Price range: Approximately $180,000 to $225,000 Years built: 1998 to 2002 Square footage: 2,000 to 2,500 square feet Fees: $400 annual homeowners fee Schools: Woodland Elementary, Riverside Middle and J. L. Mann High Parks and recreation: Onsite swimming pool, two tennis courts and a 7-acre community natural area with walking trail. Avalon Reserve is located less than 10 minutes from shopping malls.
When Dawn Sunde and her husband, Tim, left Michigan in 1997, the move took them away from family and friends. First, they moved to Atlanta and in 2001, they settled in Greenville.
Yet the residents of Avalon Reserve have found a way to minimize the effects on nuclear families, many of whom landed here due to job transfers.
"Instead of the family get-together, we have neighborhood get-togethers," said Mrs. Sunde, 34. "That's just very helpful for our kids, and for us.
"It gives you a sense of community, when you don't necessarily have family around to help with things, you have neighbors that you can count on," she said.
In 16 years of marriage, the Sundes have moved four times. And of all the neighborhoods in which they've lived, the people in Avalon, she said, have been the most sociable.
Located just off State 14 near Pelham Road, Avalon Reserve is a neighborhood with a topography as diverse as the people who live there. Gentle rolling hills with straight and winding streets, level lots and mounds, towering oaks and small trees provide the backdrop for the place where German, Korean, Indian, African, American and French families, Northerners, Southerners and others gather at the end of the day.
"It's the heart of Greenville right now, because all of the businesses are moving this way," said Tony Saxon, 40. Locale played an important part in his and his wife's decision to move to Avalon from southern Greenville County several years ago.
The community is just 10 minutes from downtown Greer, Simpsonville and downtown Greenville.
"The nice thing," Mrs. Sunde said, "is we're in a location where you can access about everything, but yet you don't have the congestion of being in some of the busier areas."
The 150-home neighborhood was begun by Pulte Homes in 1998. When Pulte pulled out of the Greenville real estate market in 2002, the subdivision was purchased by McCar Homes, the former MDC Homes of Atlanta.
Maria Turner and her husband, Will, got in at the right time 4 years ago. "Pulte was pulling out and dropped prices ... and I said, 'I want that one!' "
Their home has everything they wanted, said Mrs. Turner, whose previous employer transferred her here from Myrtle Beach. An accountant, she now works part time.
"We were looking for four bedrooms and an office and the amenities. We definitely wanted a pool," said Mrs. Turner, who was enjoying the community pool with her neighbor, Bobbie Clain; both women were watching their children frolic in the water.
Mrs. Clain and her husband, Bill, weren't really house-hunting when they discovered Avalon. Natives of Upstate New York, the couple had lived in Greer for six years. They first saw the neighborhood while moving a friend there.
"I visited her a couple of times and loved the neighborhood and bought a house three months later," Mrs. Clain said.
It was the family atmosphere and the neighborhood pool that caught her attention, she said. "I've met lots of friends, very nice people. The kids are wonderful."
"And there are lots of children," said Bill Turner, Maria's husband, "and lots of get-togethers."
"We have a neighborhood barbecue," said resident Ted Hendry, president of the United Way of Greenville. "We have had on occasion a holiday progressive dinner, and the different cul-de-sacs have parties. Every Halloween we have a neighborhood Halloween event. We have a cookout, and then the kids ... go trick-or-treating."
Hendry said he was attracted to the community by its topography and its international flavor, as well as its size.
It's a lot like Greenville itself, which, Hendry said, has "big-city amenities with a small-town feel about it."
"We absolutely love Greenville," he said. "If we could stay forever, that would be fine."
By Kathy Spencer-Mention STAFF WRITER THE GREENVILLE NEWS
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