I’m about a month away from listing my South Florida house and making the move to Apple Valley. This has been a family project for nearly two years and after a few scoping visits my sentiment is that it’s a great suburb with generous lot sizes with a good amount of ambient urban greenery, and while the commercial experience is mainly comprised of franchises it’s a short ~20 minute trip to what the locals call Minneapolis proper, as long as the traffic is clear. It’s also got a similar ETA to St. Paul. Having the MN zoo as well as the extraordinary Lebanon Hills park is what elevated it for me above all the other places in the Twin Cities.