Relocation

If I didn't have family stuff going on, I'd be as far away from Florida as I could. I'm not saying it sucks, but for corporate aviation, it is THE suck! At least Jax is...

Take it how you want to. I've heard S FL is worse...
 
Bamaaviator said:
Does anybody recommend the Melbourne or vero beach areas as good (or at least decent) places to live?
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Were you born before prohibition and drive a Buick with the left turn signal on for miles while clogging up the left lane?

That's the demographic of those areas, unless you're at FIT of FSI VRB.


Sent from my Startac using Tapatalk.
 
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Bamaaviator said:
Does anybody recommend the Melbourne or vero beach areas as good (or at least decent) places to live?
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Yup, for me - depends on what you're looking for. I live between them. See my Post # 40 above, and feel free to PM me with questions. Both seem to have a reasonable mix of ages of people (ie: not just purple-hair-rinse ladies waiting for the Senior Special). Vero is smaller but has more wealthy people, better arts & dining scene. MCI is +/- an hour and a quarter, certainly flight-crew commutable.

Aviation-wise, Melbourne had scheduled jet/RJ service to Atlanta and Charlotte (You can guess which airlines), Operations home to Elite (who also serve both MLB and VRB), Embraer's BizJet completion & overhaul center, and lots of aerospace Industry left over from the space boom era, on and near MLB. Corporate HQ, offices plus various divisions, for Harris. Kennedy Space Center is 40 minutes north-east.

Vero Beach has Piper's factory, and a large Flight Safety training facility, ab initio on up. (Hey, if Warren Buffett owns it, it must have something on the ball!) Elite is negotiating to build a hangar, presumably move at least maintenance from MLB.

In between, Sebastian has a large parachute operation (Caravan and Twotter).

Every coastal city in Florida has an airport, left over from WWII training. (They're still finding occasional bombs in the sand.) Nearly all have one or more CFIs.
 
To answer the other question...

The east coast of Florida north of PBC is a mixed bag. The mid-coast used to have plenty of middle-class engineers and techs, VRB has Piper and most of the other places were a mix of touristy and retirement communities until you got to JAX, which is a big military town. The long and the short was once you got north of PBC, it was a fairly consistent mix of retirement areas, tourist spots, AF/NASA support, and rural areas. It had been like that for decades.

There's been a shift in the last 10-15 years. The high dollar part of Palm Beach County has pushed into Martin County, with the more moderately priced communities getting pushed farther north. Daytona experienced some pretty huge & rapid growth as being part of the I-4 corridor and there have been some pockets of high dollar spots grow up as people move north of PBC and south of JAX.

On the other hand, with the pullback in NASA ops, in conjunction with the real estate bust, some places have been hit really hard. There are some REALLY tough spots along the coast. The places that have built up have done so in the irritatingly homogeneous way the SW part of the state did after the completion of I-75 from TPA south through Ft. Myers/Naples area.

Orlando sucked in some stuff and changed the mid-State dynamic as it grew from a wide spot in the road in the 70s to a 2nd Vegas. The rural areas of native Florida savanna have been essentially overrun.

Not to say that there aren't some cool and/or kitschy spots, but do your due diligence.

JAX is a difference scene, as is the Dade/Broward/Palm Beach area, which should really be considered a different state.

The west coast/Tampa/points north are different still, and the points north of Orlando along the line connecting Ocala, Tallahassee are even more different. The panhandle has two strips: "coast" and "not coast" and they couldn't be more different from each other. Travel 30 miles west of TLH and you might as well be in rural Arkansas (nothing wrong with that).

Pensacola has more in common with JAX than the rest of that part of the state.

Richman
 
Richman said:
To answer the other question...

The east coast of Florida north of PBC is a mixed bag. The mid-coast used to have plenty of middle-class engineers and techs, VRB has Piper and most of the other places were a mix of touristy and retirement communities until you got to JAX, which is a big military town. The long and the short was once you got north of PBC, it was a fairly consistent mix of retirement areas, tourist spots, AF/NASA support, and rural areas. It had been like that for decades.

There's been a shift in the last 10-15 years. The high dollar part of Palm Beach County has pushed into Martin County, with the more moderately priced communities getting pushed farther north. Daytona experienced some pretty huge & rapid growth as being part of the I-4 corridor and there have been some pockets of high dollar spots grow up as people move north of PBC and south of JAX.

On the other hand, with the pullback in NASA ops, in conjunction with the real estate bust, some places have been hit really hard. There are some REALLY tough spots along the coast. The places that have built up have done so in the irritatingly homogeneous way the SW part of the state did after the completion of I-75 from TPA south through Ft. Myers/Naples area.

Orlando sucked in some stuff and changed the mid-State dynamic as it grew from a wide spot in the road in the 70s to a 2nd Vegas. The rural areas of native Florida savanna have been essentially overrun.

Not to say that there aren't some cool and/or kitschy spots, but do your due diligence.

JAX is a difference scene, as is the Dade/Broward/Palm Beach area, which should really be considered a different state.

The west coast/Tampa/points north are different still, and the points north of Orlando along the line connecting Ocala, Tallahassee are even more different. The panhandle has two strips: "coast" and "not coast" and they couldn't be more different from each other. Travel 30 miles west of TLH and you might as well be in rural Arkansas (nothing wrong with that).

Pensacola has more in common with JAX than the rest of that part of the state.

Richman
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What is the dynamic in Boca Raton like? I have been thinking about attending FAU, is it a good town for college students?
 
Eh. Boca isn't your typical college town. Spendy and urban. Don't expect much in the way of school spirit support from the locals.

If your mission is the bang out the degree, then it's expensive, but otherwise ok. If you're looking for the "typical college experience" then meh.

Richman
 
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