Reviews & Comments
Shawnee, OK
Would not live here if I had a choice -
12/11/2018I have lived in Shawnee for almost 4 years. It is a poor town. Yes, it has a Christian University (OBU) but the college does not influence the town much. St Gregory's filed bankruptcy and closed a year ago. There is a small mall here to shop at, but they only carry the lower end merchandise. Wal-Mart dominates. The K-Mart (such as it was) shut down last year so there is little to no competition.
There are two Homeland grocery stores but they are expensive and although they have been recently renovated, they still smell like old or rotten fruit and meat when you walk in. There is a very small Aldi's in town now too.
Shawnee does have a Lowe's, Tractor Supply and Atwood's. It also has more gas stations and banks than are necessary. There are very few sit down restaurants and only one "nice" place to go for dinner, but there are multiple fast food restaurants and Mexican restaurants.
The city is old, run down and dirty with some areas closer to downtown that are very "rough" and trashy. The infrastructure is the same. There are very few sidewalks anywhere in town. (I keep calling it a town, but the population is about 32,000 people). The city streets are horrible. The city keeps patching potholes, but they keep re-forming because the city did not plan any drainage/sewer lines so when the rains come and the streets flood, it washes away the "fixes". Traffic is always bad because the streets are narrow, there are very few turn lanes and everything is built up on top of itself along Kickapoo and Harrison Streets.
Housing is relatively cheap but there are many more run-down areas of town than nice areas.
The hospital has good services and preventative care, but if you have something really wrong with you, you will definitely want to go to Oklahoma City for your healthcare.
Crime is unusually high in Shawnee and the police department doesn't seem to be able to get a handle on it. There is a high amount of property theft crimes and the drug problem here seems to be more serious than many other places I have lived.
Aside from the crime, one of my main concerns is that people don't take care of their pets here and you see way too many dogs and cats running loose. Even if you did have sidewalks to walk on, you still probably wouldn't because you would very likely get attacked by a stray dog. Oklahomans have a weird fascination with pitbulls and there are so many of them running loose. Animal Control has their hands full and many times they have ignored calls because they have no place to put the animals if they picked them up.
There are a few civic groups who are trying to better the city as a whole but for the population, Shawnee does not offer the amenities one would think there would be for a town this size. They seem to be trying, but until they get the infrastructure figured out and get people to care about their properties enough to take care of them, it seems like a waste of time and money.