Kenwood Park

[Anonymous]

Hi: Could someone living in this area please chime in? I am a little confused by the information I see. We have three small kids and we are looking for a neighborhood with lots of kids around, where you know your neighbors, and also easy commute to downtown DC where both of us work. Kenwood Park seems ideal for the size of the house we need, proximity to DC, and school cluster (Bradley Hills, Pyle, Whitman). However some of the older blogs here suggest that it is not very kid friendly (I don't see any playgrounds/parks in walking distance) but there do seem to be kids around. I don't want to pay such a hefty price and end up in a place where we feel isolated. Please please give us your frank opinions.

[Anonymous]

We looked at a house in there a couple of years ago and passed on it b/c it didn't seem kid-friendly. There are plenty of older rambler homes, which aren't attractive and also some newer builds with, presumably, younger families. But the neighborhood left us cold: not pretty enough, no families walking around, just a blahh.

[Anonymous]

Some of Kenwood Park is zoned to Burning Tree, rather than Bradley Hills.

[Anonymous]

I think you'd find a lot more kids in Somerset.

[Anonymous]

I live in Landon Woods, a neighborhood adjacent to Kenwood Park. When we moved in almost ten years ago, there were very few children in the whole area. The neighborhood felt very old, with many of the orignal owners still in the 1950s ramblers in our neighborhood.

In the past nine years, the neighborhoods have changed tremendously. There are tons of new families with kids that have moved in - in both the older homes as well as the new houses (teardowns are rampant here - but more so in Landon Woods). Kenwood Park seems to have an active neighborhood group that plans potlucks and other activities and we participate regularly in activities in a little park off Oldchester. I'm very happy here and my DC has TONS of friends in the neighborhood. Kids are running from house to house and parents hang out regularly together on each other's porches or backyards.

While there are no playgrounds, we have always used Landon School as our playground. The kids from the neighborhood go there all the time to play soccer, ride bikes, walk dogs, play on their playgrounds, etc.

Good luck with your search - this is a great area with more and more kids moving in all the time! And proximity to downtown Bethesda is great - you can walk, but it's a little long, so we usually ride our bikes there.