Parktown

Located along Highway 680, Parktown is a traditional, uninteresting Milpitas neighborhood. It is almost exclusively residential (except for the small Northwood Shopping Plaza) and acts as a good fit for Silicon Valley commuters. And it still does have a family-friendly appeal about it, but the neighborhood incapable of climbing the ranks of lower middle-class suburbia, due, in part, to the numerous foreclosures throughout the area. But while foreclosures still remain a problem, homes sell significantly under their market value. Most households who take advantage of the low prices tend to make $90,000 in annual income.

Parktown’s residential terrain bleeds of bland, monotonous real-estate. Homes are a mixed bag of old, single-story Mediterranean architectural or long, California ranch-style, both of which are so prevalent throughout the city. Most residents are usually plotted on small, squarish properties. Each lot is given a small front yard (which is really too small to call average-looking), a two-car garage and little room for a side yard. For prospective residents, homes are usually priced around $500,000. But if you’re looking to rent, there are a number of rented homes within the district as well as a few condominiums. For the latter, they tend to be listed in the range of $200,000-$300,000, but again, they still fit the poor aesthetic of the neighborhood.

Like most of Milpitas, the stench of the local dump can be a bit of a deal breaker. And its commercial appeal is also less than great. While you have the Great Mall (a 1980‘s megamall) just on the other side of Highway 680, the Northwood Plaza is all you get. It consists of a couple eccentric shops, a few family-oriented restaurants (ethnic eateries and a Round Table Pizza), a Target and a Walgreens. Next door, you have the unexceptional strip mall of Parktown Plaza. This area affords more mixed stores, a supermarket, a Rite Aid and a fitness center. There’s also a rundown Bowling Alley along South Park Victoria Drive, while a public storage space is adjacent to that.

For young families, Mornil Middle School and Robert Randall Elementary School are just blocks off the community’s limits while both Rancho Milpitas Middle School and John Sinnott Elementary School are within the neighborhood. All four schools earn lousy test scores against other cities within the San Jose area. Elsewhere, there are a couple non denomination churches within the district. These include St. Elizabeth Church and Christ Community Church.

The Parktown neighborhood is far enough away from the south and east of Milpitas that it just about escapes the stench of the landfills on the northwestern end of the city. This neighborhood is also home to the rather bland strip mall complex known as the Parktown Plaza Shopping “Mall,” which is basically just a number of stores built around the anchor supermarket, Lucky’s (Rite Aide and a Bally Fitness being the main stores.) This is definitely not one of those supermalls that people come from miles around to visit.

The 680 freeway is also on the western end of this neighborhood—which is arguably the main feature and draw of the area since the main reason people live here is so they can commute into Silicon Valley. Although the ranch house is still the dominant kind of home in Parktown, you will also find a few fairly nice planned communities where the newer homes all follow a similar architectural style—such as the red-tiled, Mediterranean style roves just to the south of Shasta. Even the neighborhoods that are dominated by Ranch Homes are generally a little bit nicer than you might normally expect, with various styles of bushes and trees decorating the front yards (palms being a popular choice) and a fair number of 1980’s style bi-level homes.

As with the rest of Milpitas, foreclosures are the rule of the day in the real estate market here. Despite this, the quality of the homes here, keep home prices somewhat higher than just to the north in Milford Village, for example, with the median home price in Parktown being around $475K (as opposed to $425 just to the north).

The difference may have something to do with the better ranked schools here, the slightly better home choices, the farther distance from the landfill to the northwest and closer proximity to San Jose. There are also—as the neighborhood name indicates—a handful of small to medium parks in the neighborhood—a nice touch of a family-oriented family neighborhood like this.

I suppose these extra improvements are worth an extra $1000/year over the course a 30 year mortgage. Overall, however, this is another pretty average, uninteresting neighborhood.