Hi Jeff (if that is your real name). Like CL said, I just relocated to Richmond in October from Kansas City. So, that was a pretty big move for us. And we have a ~2 year old daughter as well. I got a good job at Capital One, so the job market here seems to be better than most places. There are a lot of opportunities, and the area is definitely growing. Unfortunately, the builders can't keep up with the pace, so I guess the house prices have sky-rocketed in the last few years. It's made house-hunting frustrating for my wife and I. But if you're coming from a $400k house in CT, you shouldn't have any problem. We came from a $190k house in suburban Kansas, so it's a bit of a sticker shock. A 3,000 sq. ft. home here will cost you anywhere from 220k to 600k, so the market is just plumb wacky. A lot of people sell their homes "by owner" since the market is so good. There was actually something on the news the other night about people camping out for a couple of days to get plots of land in a new subdivision.
Who will you be working for? Do you know where they are located? I might can tell you something about that area. Richmond is a fairly small town. You can drive all over it in a day and see most of it. It's not terribly large. Coming from Kansas City, I'm not used to that. There, you rarely ever see the other side of it, and the beltway takes 4 hours if you drive the entire thing (one of my coworkers did that one time).
Richmond has several different "areas" that they talk about, and each is fairly unique in terms of demographics, houses, schools, etc. There is downtown, and there are a lot of companies downtown. It has its own style, and a lot of it is right on the river. Parts of it are nice, and parts of it you wouldn't want to be in after dark. There is the "fan" area which is just westish and northish from downtown. Lots of museums and ecclectic shopping. The University of Virginia is there, so it's got a lot of college-energy to it with people walking around and stuff. There's a science museum, and a children's museum, which my daughter just loves. We bought a season pass to it.
These areas are in the Richmond school district, which struggles. Apparently it goes from being accreditted to not, and so it's not very good. The east side of town, and some of the northern section, and the south side are fairly depressed, and a lot of that is old industrial parts of town. A lot of those sections are very poor, and many of them you wouldn't want to be in after dark. If you're caucasian, you'll be a minority there. In fact, demographic-wise, Richmond has more blacks than whites. It's really, really segregated, though, which is a shame.
The West end is really nice, and it's where my apartment is. The schools in Henrico county are generally considered the best, but most of the houses in the west end are quite pricey. Of course, that could be said of Midlothian/Chesterfield area as well. They just opened up a new highway - 288, which goes from 6 o'clock to about 10 o'clock if you think of the city as a clock. This is a major improvement over what they had, which was a toll road (Powhite pkwy), and there was no easy way to get from Midlothian to the west end. Now there is. Capital One has also built a brand new campus off 288. Conversely, because of this hwy, houses that wouldn't really be considered in Midlothian/Chesterfield have suddenly become popular because of the accessibility. The city is basically growing westward, so that's where most new development is.
There is also Ashland, which is fairly nice, and pretty small. I think their schools are pretty good, and it's a bit more rural. That's Hanover county. There is also Mechanicsville, and I'm not going to speak to it, because I don't really know anything about it. It's on the northeast side.
In terms of game stores, there is 1. One-Eyed Jacques is deep in the Fan district, on a street called Cary Street which has a lot of really interesting shops. It attracts a large college crowd, and so there is always a lot of activity in this area. It's actually a pretty good store, but I don't go very often since it's quite a bit out of my way. They have a table for gaming, and a decent selection of stuff, and they seem to be quite friendly the few times I've talked with them. There is also a Warhammer store in one of the malls if you're into that.
I got into a group with 'drife' and his girlfriend, and we've since invited a few others to play. I don't know that he'd want any more players, but there is a fairly active meetup group of people, and you can probably find people through One Eyed Jacques as well.
I guess that covers the basics, for the most part. Feel free to email me at
curtis.bennett@gmail.com if you have more private questions. Otherwise, I'm happy to post about it here.
