Cincinnati neighborhoods?
We're about 18 months from making a permanent move away from Chicagoland (90% likelihood). In thinking about where we'd like to live, we've landed on Cincinnati as one candidate. There are several reasons, which are beyond the scope of this request, but suffice it to say that it's a compromise position between my wife and me, driven largely by proximity to family.
Part of the exercise is to simplify and reduce our cost of living so I can spend more time with the kids.
At this point, we're considering Cincinnati almost entirely on paper. That is, neither of us have spent enough time there to really know whether we could live there or not.
In the next month or so, we'll head down there to start looking around and determining which neighborhood(s) would be worth considering and to generally decide whether we want to keep Cincinnati on the list.
So we're asking the community for suggestions on neighborhoods meeting the following criteria:
a) low cost of living (~$120-150/s.f. for a house; looking at 2000-2500 s.f.)
b) urban or mature suburban neighborhood with walking or biking access to stores, etc
c) <1 hour to CVG
d) reasonably safe
If anyone's familiar with Columbus, I'm looking for the equivalent of a Bexley (the more modest parts of it, anyway), Grandview Heights or Clintonville neighborhood, only in Cincinnati. Maybe Worthington as well. As a stretch, Old Town East (a little too sketchy) or German Village (a little too pricey).
Thanks for any suggestions.
PS. As for schools, it would be nice if the public schools were good and safe, but we've basically resigned ourselves to paying for private schooling and won't let schools quality stand in the way of an otherwise great neighborhood.