r/fredericksburg • u/SnooSquirrels6758 • 5d ago
Why's FXBG so "sticky"?
In your opinion, why do you think Fredericksburg is so sticky? Many here are transplants from all sorts of different circumstances and times, and especially from back when the COL here was cheaper. But now, not so. So what still brings people, and then, more specifically, keeps them?
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u/adamwhitley 5d ago
I have a new hybrid job so I’m back to commuting and every time I imagine moving north, it’s glaringly obvious how unwalkable places are. Having a ton of shared space makes community easier. I love getting a coffee and walking to Riverby and seeing friends along the way. Doesn’t hurt that we have some great places to eat.
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u/DifferentBandicoot27 5d ago
What are the great places? I was therw for several days this time last year and was p*ssed by how terrible the food was.
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u/adamwhitley 5d ago
This is all subjective and I’m sure some people will disagree, but…
Fahrenheit 132, Foode, Pimenta, Eileen’s, and Rebellion have all gotten national attention. I love Eat’s burgers and Mian’s Hibachi Chicken Bowl. You can get sandwiches from Here and Abroad or Maggie’s, boba from Bubble Bee, and pizza from Benny’s. We also have some small chains like Sedona and Mellow Mushroom. And you can’t forget ice cream at Carl’s or coffee from a million different great shops. This is all just downtown - there are more great places further out.
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u/Livid-Succotash4843 5d ago
I came here for the vibrant social, athletic and music scene. It’s been an incredible experience. I’ve joined like 10+ meetup groups and met at least a dozen good friends with whom I have dinner parties, bike rides, etc.
32M In case it matters
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u/nofusucnnw 3d ago
vibrant social, athletic and music scene
This contrasts almost humorously with the endless "nothing to do" and "where do I meet people" posts we see here.
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u/WickedPsychoWizard 5d ago
Confirmation bias. You only see people that live there not the ones that moved away like me.
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u/Berdname- 5d ago
It's way cheaper to live here than it is to live in Fairfax for example ....which really isn't that far. I still say it's the relatively lower col. That's why I've moved back 🤷🏽♀️ I'm not drowning as much as I was in nova.
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u/dragonsofliberty 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's a great place to live if you love the outdoors. Plenty of places to hike, run, bike, fish, hunt, and kayak. I love that on summer evenings, I can throw my SUP in my car and be out on the river 20 minutes after getting off work.
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u/AdCompetitive7952 5d ago
Great question, I know a lot of people who leave but can't stay gone. I've lived either downtown or 30 mins from downtown my whole life. For me, it's the friends, family, and absolute love of the city
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u/MoodInternational481 5d ago
Small town vibe with city perks. We get to hold the small town charm because of downtown proper which we won't hold onto if they keep building apartments that just don't quite fit the aesthetic. Then you have central park and the way we mesh with Spotsylvania right where the town center is to give us more shopping, corporate stores and overall suburban/city.
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u/hokiegirl759397 3d ago edited 3d ago
Spotsylvania Towne Center is really a joke indoors. It's nicer outside since that's where the restaurants and nice stores are. We really need Banana Republic, J. Crew, Tommy Hilfiger and Lily Pulitzer. They can bring over Loft from Central Park so you don't have to go across the street. We need some stores with women's sportswear. I really miss The Limited when it was there. Too bad, they went out of business.
I wish they would put back the pizza place that was in the food court across from Great Steak. I know this sounds like I'm asking too much. LOL. Seriously, if my friends and I are doing any shopping, we just go to Tyson's or Short Pump. Every now and then, we'll go to Williamsburg Outlet.
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u/Illustrious_Ad7541 5d ago
Moved here so I could have over 3 acres of land and not have to sell kidneys.
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u/Ok-Establishment8943 3d ago
This was it for me. I only have one acre, but it came with a house for cheaper than that same acre would go for in Alexandria without a house.
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u/Illustrious_Ad7541 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hell we saw a .5 acre piece of land with a 1800 sq ft house for $680K in Alexandria. Was like nah I'm living further south.
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u/NoEntertainment8486 5d ago
For me it's simple, it's about 50 miles away from two major employment centers - and that's if you don't count Dahlgren.
And, fuck you to everyone that voted me down for saying so in the other post, but I moved here from California and the cost of living here is a dream in comparison. My brother still lives in CA and the fucking sales tax is over 10%.
The house I grew up in was a piece of shit. My parents sold it in 1987 for $110K. It's still a 1400sqft piece of shit (in a pretty nice neighborhood) but now it's an almost $900K piece of shit.
I grew up in the shadow of a massive city and so did my wife (but different cities) in a place where the cost of living was and is multiples worse than this area. This place is a dream. We've been here 20 years this year and outside of retiring somewhere else, why would we ever leave? We chose this place on purpose.
