WSllama

It's a nice area. Almost all residential except for the most northern bit of the street.

The canal that borders the street on the east for much of its length is a nice place to go for a walk in the morning before it gets hot, and there are lots of people doing just that, so keep your dog on a leash if you take the dog with you.

Contrary to its name, I never saw any FLW-designed architecture anywhere near the street. Maybe I overlooked it or something, but I came down this street every day for most of a year so I don't think I would have missed it if it were there.

At the north end of the street, the surrounding streets become distinctly commercial, with car dealerships (one of which is Ferrari of Scottsdale), a wholesale store, and a dip into the industrial with a municipal airport. There's even a really nice store that sells spices. I swear its still there even though I only found it the once.

A the west end of the street is a mountain preserve type of place with hiking and mountain bike trails. Good stuff, but I usually finished rather than started mountain bike rides here.

The street goes from residential at that end, past a middle school and the high school I went to, through a light commercial area with one of the best pizza shops in the city--Uncle Sam's--and a couple grocery stores and pharmacies and doctors' offices, through some more residential area, and once it gets near Scottsdale Rd, things really start to pick up. Here there's lots and lots of commercial stuff including bike shops, spa stores, paint stores, restaurants, nick nack shops, and gobs of other stuff topped off with an outdoor mall sort of place that's great to walk around in the spring and fall.

Eventually the commercial stuff dies down and the residential stuff gets a little more sparse as you head toward the mountains at the east end. The climb over the mountains into Fountain Hills is just a road carved into the mountain with not a lot else going on. There's a casino somewhere out on the Beeline Highway, which Shea turns into at the far East end. And the town of Fountain Hills really does have an enormous fountain in the middle of a park.

Shea was the first part of a favorite 60 mile loop for a bike ride I used to do when I was in high school. Good street.

Except for having a restaurant with the best Chinese food I've had outside Manhattan, and a dinky little pool hall, all this street seems to have is car dealerships and fancy looking apartment complexes. I guess when it was empty, the property values were just right for car dealers to buy up big stretches of street-front and the apartment complexes got what was left.

Okay, it's not ALL car dealerships and apartments, it just seems that way. There's other stuff, too. I swear. LIke, um, that Chinese restaurant. And the pool hall.

The apartments are nice, though. At least the ones a couple of my friends rent in the area are.

Cheap housing. That's what came to mind when I was down here last. Between the scattered houses among dirt lots toward Avondale on the west end of the street, the airport at the east end (and the planes flying overhead because of it), and the mix of residential and nondescript warehouses in between, I can't imagine property values being all that impressive.

A lot of people work well paid jobs in this area, though. And it is very close to downtown Phoenix, so it has that going for it, which is nice. But I still wouldn't want to raise a family here if I could avoid it.

It's kind of slummy in places, to be sure, but very busy with excellent access to public transportation and plenty of amenities including a mall, home stores, antique shops, grocery stores, banks, and restaurants. It's not much for nightlife, though, and the traffic is horrible during morning and evening rush hour.

The map shows a "Cave Butte Recreation Area," but I don't remember that being there. I just remember Happy Valley Rd as the bit at the top of 7th St--or rather at what I thought was the top of 7th St. since I recently found out that 7th St. goes up in fits and starts all the way to the city of Cave Creek--a nice long, quiet bike ride loop I used to do. It would get 5 stars for bicycling, but only 2 in general because there really is nothing out here for miles except for a some new residential construction at the far west end of Happy Valley Rd. Or, rather, it was new when I was there a few years ago.

The map seems to show the start of the street all the way up at the top of the metro area in the city of Cave Creek, but all the good bits are south of Bell road, which is miles south of the pin in the map. As you get closer to downtown Phoenix there's tons of retail and commercial stuff including access to one of the city's biggest public high schools and the Phoenix Country Club.

There's not much to say about this street. It's kind of a generic and nondescript place to keep a house while you're at work and the kids are at school. It's a mile or so from the local high school and middle school, there is a small park nearby that was almost never in use when we lived there. There's a few doctors offices and businesses nearby on Shea, but other than Uncle Sam's Pizza, everything fun or useful like the mall or grocery stores requires driving.

It's a residential street just far enough from the highway to be quiet but close enough to have easy access to the rest of Phoenix. But it's just far enough from the high school and middle school to be annoying since it's not far enough for kids to take the bus.

The people are nice and the streets are well kept. But the best feature is that at the west end of the street is the entrance to a park area with amazing hiking and mountain bike trails.

The place is unearthly quiet for being close to such a main thoroughfare as Cave Creek, the surrounding streets are well-paved--though there is a bunch of totally unnecessary speed bumps on the side road that leads to the nearby mountain park--and all the houses are well-kept by friendly people.

All the retail stuff nearby, including public transportation and a German deli, is on Cave Creek. But that's only a 1/2 to 2 mile walk (or drive since this is Phoenix after all and the summers are hot) to most of it.

The best part in my mind is that all of the quiet and friendliness was achieved without an HOA.