A bit of information is coming out about Millennials and where they'd like to settle down. Turns out, it's the 'burbs. Great! H-Town's a 'burb. And we have all the things here these younguns are lookin' fer: "It appears that what many Millennials want when picking out a place to raise a family isn’t a city per se, but rather the perks that are traditionally associated with living in a city: restaurants, shops, and grocery stores within walking distance, easy access to public transportation. In other words, they might want suburbs that are more city-like than the ones they grew up in." Here at HavertowniesHQ, we get it. We searched for a town with good schools, a single family dwelling we could afford and good "walking-around" streets. We've been lucky to be here, within walking distance to the schools, a Wawa, the library and a few pizza places (and more) for 15 years. We're the lucky ones, apparently, because this article reports many Millennials are stuck in cities they can't afford to leave (median house price here is $301,500). We personally haven't met too many Millennials in Philly who want to flock to the 'burbs (and we meet quite a few, being techies and all), but surely there are those who have the same reasons we did for wanting to move out of Center City and into the suburbs. Of course, not many of us Havertownies can do much about these stuck-Millennials plight. But: We can encourage businesses and residents to keep up our eclectic mix of hometown charm and upscale living. Despite all the nail salons (jeez, people, don't any of you do your own nails?!), our dining scene just keeps getting better, and our Walkability score is crazy great (so stop complaining about parking. There is NEVER GOING TO BE ENOUGH PARKING. Walk.) We can also encourage a bit more diversity. Haverford Township's 92% whiteness is just... over. Wanna know where we got our stats? From the guvvermint: http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/RHI125214/4204533144,00 … [Read more...]
Pop-up dining comes H-town
"Pop-up" dining is so 2014. In 2016, we Townies are just catching up. (For suburbia, though, being only 2 years behind NYC and Philly is not too bad. H-town is cutting edge!). Eventbrite.com saw such a serious uptick in pop-up listings in 2014 (47% increase from 2013), they had to take a closer look. They analyzed 40,000 events listed and saw it was the most explosive trend on the site, with 82% growth. In industry standards, that's just plain bonkers. The long and short of it: Pop-up dining is a great way for restaurants to maximize use of their space, for chefs to break out of normal roles and for diners to try something different. Since the dawn of the Web, "sampling" experiences are the new normal, and we Townies are doing it. It's a good thing, too. Events like this will attract more of the highly-desired Millennial buyers to the real estate market in H-Town. H-Town has an aging population with a lot of empty houses. We'll be competing for those buyers with neighboring towns. We need a great mix of urban-style attractions along with affordable houses and great schools. We've posted before about the pop-ups coming to Kettle. Here's an update. There's a company called fEATures (notice the "EAT" in the middle) that acts as an event co-ordinator of the pop-ups. Here is there upcoming schedule for dinners at H-Town's Kettle restaurant at the corner of Brookline & Darby: LINKS: We like that the fEATures pop-up people are using Philly area start-up Ticketleap for their ticketing. Get more info at their website or their Facebook page. Look through the restaurant/dining industry talk in the Eventbrite article. There's lots of info from their survey of 2,ooo pop-up attendees. A more casual read about the study and trend can be found in a March, 2014 article at Huffpo. Better Homes and Gardens talks about the Millennial buyer's wants and needs. Photo Credit: INHABIT on Flickr … [Read more...]