I had lunch with a friend today who mentioned that he was trying to find out if Salt Lake City is a decent place to live.

He's a very outdoors kind of person (mountain bikes, trail runs, has competed in Xterra off-road Triathlons, that kind of thing) and likes the thought of living somewhere so centrally located to everything in the western part of the country.

However, he can't seem to find anything about what it's like to live in Salt Lake City.

Anyone have any comments? He's lived in the Richmond, VA area pretty much his whole life, but he's spent a lot of time out west. He's never visited SLC, however; just spent time in its airport.

If you live there, what are your 3 likes and dislikes about the area?

 

Forgot to add, he's been a BSA in the Financial Services area here in Richmond for a number of years. Does SLC have a number of Financial Services companies?

 

hobbit works for Wells Fargo here, so he might be able to answer this one. there seems to be a fair amount of banking here.
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i'm an army brat, so i've moved around the US quite a bit growing up. i lived mostly in the south and new england, with a quick stab in DC and hawaii. i also lived in finland for 2 years. so that's what i compare UT to.

others, please openly agree or disagree with this, but this is my take:

housing inside the SLC area runs $200k-300k for a typical home (depends a lot on your definition of typical though), so its not super cheap, but its not too expensive either. they havent been hit by the sub-prime mess as bad as either coast. stay away from the west side of the city, as crime is more of a problem.

the mormon/LDS church is strong here, and i find that many to most of the people here try to be fair rather than trying to get a small step ahead, and that can be a nice change. there are universities and such here, so a lot of the population is educated. i personally like that better as i think education has a lot of positive influences on people.

PROS
there are a lot of beautiful canyons, and if your friend loves to ski/snowboard, it's a great place. we all enjoy canyon drives and such. i love to see the mountains everywhere, all day. it's just a beautiful place to live. not tons of trees or small lakes, but the mountains are gorgeous.

if you don't like outdoor stuff, there's enough to do here, but not tons. if you like outdoors stuff like hiking/rock climbing/biking and winter sports, you'll be in great shape and really enjoy it here.

the local economy seems good to me--i had several decent local job offers as a mechanical engineer upon graduation, and there are always other positions if i need one.

vegas is 6 hours away, so it makes for a fun occasional weekend trip. disneyland/southern california is 10 hours drive, and so that can make for nice vacations too.

CONS/POTENTIAL CONS
in the smaller satellite cities away from SLC, some of my coworkers have been frustrated by the occasional unprincipled LDS (LDS = mormon) family. (I am LDS, and most of us are pleasant friends/neighbors.) they say they have to deal with 'my kids cant play with your kids' type crap now and then. i lived in the deep south and wasn't a standard protestant, so i faced the same type of thing there--i suppose its the same every place when you have a limited demographic. anyways, don't live too far from salt lake and this will probably never come up. but that's the only issue i've heard of here.

oh yeah, they don't keep the roads clean. gravel trucks from the mining industry drop gravel and such and chew your car to pieces very quickly. its frustrating--i just put my car in the shop yesterday to do a $900 repair because a semi kicked a large (golfball-to-baseball sized) rock into the side of my car. and it's "not his fault because it was on the road, not something that fell from the truck" so i'm SOL unless i take it to court. i have lots and lots of rock chips in the front end.

overall, it's got a more pros and less cons than most areas IMO.

 

For outdoorsy types you can't get much better than Salt Lake. I live within 20 minutes of 7 world class ski resorts, 5 minutes from hiking, biking, and climbing.

I love that it's a big enough city that we have pretty much everything, but it's still small enough that I don't feel crowded. I love the mountains, and I love that it's a clean city with friendly people.

I don't like that I can't ride my bike or have the top down year round, but the skiing makes up for that. I am sometimes bothered by how ignorant some of the population is (this is generally attributed to the dominant religion). I don't like the ignorance of some outsiders who have some "ideas" of what it's like here.

As for companies I'm not sure what's out there.

 

I agree with Euclid. Plenty here for all walks of life. Plenty to do year round.

As for financial companies you'll find American Express, Discover Card, Advanta, Zion's bank corp, Well's Fargo, etc.

 

I agree with all of the above. I grew up in AZ and So Cal and never expected to want to live here. I wouldn't live anywhere else. Well, maybe Spain or London or...

 

oh yeah, another potential con:

the winter is a bit long here, as SLC is pretty far north.

i like shorter winters, but if your friend gets into skiing he might wish we had a longer winter and think of this as a good thing.

 

dude... SLC beats the hell out of richmond, virginia!!! game over

SLC is one of the cleanest cities in america, .... In the west you can breathe.... theres wide open space.... mountains... smart people... and opportunity!!!!

much like northern virginia/fairfax county as far as opportunity/growth etc... but richmond/hampton roads area are not even worth comparing .... different worlds!!!!

 

100%. Lived there for 13 years and I probably still would if it werent for the cold weather half the year. Cold weather is certainly nothing new to the VA area though.

 

I agree with everything that Ace has said... I've lived in Texas, Oregon, North Carolina, DC, Maryland, and currently SLC, UT...

I was in-love with the weather in Charlotte, and I thought I would hate the winters here... but have since picked up Snowboarding, and love it (I've gone 30+ times this season). There is tons of hiking, rock climbing, mountain biking, and of course canyon running etc to do here. There are a couple of lakes not too far away as well.