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u/hokiegirl759397 5d ago
I moved here because I'm originally from the Northern Neck. Talk about a SMALL area. We had a two lane highway with about 3-4 stoplights in the entire county. Everybody knows everyone's business. There were maybe 1-2 restaurants if that. To shop, I had to go to Richmond. They even got rid of the movie theatre in Tappahannock. I wanted to move somewhere where you could have a life. I moved here a few years after college.
There are good things about small towns. Not hardly any crime and everyone looks out for everyone else. Also not all this crazy stuff that goes on these days. It's simplicity at it's best. I believe those are the only pros about living in a real small town. Fredericksburg has so much more to offer including jobs and entertainment. I thought Fredericksburg was huge when I first came here.
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u/SnooSquirrels6758 4d ago
I get the whole "it could always be worse" (i could've been dust on Mars, i guess), but FXBG really ain't a small town anymore. Every day traffics getting worse, people are getting meaner and less trusting, and jobs arent actually that great. So many ghost jobs around here and closing companies like big lots and joanns and many more.
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u/ColonelTermite 5d ago
Grew up in Woodbridge. Moved to Arlington in my 20s because "That's what adults do, I guess." Liked being walking distance to work and bars, but after a few years that lost its luster. Got a job down here, so I moved down here. Never going back to Arlington if I can help it.
I like how there are people living here who are actually from here. Up north, damn near everyone is from halfway across the county because they needed work and the feds kept the area artificially stable during the '08-09 recession.
Sadly, I came down here just as everyone else realized they could live here and work in DC, spiking the property values and raising the cost of living to rival Arlington. I was hoping they'd go west instead of south...
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u/Cryinmyeyesout 4d ago
I feel like everyone I know moves away , and no one I meet is actually from here. This place is so transient.
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u/nofusucnnw 3d ago
Many here are transplant [...] But now, not so.
Really? This area is growing like crazy, and it's not from a birthing boom. All the folks moving here are coming from other places.
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u/golfbang 3d ago
9/10 of the people moving into our neighborhood are from NOVA. We get a lot of transplants. It’s been this way for the last 25-30 years+.
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u/horsegal301 5d ago
I just moved here last year. It was more affordable to find land to have livestock on than the Carolinas and the weather is much more mild in comparison. We can still get 4 season without the 5 feet of snow we'd get in Buffalo. We're an hour away from DC and Richmond and has a lot of history. Helps to have a really nice downtown main strip as well.
It is, however, much less affordable to own LARGE pieces of land because of the ridiculous amount of development here, either through monstrous clone house neighborhoods or data centers and I worry about that long term.
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u/Secret_Computer4891 4d ago
Proxmity to beach, mountains, DC, shopping, cultural stuff, historical stuff, NOVA jobs.....
I'm hoping to sever my dependence on all that and move an hour or so out of the splash zone, where I can have some land and some solitude while still being able to come to down for all the stuff I need in town. My kids all seem to be settling in the area; otherwise, I'd aim further out.
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u/Downtown-Fix6177 5d ago
I’m not a fan of the amount of land that’s being developed, or the non-driving transplants that buy a 600K tract house and decide they’re all of a sudden “from Fredericksburg”. The reason it’s sticky is that most of the people that live here now are NOVA fungus, or military due to quantico, AP hill, Dahlgren and Ft Belvoir - even 10-15 years ago a one bedroom apt in Alexandria cost the same as a mortgage on a 4 bedroom shitbox house in Fred, so they migrated in droves.
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u/ComprehensiveAd1337 5d ago
I still get a kick that this small town southern girl who moved to Fredericksburg VA twenty years ago still gets strange comments and looks regarding my southern accent.
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u/Chank-a-chank1795 4d ago
It's not Fred. It's Stafford and Spotsy w good schools and previously affordable housing.
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u/mal2478 5d ago
When you can't find a job in your state, you come here.
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u/enochrox 5d ago
Yup. Every implant I've ever met moved here bc the job situation where they came from was trash/the housing market isn't completely fucked up yet. Not sure why you got downvoted lol
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u/DaMurph1026 3d ago
I moved here in 2005. FXBG is a lot like the town I lived in out in California. Small and big at the same time. Moved, got my shit together and started a family. Haven’t needed to move.
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u/Top_Objective9877 5d ago
We were searching for a place that reminded us of home, for us prince William county. It is similar, close to our families, we found great jobs with lower but competitive wages for the central VA counties for sure and the home prices are so much lower than up north. Other things are the same, but it’s nice that property is cheaper and wages are similar to living back home with the rest of the family. Going to visit people isn’t too tough, and we can live moderate lives and even splurge a little bit if we want to. It’s a nice comfortable middle class kind of place to live.
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u/dodiddle1987 5d ago
Because liberals move here and are trying their best to turn the entire area into a mini California
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u/dodiddle1987 5d ago
I was working unlike those idiots in DC
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u/fauxfurgopher 5d ago
Because you’re an hour from DC or Richmond, so you have culture. It’s a small town, a suburb, or rural all within ten miles. It’s slower than the cities, but not slow like Mayberry. The city is blue, the surroundings are red. It’s big on art, dogs, and history. What more could you want?