West Orange: Thoughts + Opinions, Please archived

My friend just put her WO house on the market. @leighan!

I am a fan, tdevine, and I live in West Orange. Strangely, our house is about to go on the market. If you are in walking distance to the Highland Ave Station, though, you might not actually be in West Orange... or might be on the border of an "iffy" area within West Orange. When we first moved here eight years ago, I met someone who asked where we had bought our house, and I told her it was five houses down from Gregory Avenue. She sniffed, "Oh, you mean the 'downhill' side...." as if it was very sub-par and déclassé. But we have loved it.

Oh, hang on... I might know the house you mean. There was a real beauty for sale across the street from the strip mall with the CVS that's on South Valley. I thought that was a pity, because it's a gorgeous house with a rather rotten location (busy street, strip mall right there). But the owners did a beautiful job with the renovation.

West Orange has the jitney service that takes you directly to South Orange Station for the Midtown Direct trains. It takes commuters to three or four trains in the morning and picks up for the same number in the evening. It's free, too.

I have found it to be a really great place to live. If you have little ones, the Gregory School has an excellent reputation. The Town is pretty responsive, all things considered. And South Orange and Maplewood are very accessible -- that's when we spend most of our time!

We've enjoyed our time here and would not be moving if it weren't for family reasons.

Study the NJT schedule, you may be able to walk to Highland Avenue train station but the likelihood of catching a train once you get there is somewhat limited. Also, West Orange is much larger and more varied than the area you're specifically asking about.

I believe Leighan's house is in the St. Cloud section of West Orange, which enjoys a very good reputation. My house is in the Gregory section, which is also considered good.

http://www.trghome.com/listing/938/West%20Orange

The link is for the house I mentioned above.

PeggyC - That's the house! Looks to be across from a CVS/strip mall. I've not been yet. How is that area in general?

Glad to hear about the Gregory School is good. How are the other schools - middle/high school?

not because we don't love WO! we do!
not thrilled with the property taxes, but that's all of essex county and WO is lower than many towns.

the school system is wonderful. my kids have gotten a great education here.
there's a huge range of types of neighborhoods in the township, so that's really nice. it's a sprawling town, so it's not walkable, which is a bit of a drawback. you need to drive everywhere. and there's no real central quaint downtown.

most areas of town are relatively crime-free, which brings a lot of peace of mind.

our house just went on the market yesterday.
it's on the other side of town from where you are looking. there is no train service, but there is a NY bus at the end of our street which my husband takes every morning. 40 or so mins to port authority.
we are right on the livingston border so we take more advantage of things toward the west. we are within spitting distance of st barnabas medical center which has been a godsend on occasion!

You should certainly consider West Orange. It is a WONDERFUL community. Housing stock is great. Schools are great - and they recently added a beautiful new middle school. There has been a fair amount of very high quality development in in the last several years so the tax base is strong and taxes are likely less in West Orange than they are in S. Orange or Maplewood. The Gregory section of West Orange borders on South Orange and has a Jitney to the South Orange train station. They don't have as much of a real "downtown" as Maplewood and South Orange, but that town has a lot going for it. Everyone I've ever known who has lived in West Orange has loved it.

My only hesitation would be with the Highland Ave train station. I've known some people who were not comfortable commuting through that Station . I just don't know if that is a valid concern. Six months a year you will be coming home in the dark - so I would consider checking it out yourself in the evening and after dark and checking with other commuters as well.

Good luck.

That area is good, but very close to the border with Orange, which is not considered to be great... but it's also close to an up-and-coming section that is very big on the arts. I suspect that area might be enjoying a bit of a Renaissance in general. I would not, however, buy that close to retail shops, and the traffic through there is heavy, because it's a common route to get to 280 from a lot of that part of the town.

The middle schools are good around here, and the high school gets mixed reviews. But then, most of the high schools in this part of NJ get mixed reviews, as far as I can see. I think they are all good. You might check out NJ Monthly's most recent issue that ranks the towns of NJ... they include school rankings, IIRC.

The house is located at 29 S. Valley Road in WO. I'm hearing that the town is larger and has many sections/neighborhoods. What is this section called? Safe? Not so safe?

I also live in the Gregory section. We moved here in '98 because we couldn't afford Maplewood. We love it here. The up the hill/down the hill definitely used to be a thing, but I think it's less so now. There are several jitneys that connect with the midtown direct to Mahattan out of south orange. There is also a jitney that goes to Orange Station. My husband commutes to Jersey City through Hoboken via mountain station. He can walk there from our house. There is also a bus to port authority from the arena up by turtle back zoo. I believe it goes down Northfield Ave, so that's an option for the other side of the Gregory Neighborhood.
My kids go to Gregory School and we have been mostly happy there. It is a friendly welcoming school. You will hear differing opinions re: Hazel School. I have only heard good things from parents of kids who go there. In fact, some gifted kids I know have had a better experience than my kids had at Gregory.

I agree with Peggy, the house near highland may be in an iffy area, but may be fine.

Any other specific question?

Short walk to Hat City kitchen.

