time, but this was when 100 and 494 and any other road that seemed to point towards my general destination was torn up. And I recently had a job out west of the cities… that was horrible… agreed
I would recommend somewhere around Summit or Grand Ave. in St. Paul. The Mac-Grove area is a nice area. Pretty quiet, and a great place if you like to be in the city. You can definitely get to some great routes fairly easily from there, and there are quite a few schools in the area. I highly recommend it. Grand Performance, a small but pretty nice bike shop, is on Grand Ave., and definitely caters toward the competitor.
Edina is fine going to and from the U area, especially since they’ve fixed up 100 quite a bit. I drive that way pretty much every day and it takes me 15-25 minutes max depending on where exactly I am going.
Let’s put this is perspective…the worst day of driving in Mpls (say 12" of snow) from the U to 50th/France (heart of Edina) would still be shorter than driving from Dunwoody to Marietta using the perimeter on the best day…
If they did live in the heart of Edina, they surely wouldn’t be taking the highway to the U…rather 50th to Minnehaha Parkway to River Road. Heck, that would be a GREAT bike commute!!! Basically, they would be riding the LTF triathlon bike course.
Q: Why is the Edina HS team nickname the Hornets?
A: Because Wasps would have been redundant.
On the original topic, I agree the Grand Ave. area in St. Paul is a very cool neighborhood. Falcon Heights always looked nice, though admittedly I wasn’t in the market to buy a home when I lived in the Cities.
Having lived in Edina for 3.5 years, I can say that is / was a rock solid investment in terms of property value / top school district in the state / quality of amenities / services, etc. While it is not ideal for jumping on the bike an getting to a bike friendly road, it is located less than a mile or two from the three lakes (great for running and riding) and is centrally located for just about everything the Twin Cities has to offer.
