It was 2015 when Tom Carlson left St. Louis. It made sense to be in Phoenix for work—his longtime employer, the parent company of the Riverfront Times, had shed the St. Louis-based publication and promoted him to be design director for its other newspapers. His son had recently graduated high school; why not give Arizona a try? “I hadn’t lived anywhere but St. Louis and Springfield, Missouri, for college,” he recalls. “So it was like, Let’s have an adventure.”
Carlson found much to like about his new home in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe. “It was almost like a tropical vacation,” he says. “Because we had palm trees and saguaros in our yard and a swimming pool and a lighted path through the neighborhood that was almost like a lighted path through a resort.”
Yet the Carlsons both found themselves thinking of home: She missed her friends in the theater scene; he missed St. Louis’ music scene, and found himself frustrated by the bad Italian food in Phoenix. “There’s so many places to eat, and so many of them are mediocre,” he says, laughing. “I think St. Louis is a better restaurant town.” And then they started getting calls from investors, offering double what they’d paid for their home in Tempe—a proposition too tempting not to consider. Last year, the couple moved back to St. Louis…