Chandler City

Best place to raise a family. Very well planned city with excellent amenities. Friendly people who are willing to help one out in every way.

One of the many cities in the Valley of the Sun, I enjoy my visits to this city. It’s spread out over a large area of the Valley. We have friends that live in the far south end of the city and some that live near the 10 fwy close to Tempe/​Phoenix.
There’s a nice selection of restaurants and shopping throughout Chandler. The city also has an awesome automall area with BMW, Mercedes-​Benz, Audi, and Lexus to name a few all located in the same area so you can easily shop for cars.
The rent is relatively cheap in this city as well. We’ve seriously considered moving here, but the commute is just too long.
Return Factor — 75%

My 700^th review (finally!). Hmmm, needs to be someplace special to me, just as my other «Centennial» reviews were. I decided to choose Chandler, AZ, a city I sort of adopted, or maybe it adopted me, in 2007. Oh, I had been visiting it since I started college in San Diego in 1966, even before that a few times, a visit for Xmas in 1954 from where my family lived in Ohio, again in June of 1955 to be my cousin Barbara Gaddis Knox’s flower girl, later in 1965 from Michigan as part of a trip out west to look at colleges in California, Nevada, Colorado. Then trips for some Thanksgivings and Easters, since the Knoxes were my closest relatives to San Diego, and finally for most Thanksgivings and Christmases after my parents chose Chandler to retire in from 1973 on. But it was always as a visitor, with the focus on visiting family, not the area.
That all changed in January of 2007 when I rushed here, driving all night, after my mother had a heart attack and I didn’t even know if she had survived the night till I arrived at 6am. My father had passed away in Dec. 2000. She seemed to to be on the mend and I stayed to be with her during what was supposed to be her recovery but at 89 she just didn’t have the strength to bounce back and passed away three weeks later. By then I had been staying in her house and doing the upkeep, shopping in the area, making friends with the neighbors, and now had the daunting task of going thru her possessions, many of which were family keepsakes, and deciding what should be done with them. I mention all this only to give background on how I came to live here.
It seemed like the longer I stayed, the more I grew to love the area, in spite of the sad circumstances that brought me here. I ended up being here for nine months, using the post offices, libraries, grocery and hardware stores, taking classes at the local craft stores, driving all over exploring, enjoying the beautiful spring weather, marvelling at the power of nature during dust storms and monsoons, experiencing the triple digit heat in the summer, eating at the variety of local restaurants, making acquaintances and friends wherever I went. I enjoyed it so much I didn’t want to return to San Diego! People would ask me where I was from and them ask what I was doing HERE instead of beautiful San Diego and I found myself answering, «Because I love it here!» My line was, «I’m a San Diego snowbird!». I was really sad to leave here, thinking I might never get back.
Sadly, a cousin passed away the next July so I did come back. I stayed about a week. Then a few months later my daughter who lives in Mesa talked me into coming out for Easter and I stayed longer. Then again in a few months, each trip lasting longer than the last. I still love coming back here, and spent over half of last year (2010) here! Not all in Chandler, part in Mesa, but still in the area.
If anyone asks me if I would recommend this area to live, I give them a resounding yes! If I could have kept my parents’ house, I think I would have stayed here myself.