Central allandale By Jackie Potts

French Place

Best described as a mixture of the past, present and future, French Place is a hodgepodge of greenery, homes, businesses and people. Small, one-story houses intersperse larger, multiple-story dwellings along wide streets, shaded by a wide variety of trees, bushes and in some places, bamboo.

Children play in their front yards under the morning sun, as parents stand by. Residents are outside watering their lawns, walking from place to place and greeting nearby neighbors.

French Place is often mentioned in conjunction with the neighborhood Cherrywood. It is in actuality a subdivision of the neighborhood Cherrywood located in zip code 78722, and includes the pricier Wilshire Woods.

Cherrywood is defined by Wilshire Boulevard on the north, Manor Road on the south, Airport Boulevard to the east and Interstate 35 to the west, and is located a few miles from the University of Texas and downtown Austin.

French Place was originally owned by the Giles family in the 1940s. Once known as Giles Two, the area expanded slowly until the 1980s, a period of change and extreme growth in the neighborhood.

Today, French Place houses a diverse group of residents, ranging in all ages and all backgrounds.

Its central and convenient location, coupled with the environment residents have cultivated, make French Place one of the most attractive neighborhoods in central Austin for homebuyers of all types.

Residents have quick access to neighborhood restaurants, grocery stores and other retail services. Among a few neighborhood highlights are the supermarket Fiesta, and the local eatery Hoover's.

French Place is generally known as one of Austin's older neighborhoods, containing a great deal of "starter homes," mostly two-bedroom, one-bathroom homes with 900 to 1,200 square feet of living space. Prices for the homes range from $150,000 to $250,000. Realtor Tom Polk, of Stanberry & Associates, says he doesn't think there is any one type of purchaser. "It has to do with what French Place does for the purchaser. It has a really neat name, it's kind of a cool area to be in," he says.

Children in the neighborhood attend Maplewood Elementary, Kealing Junior High School and McCallum High School. Area parks include Alamo Parkland Recreation Center and Patterson Park.

Utilities are provided by the City of Austin.

Polk says the high demand of French Place residences is shown through the low availability of homes for sale.

"It's not a big area. These homes are older and have character, and over the last years people have placed their own personal value in them," he says. "They remodeled them, kept them up, and when you put that together with a nice looking, vintage neighborhood, the extreme convenience of it, you have a winner."

Zone: East Central

Zip Code 78722

French place provides residents with downtown convenience and shopping, like the Hancock Center which features HEB, Old Navy, Freebirds, Sears, Wendy's, Jason's Deli and much more.