Possible relocation to Dallas
 

I currently live in north Scottsdale and am looking at a new potential job based out of DFW land.

I'm single, mid 40's and like the bars, restaurants, shopping, and other activities this area offers to said batchelor.

What would be a good equivalent for me to look at? I'd like to rent a new apartment, be 30 minutes from DFW and be in an area that has the lifestyle I enjoy now.

Thanks!

Would Austin be too long of a commute?

Yes. Greater Dallas area.

Fort Worth

/drops mic

Lol

Are you being serious? Just asking. I know nothing about ft worth except the zoo and stockyards.

Fort Worth suburbs and Tarrant County are far better than Dallas and Dallas County. If you want to live north of Dallas (Frisco, Alllen) which your lifestyle may require, then that's your decision.

There are plenty of chain restaurants, so you will have a pool if you relocate

Whatever you do keep the commute as short as possible. Dallas traffic is a nightmare and there are thousands of pickups driven by maniacs.

Ooh Dallas. I know nothing about it but it sounds exciting.

Depends....

Will you have to go into an office or be home-based? Traffic can be pretty miserable, so if you have to commute, that will limit where you live (unless you like spending 90 minutes on the highway during rush hour).

The DFW metroplex is pretty big. Probably 100 miles East to West, and 50 North to South.

I'm partial to Fort Worth. Booming and expanding social scene and not as pretentious as Dallas. (If you ignore the TCU students.) Downtown/7th Street/Cultural District/Arlington Heights (not the City of Arlington; a neighborhood in FTW)/Camp Bowie West/Hospital District/TCU are the party areas. Downtown to Camp Bowie West is basically one long strip, and Hospital and TCU are not in the same area, but close.

Lots of new construction along 7th.

I live in Arlington Heights, and I'm a <8 minute drive from everything noted but TCU. (University area is more like 15ish.)

The City of Arlington is basically a pit stop between FTW and Dallas, sports stadia notwithstanding.

I could discuss the mid-cities and North FTW, but I'll hold off for the moment. I've already written a dissertation.

A friend of mine loved living in Fort Worth.

I recall the area close to the SMU campus being "dry" with drinks requiring membership in some private club known as the bar, so it wasn't really a restriction. It wouldn't surprise me if the area around TCU had similar rules.

^^^Tarrant County is not that dry, but some places are. Dallas and Collin (North Dallas) still have Dry parts too.

The Metroplex is still better than PHX

I will home office and travel frequently via DFW.

Is the metro phx area larger or smaller than the metro dfw area?

What's Plano like? My brother and his family lived in Plano/Frisco for years and it looks nice but I don't want to move to the equivalent of Chandler/Gilbert where it's mostly families.

Metro PHX population is smaller by about 2.5 million. In terms of area, metro PHX is about 14.5K square miles compared to metro DFW's ~9.3K. I guess that's why Dallas always seems more "crowded" to me than Phoenix - it literally is.

I personally find Dallas area traffic usually much worse than that in the Valley. Not as bad as Boston; certainly nothing like Roma.

Aside: Didn't you just recently move back to Scottsdale?

I would suggest the following areas in no particular order.

Uptown - lots of restaurants and bars that you can walk to.
Addison Circle - several apartment complexes, a few restaurants that you can walk to, lots of very close by bars and restaurants that you can Uber to easily.
Downtown Grapevine - very specifically 925 Main Street apartments that you can walk to shops restaurants and festivals a few times a year.
Downtown Fort Worth - Sundance Square may be the closest to Scottsdale in terms of number of restaurants, bars and shops.

Maybe Arlington?

So, you are in to big hair right?

Giggles.

I currently live in a brand new Camden property. I will check what they have in the metroplex area.

You know what they say.....the higher the hair, the closer to God. :D

What's las colinas like?

Las Colinas is a LOT of apartments and a few restaurants or bars. The city of Irving cannot get a project off the ground to put in shops around all of the apartments in the Mandalay lake/canals area. It doesn't have a "vibe" to me like Grapevine or Uptown does but it does have a lot of apartment complexes. It is very convenient to the airport and even in rush hour traffic wouldn't take long to get to/from the airport. It is pretty much deserted streets and office buildings because other than apartments and office buildings it hasn't developed.

^


I'd vote for ft worth as well. I'm not a big fan of either but its the lessor of two evils.

*I had back to back long term projects in dallas and couldn't ever acclimate to the weather or the traffic. I did enjoy the people and the food is amazing.

If you're used to ASU talent, you might be slightly disappointed, but that's true about moving from ASU to 99.9% of places. SMU has a good bench of hot, upper middle class women.

This might belong in the Match.com thread but seemed more relevant here.

Dude I'm 47. I'm not interested in collegiate girls.

I disagree with this. I feel the Dallas side and suburbs are better for my lifestyle and I have lived in and around both cities. I have lived from Fort Worth, Hurst, Grapevine, Coppell, Dallas, up and down to McKinney, Plano, Frisco and Uptown. I did skip over Arlington and far west Fort Worth suburbs. My favorites areas to live are Uptown, Addison, Grapevine and Dallas.