South Valley is just down the hill from Peggy and I. I think that area is fine. If its the house I'm thinking of, it's been on the market quite awhile.

I hear mixed reviews on Edison School. It's the central 6th where all the 6th graders in the district go. Some love it, others not so much. The school Sarah mentioned is on the other side of town. From South Valley the kids would go to Roosevelt. Old facility, but school gets great reviews. Staff is supposed to great.

There is a neighborhood yahoo group for Gregory. If you decide to move here, pm me your address and I'll send you an invite

i personally wouldn't consider that neighborhood, but i'm a western part of the township snob.

as for roosevelt middle school....my kids LOVED it there.
west orange high school recently named a new principal who is young and bright and full of enthusiasm! i'm sorry i have no kids in the system at this point!

I feel the same way as Leighan about that neighborhood, but I don't want to write anything about it because I have no clue at all whether it's valid or simply a preconceived notion that's been passed to me by others in the area who have a prejudice against that district. I have no evidence or experience with it, aside from using that CVS for prescriptions and such.

Leighan, I personally wouldn't want to live on South Valley - too busy, but the rest of the neighborhood above there is good and there are many houses in the neighborhood in OP's price range. I'm a snob too, I wouldn't want to be up by the hospital, too far from the train. Different strokes.

There is a beautiful house on Orange Heights, a couple on Lowell and Peggy's soon to be on the market.

Hey, here is the first photo I took with my iPhone since the house was partially staged yesterday:

Yes, I'm shameless.

carolanne said:

Leighan, I personally wouldn't want to live on South Valley - too busy, but the rest of the neighborhood above there is good and there are many houses in the neighborhood in OP's price range. I'm a snob too, I wouldn't want to be up by the hospital, too far from the train. Different strokes.

Beautiful! Post the pics of the front you have with everything blooming.

Oh, but @leighan, your house is gorgeous and I'm so impressed with how fast you got it ready.

Okay... this is the front of our house last year, when things were starting to bloom in May:

oh, so pretty, peggy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love yours, too, Leighan. I have a feeling we are almost directly comparable!

I live in Maplewood, but know lots of families that live in WO. We all think that it is a town to consider. Yes, it is more sprawling, but that can be an advantage because there seem to be many neighborhoods with affordable homes. If the house you are talking about has been on the market for awhile, there is likely no rush to bid on it as you explore our area.

WO, Maplewood, and SO are all great towns with much to offer.

West Orange is more affordable than South Orange or Maplewood, no doubt about it. Slightly lower taxes, too, and I have found it offers just a few more services, oddly enough.

We ended up here because we wanted to live in Montclair but got priced out of it. But we have never regretted it. This town is great, and has easy access to all the other places we love to spend time.

garbage pickup included here!!!
including BULK

There are pros and cons to considering West Orange over M/SO, and I cannot speak to the West Orange and its neighborhoods piece, since I have never lived there, and can only offer my Maplewood experience, specifically coming from NYC to raise kids. I LOVE that Maplewood and South Orange are so walkable. We actually live in a small, relatively affordable home about a mile from the train station. My husband walks to/from the train about 90% of the time. When the kids were small, we walked places all the time - park, library, school, shops, pool etc., and now that they are aging up, they are walking places on their own. Problem is, I have found, over the years, that there are not many homes in the $300K to $400K range, and when they come on the market, they usually go FAST. Our home is in the < $300K range, and, though it is small, it is a trade-off I am willing to make, for the location.

Hope your home/community search is successful.

We live in Gregory and love it. There is somewhat of a crime problem along the Orange border, which includes the Valley area, which I THINK is what that would be considered (if not, it'd be "lower Gregory,") but on a concern scale of 1-10, my own concerns about living at 29 South Valley would be maybe a 3 on the street crime issue at that exact location, around a 7 about the street just being busy and being so close to the strip mall, and around a 9 about being that close to Suzie Q's and having to smell bbq cooking all night long. Seriously: come by around dinner time on a weekend, and it smells wonderful, but I'll bet it gets into everything, too.

That being said, there is street crime happening in the area around Highland Avenue station (the area between Valley (not South Valley) and Scotland), and along your route home from there; I drive that way every day, both day and night, and feel safe doing so, but would think twice about walking back from Highland at night.

Highland Avenue also doesn't get a lot of train service; Mountain Station gets more, but both stations are primarily served by Hoboken trains, meaning you need to either change at Newark Broad (to a Montclair Branch train going to NYP) or take PATH from Hoboken if you're going to NYC. My wife actually goes out of Orange station in the morning but comes back via Hoboken & Mountain at night because Hoboken is so much more pleasant to commute out of at night than New York Penn.

If it were me, I'd rule out living on South Valley due almost entirely to traffic; I'd definitely consider any of the streets leading uphill from South Valley, but not downhill (there's actually very little downhill of South Valley that's still in West Orange anyway). My anecdotal sense is that Orange's street crime issues do not extend very far into West Orange at all, so again, I don't think there's any particular danger about that location, but I would be concerned about a walking commute at night.