When Jan Eisen thinks of Plymouth, he thinks of his old hometown in Europe.

The small business owner grew up in a small town in the Netherlands and lived in other parts of Europe before moving to Plymouth in 1996. To him Ann Arbor was a little bit over the top but he didn’t want to live out in the middle of nowhere. Plymouth offered him that nice little middle ground with the same small-town flavor he grew up with in the Netherlands.

“Plymouth’s downtown gives me a very good idea of where I came from,” Eisen says.

And it gives Eisen a very good idea of where he wants to raise his family. He loves all of the events his town offers, the great schools, library, churches and recreational options, like an ice rink.

“You name it, it’s here,” Eisen says.

Downtown

Eisen regularly rides his bike the 1.5 miles from his house into his downtown office for work each day. He owns Eisenbahn, which sells niche brands of model railroads. Eisenbahn also means railroad in German.

Eisen loved trains as kid and has been infatuated with model trains since. He started collecting model trains years ago. Over time his hobby became progressively bigger and bigger to the point he began selling them. His hobby then became his job which then became so big that his wife gave him an ultimatum.

“It got so large my wife said get out of the house with that thing,” Eisen says.

They now crowd his downtown office. He sells a vast majority of them over the Internet to collectors across the nation. Even though Eisen wouldn’t mind having his train business back home again, he likes the idea of living so close to his work where he doesn’t need a car. He loves the walkability of Plymouth’s downtown and all of the amenities that come with that density.

Those are the same type of features that attracted Sharon Peigh and her husband. They moved to downtown in 1996 before it became fashionable in Metro Detroit. But they have been active stakeholders in downtown for even longer.

Peigh bought the home décor shop Sideways Inc. 31 years ago, growing it from just another 1,200-square-foot store to a 5,000-square-foot institution. City officials love to point out that it seems to generate newspaper stories every few years when a new reporter wanders into town and discovers what longtime Plymouth residents have enjoyed for decades.

After raising their children in Plymouth, they loved the schools and the housing stock in the neighborhoods, the Peighs decided they wanted to downsize to a more urban lifestyle. They still enjoyed Plymouth’s downtown and wanted to stay, but the trend of building downtown condos hadn’t hit quite yet. So the Peighs decided to build their own above Sideways.

“We wanted something very simple,” Peighs says. “We wanted to be able to walk in and walk out. Nothing was available so we built it. I can walk anywhere now.”

Those types of homes are widely available in downtown today. Several dozen downtown condos are online and more are in the works. They range from units above renovated storefronts to new construction. There are also a number of town homes and lofts on the outskirts of the central business district where downtown meets the neighborhoods. These homes range in size from studios to penthouses and are priced between the high $100,000s and the mid $300,000s.

Neighborhoods

The Plymouth area is one of the fastest growing communities in Metro Detroit. The three municipalities that make up the Plymouth area have added about 9,000 residents between 2000 and March, according to estimates from the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments. Thousands more have flocked to the area in the years before.

Larry Olson has watched a lot of those people move into his town. The lifelong Plymouth resident bought into his family’s heating-and-cooling business early on in his career before eventually selling it and becoming part of management at Visteon. He remembers when the town was much smaller growing up but he still thinks it’s largely the same today as it was then.

“It’s still a small community that is very informal and very easy to know everyone in town,” Olson says. “It makes a great place to raise a family.”

The excellent schools are a big reason he decided to raise his family in his hometown. He notes that some of the teachers that taught him and his kids are still teaching in the school system. And it’s still the small town where kids can grow up with a small core-group of friends.

“Most of the time you end up going to school with your friends and making new friends,” Olson says.

Some of the schools are located near the city’s core, which is surrounded by blocks of solid, well-maintained neighborhoods. The housing stock covers most styles of the homes that have traditionally been built in Midwest neighborhoods. They can range from cheap bungalows worth somewhere in the $100,000 price range to million-dollar mcmansions in the townships.

But even though the homes may appear quite different in grandeur at times, many of the people come off as just ordinary, everyday citizens. Many of the residents pride themselves on the idea that the residents in this growing country town still embody a lot of its down-to-earth values.

“We are very down-to-earth,” Peigh says. “You wouldn’t know by talking to people who has money and who doesn’t have money. It’s a very personal town. If you see someone walking down the street and they drop something, you pick it up for them.”