Dull, boring, unsafe town far away from big cities
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5/24/2020
Extremely boring town with hardly any social activities to partake in. Lots of parks. Markland mall, restaurants around SR31 around Alto and the YMCA in the so called "downtown" area are the only things saving myself from killing me from boredom. There are low income communities here and the only reason keeping me from leaving is the short commute to Delphi/Aptiv and a few of my colleagues living here. As a highly educated and high earning immigrant, I have personally experienced a lot of racism, strange looks from a lot of people in Walmart, Kroger and an overall unwelcome feeling in this town. Dearth of options for entertainment and lack of educated young professionals. The roads here are good in some areas (Lincoln) however absolutely horrible near the Foster park, and Dixon Road among others. The local authorities here don't care much about the fact that roads here are on par with some of the worst third world countries.
On the positive side, there are good parks here, a bowling and a laser tag facility and most big grocery stores (Walmart, Target, Meijer). Also with a relatively smaller population density it is good to do social distancing during Covid-19 times.
This town is absolutely not for young, college educated people and especially for immigrants. There is extremely less diversity. The city council and the Mayor's office (both previous and current mayors) have let this city go to the dogs in terms of public infrastructure, diversity of economy, diversity of population, dearth of highly educated young professionals. No wonder a high paying company like Aptiv is moving to better places like Westfield/Noblesville; and Delphi might move to Noblesville after BorgWarner acquisition leaving only Delphi/GM (dead plant now making ventilators for COVID-19) and FCA (only low skilled and less educated technicians) as well paying employers.
One of the biggest problems of Kokomo is the location being far (1 hour) from Indianapolis and the fact that the current mayor of 2020, previous mayor until 2019 and Howard County commissioner not caring much about Kokomo will also lead to this town being the next no go town (read crumbling economy and dangerous) of Indiana like Gary. Good luck Kokomo, you really need it. And I am going to get the hell out of Kokomo once Aptiv moves to Noblesville.
Animesh | Kokomo, IN