Gotta give the obligatory shout out to Airdrie.
I live on the SW fringe just off of 8th Street where most of the current new development is happening (currently a dusty mess, but this isn't my first new-construction rodeo, so it's not a big deal to me. It will end eventually).
I take 8th & 566 to access The Deerfoot.
6 minutes to Cross Iron Mills / Costco (not that I care about CIM... on the weekend it looks like a refugee camp and I swear not a single person in that complex is actually there to buy anything).
Just over 10 minutes to the Airport (closer than anywhere in SE or SW Calgary)
I work at Deerfoot & Paigan Trail. I leave home at 6:50am and get to work in 22 minutes.
Though coming home sucks if I don't finish work before 3:30... NB Deerfoot is a nightmare until you get past 64th... though relative to where I lived previously (Ontario), the commute is a dream.
Like Okotoks, Airdrie has everything. The only thing I have found myself having to go to Calgary for is good restaurants and select ethnic or higher end imported foods/ingredients that I can seem to find around here.
Most of the restaurants here are garbage. Fast Food with one good Shawarma/Donair place and a bunch of second rate dumps. The Sushi place in town is horrendous. The 'nice' Italian place serves food that isn't much better than Kraft Dinner... but I only eat out once or twice a month, so that isn't a big deal to me to hit up Calgary.
Other than that, it has WalMart (a complete freakshow of low rent pigs and bath salt experiments), Safeway, Sobeys, No Frills, Superstore. 2 or 3 Shoppers Drug Marts, a really awesome mom & pop Butcher Shop, etc. Most car dealerships are represented here.
I lived in a large town of 100,000 people in Ontario (45km from dt Toronto), twice the population of Airdrie, but Airdrie has about 3 times the amenities.
Airdrie is growing. It's infrastructure is growing. Property Tax, at the moment, is relatively low.
It's a bedroom community... hopefully anyone buying here or in any other similar 'parasite community' knows that before they make such a huge purchase.
I think the cosmopolitan city crowd get all bent out of shape because they drive past this towns and think "BORRRRRING!!!"
Yea, exactly. It's nice, quiet and boring. Just what I'm looking for after a 10 hour day of work.
If I'm not working, I'm in the mountains 90% of the time... in which case, Airdrie, Okotoks or Calgary... the travel time is the same.
Looking for night/social life? Stay the hell out of Airdrie/Okotoks. I doubt any such life exists unless you're still into driving your car 2 miles up a dirt road and drinking in the beams of your trucks headlights (which I am still down with, I just recognize I'm too old for it if the cops show up).
Anyways... I would love to have some people expand on the "quality of life" argument.
My QOL in Airdrie is quite good, as I would imagine is the same for those living in Okotoks.
My job requires me to drive about 120km around Calgary all day long, so I see much of the city. Most of my time is spent in the SW (which I love, but would need to fork out twice as much money to get what I have in Airdrie and pay $1500-$2000 more a year in property tax), and it has it's share of Skid Row Alumni lurking around. I fail to see how, when the people I see go back to their homes, their quality of life is superior to mine.
Excluding the SW, even if the other 3 quandrants of Calgary were cheaper than Airdrie, I'm not sure I'd care to live there. It's not what I'm looking for. I moved to Alberta for the fresh air and mountains, not for a social life and glass office towers.
|