Just about all of us have our favorite places, those wonderful, reliable places where everyone you know is sure to have a good time. It’s where we take our out of town family and friends, where we go when we really can’t decide what else we want to do, or the place we pick because we love it so much.
Downtown Tempe is that place for so many people and has been so for generations. Now, it’s officially statistically one of the best places in the country. According to Bloomberg Business, Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate and real estate data provider Onboard Informatics, it’s one of the three most affordable, fun places to live in America.
Who would think you could quantify fun?
To select the country’s most affordable places, Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate, along with its data partner Onboard Informatics, analyzed 6,106 Zip Codes nationwide where the median home price was within 20 percent of the state’s median. It then selected the zip codes with the greatest number of bars and restaurants as of July 2011.
Tempe, thanks to Mill Avenue, topped nearly every city in the country. Only Ocean City, MD and a section of Honolulu ranked higher.
We in Tempe have understood for years that lifestyle and community are more important for echo boomers and knowledge workers. Affordable places with active downtown areas and a cool atmosphere are vital to attracting the current generation of home buyers. They are also important for companies looking to locate businesses and for people choosing locations for vacations and conferences.
The mix of a great downtown located on the light rail line and next to a major airport, Arizona State University and Town Lake, has made Tempe a very popular destination. More than 2.8 million people visit the Mill and lake area each year. It didn’t happen haphazardly. This has taken investment, good planning and hard work by city officials, developers, staff, business owners and community groups. It has taken work by our city staff in events, public relations, planning, economic development, and so many more. It’s required work by the Downtown Tempe Community, the Tempe Tourism Office, ASU and so many more.
What has been required more than anything is responsible forward thinking – innovative approaches to reaching our end goal – being the city of choice for current and future businesses and residents, tourists and students, workforces and people who just choose to be here for the fun of it. We want to be a desirable place. We’ve worked hard to become fun.
And even with all the perks of a great lake, a fabulous downtown and one of the nation’s best universities, home and apartment prices remain within the reach of most.
People can live at our newest apartment community, West 6th , and still have money to enjoy a night at the movies, to go to our newest breakfast place, NCounter, or to Monti’s, a restaurant that is housed in our county's oldest building.
We strive to provide all who come to Tempe with a great quality of life, and really, that’s what this designation is about.
I’d invite you to come to downtown Tempe and see it for yourself. If you can’t get here soon, here are a couple of interesting videos about Mill Avenue that you might enjoy:
Music and Fun on Mill - shows the ambiance and music on Mill
Evolution of Mill Avenue - shows how Mill Avenue has grown from a flour mill and ferry to one of the nation's top destinations