Liquor laws have changed, you can get a drink anywhere in Dallas and Collin County if the restaurant wants to get a liquor license. If they don't have a liquor license a lot of restaurants are BYOB. You may have to drive over to the next city for a liquor store but you are talking 5 or 10 minutes. So I don't know what you exactly mean by dry, wine and beer sales are everywhere.

After 16 years of moving from one area to another I landed in Far North Dallas and just love it on the Dallas side.

I love it here, Dallas has a lot of activities you can do. The people area friendly, I have found it be easy to make friends here and find people to socialize with.

I'm confused. If you work from a home office, why can't you travel from any major airport and not necessarily DFW? If you must go in for occasional meetings, couldn't you fly in at your own expense in the worst case?

ADDED: Are there potential emergencies that would require your presence in some DFW area office almost instantly?

I've heard of call center people who were required to live within a certain phone service area (such as being a "local" call away from the physical call center and served by the same provider of local hardwired service) as a condition of working from home. There might have also been requirements of being able to use some particular internet service provider.

"Activities" = drinking and mechanical bull riding? (Not that drinking isn't a favored activity in other places too.)

Congratulations is in order. I hope they treat you better and now you have anew batch of Texan women. :p

Is this move because you have run out of new matches in PHX? :D

I think most of Plano and pretty much all of Frisco skews heavily towards families. The younger/hipper parts of Plano would probably be Shops @ Legacy area and the revitalized 15th St Downtown area.

I live in Far North Dallas, between Plano and Addison, and like it. Addison has a ton of bars and restaurants, owing to its legacy years ago as one of the first parts of the Metroplex to go wet. But a lot of the spots there are corporate / chains, with fewer independent and quirky places. Both Plano and Addison don't have many live music spots, if that matters you you.

The Uptown area others have mentioned could be a good choice.

One other that hasn't come up yet is the M Streets area near Greenville Ave below Mockingbird. I'd check that out too.

Traffic can be bad here sometimes, but it's not nearly as bad as Austin or LA. My 25 minute drive to DFW only expands to 30-35 during rush hour. But getting across town to Ft Worth can be horrific in the afternoon rush.

good luck! hopefully you will not run out of dates there:)

We moved to the Fort Worth area earlier this year and have been enjoying it so far.

OP what's your budget? Looking to buy or rent?

I spent a few months in Dallas in the early 2000s. The hotel was in Addison, and I liked the area. We also went to Lower Greenville a few times, and that was really nice, too.

2BR, $2K/mo

The "effective" Phoenix metropolitan area--where people actually live--is much smaller that DFW's:

The Office of Management and Budget defines a metropolitan area as the core city plus its county and any nearby counties that are economically dependent on the core city. However, Arizona has relatively large counties and a harsh, rugged desert landscape. For these reasons, much of the land that is part of the Metropolitan Statistical Area is rural or completely uninhabited. The core part of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area is the Phoenix–Mesa, Arizona Urban Area, which is far smaller than the Metropolitan Statistical Area.[7]

Check out west 7th in ftw

Another 1 hour phone interview this morning....wow...here I was saying a month ago I've never had a peer interview.

Today's interview was with a director who would be my boss. I know him from the 10K foot level in the industry and a very nice guy and we had a great phone interview. He told me he would be telling the VP I'm meeting on Tuesday in ATL how well the convo went and then proceeded to ask me if I was looking at taking some vacation time between jobs or get right to work.

He lives in Dallas (Highland Park he said--have no idea where that is). He said Uptown is the place to be and I have been checking it out. It does look amazing and the prices for a new 2 BR apt are about $400/month more than where I am now. Then again a similar type apartment in old town Scottsdale would be $400/month more than uptown. I'm all for the urban setting but I also like the peace and quiet of where I live now. Everything is also close--bars, restaurants, shopping etc, but not walking but a 5-10 minute drive tops. So here in DC Ranch (Scottsdale) it's upscale suburban, not urban. I like this. What would the equivalent be in DFW area? Plano? Frisco Legacy area?

I want to move into a new place as well.

Southlake

Highland Park, super expensive, think Troy Aikman neighborhood. He listed a house there when he got divorced for $24M.

Ian--it sounds like your mind is made up although I don't understand why you can't just stay where you are since you home office. Wherever you end up, I am sure it will be a new adventure although you seem to like being in Scottsdale.

For years I was in Dallas/Plano twice a month and this is my take.
Pros: Inexpensive housing, great restaurants and bars and shopping, very nice people.
Cons: The weather (imo) is horrid. It's not horrid all year but when it is, it's bad. High humidity and torrential rains with flooding are a huge :td: for me. It is very flat--I like more variety in my landscape. I was always getting lost as there was no point of reference--everything looked the same.

Most of the clients and opportunities are in the CST and EST time zones as is the firms operations. They'd rather have me in that region. Having worked for a firm before where I was the odd one out in the west coast I totally understand and agree.

This is pretty spot on how I feel about it. I was there for a~12 month stretch (mon-thur) and an 18 month stretch.

Coming from Colorado/Wyoming the weather is horrid a ton more than its not IMO. That alone is a deal breaker for me...I'm outside way too much for it to be that hot. I rode bikes a lot late at night and even then it sucked.