Why Choose Colorado Springs? (Denver, Boulder: lawyer, military, house hunting)

[Rhapsody]

I've lived in Northern VA (Leesburg) for the former bit of my life, but we relocated to Denver because of the bad weather and to take care of an ailing relative.

Denver is a very nice city; in my opinion it is better than Colorado Springs because it functions as more of a cultural centre and, to be honest, I found CS a bit boring.

Denver's suburbs have terrible sprawl, however. In fact, Broomfield is merging with Boulder already. The outdoor activities and multitude of cultural events (ballet, orchestra, etc.) are great as well. I live in the Stapleton neighbourhood (built on the old Stapleton Airport for those who don't know), and I absolutely love it. It has a very tight-knit community feeling, plus it can be afforded on most any income. Not to mention its proximity to downtown and the airport.

[cyecye]

Hi .. We are from Fredericksburg VA and it's growing so fast so Mike you and your wife sound just like myself and my husband..we have done all most the same things. So we decided well why not out by my daughter she lives in Broomfield. We are looking to move out of town. As you said with 1 to 5 achers.
We just want some peace and quite..As you said we are tired of all the traffic and the noise..Thanks for all the info and now I know we are not the only ones who feel this way

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by cyecye

Hi .. We are from Fredericksburg VA and it's growing so fast so Mike you and your wife sound just like myself and my husband..we have done almost the same things. So we decided well why not move out by my daughter, in Broomfield. We are looking to move out of town. As you said with 1 to 5 acres. We just want some peace and quite..As you said we are tired of all the traffic and the noise..Thanks for all the info and now I know we are not the only ones who feel this way

Cyecye: Thanks for the feedback. I've been to Fredericksburg many times, one of my former coworkers lives there. I know Rte 17 well, it was my way to get from Chantilly to Richmond without using the Capital Beltway and the upper stretches of I-95, as I travelled a lot to Petersburg, VA (Fort Lee) on Army business.

You'll enjoy looking around Broomfield, it's on the way to Boulder, a big college town. Further north you go from Broomfield (away from Denver) the prices are lower, so don't rule out Longmont or Fort Collins. I haven't driven all over that area like I have down here, so I'd bet there's a lot to choose from. If you want to get down this way, consider being along either Rte 83 or Rte 85, south of Denver, as there's tons of stuff with acreage, as well as all the way down here in the Black Forest area.

See my posting under the OTHER category for Tips and Techniques to use the internet to search out homes & prices in any zip code.

s/Mike

[cyecye]

Thanks Mike will look around there more..We are just looking for a nice quite place to live and retire..I was wondering do you know anything about retirement communities? maybe with some land?? again thanks for the help..
Holly

[Mike from back east]

Cyecye: There are some many retirement communities in Colorado. Do a Google on ( "retirement communities" +colorado ) and you'll get plenty of hits.

Phoenix, AZ area is the grand-daddy of retirement areas, like Sun City Grand in Surprise, AZ, but it's too hot for us. Del Webb is going to build something up near Denver, off of toll-road C-470 near Denver airport but not sure what it's going to be, and not sure it's going to be all that quiet. We have a quiet community here, called Pine Creek, in the Briargate area, zip code 80920, that wraps around a golf course like the Del Webb places. It's fairly quiet in this northern area of town, and has a full mix of families and retirees.

s/Mike

[CharlesStro]

Mike - thank you so very much for sharing your research and experiences! And of course, to the others who have contributed, as well.

My boyfriend and I have been researching for many months on finding a place to move to that, also like you, Mike, had no humidity, no extreme hot/cold, no bugs, etc. and is affordable. We've narrowed it down to Spokane, WA, Colorado Springs and the area, and perhaps even Reno, NV. [We're currently in Austin, TX and hate the heat and humidity! And I was born and raised in the MD/D.C. area, so I can relate to the comments posted here about the east!]

I am beginning to think that CS fits the bill the best, esp. after reading this forum!

We are both starting out as acupuncturists and I am curious if anyone knows the reception for acupuncture and alternative medicine in the CS area?
There seems to already be quite a few acupuncturists in the Denver/Boulder/Fort Collins (Northern) areas, but fewer per capita in the CS and Pueblo area. We're also trying to get a better idea about what acupuncturists are charging in the CS area - we seem to have found a general range, but nothing too informative yet.

Any information that anyone may be able to provide is greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
F & C

[ConnieandFrank]

To: Mike from back east. Hope you can answer some of our questions. We are from Southeastern Arizona. My husband and I have been looking for a good place to move to. The population here is 14000 or so. I'ts pretty inexpensive to live but no good paying jobs and no higher educational schools near by for our growing kids. The closest is Tucson but my husband and I don't like the crime rate there. We were intrested in Flagstaff due to the University but it seems it gets as cold as Portland ME!! Still looking perhaps at Prescott but the Universtiy closest there is in Flagstaff. We also want to stay away from tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and other major natural dissasters. We ran into Colorado Spings by accident. We had heard of CS before but figured it would be very expensive, very cold and would have high crime. I love the very "in depht" review you have done on the place. I have a few questions. I understood that you referred to "black forrest"? what is that...name of a town/city? Right now we own 5 acres in which we have few horses, chickens, a cow, a donkey, ducks, canaries, parakeets, love birds, and cockatiels. Can you have all this there in CS or very close to it (like the outskirts)? Would this place have access to the schools there in CS? I'm an RN specializing right now in Behavioral Mental Health.(would like to be a RN in the operating room) My husband is a transportation supervisor and would have to look for something new. Is there a good variety of jobs? He always liked the Forestry opportunities. Our kids are small right now but sooner or later they will grow up and will need to attend a University. We would like a place they can go to school and be able to have a pretty good chance of working in their field of study. How cold does it get there? We thought about Corvallis, Salem, Medford (Oregon) but one thing or the other discouraged us (mostly the threat of tsunamis). Also looked into Walla Walla WA and areas in New Mexico. My husband and I are both in our early 30's. We are very family oriented and like places that we can do things with our children. (like take them to the zoo, nice park etc.) We like fishing, camping, and spending time outdoors. Safety is very important to us and this is where most places fall short. Hope you can shed some light in some of our questions. What is the percentage of population you have there? I mean (white, huspanics, asian, etc) We are both Hispanic and would like a place that does not have a problem with this. We are not looking for a high population of hispanics either. I mean.... it doesn't matter we want a safe good place that we can work in, out kids go to school and work as well. Is CS culture sensitive? I really appreciate your time and honesty. Thanks
Connie and Frank.

[Mike from back east]

Hello, and thanks for writing.

Population here is about 360,000 with a high level of education and job skills as you would expect in a town with as much military work as this one. I'd say we are very near the DC metro level as far as our expertise levels, a lot of high tech here for USAF Academy, two AF bases, NORAD, Cheyenne Mountain, etc. And that doesn't even count all of the work done at Fort Carson, which is almost going to double in a few years.

Like us, retirees are starting to coming here for the mild climate, low crime, reasonable cost of living, affordable housing (compared to the coasts and most major cities), fine public schools (esp District 20), several fine colleges, good medical facilities (a current building boom here and in Denver on hospital construction), lots of culture (even more, 75 minutes up I-25 in Denver), tons of outdoor fun, fabulous scenery, nice friendly people, huge churches of all sorts, fine food. We sort of have it all here, and there is little downside.

Some locals gripe about the traffic, but having lived for 30+ years in the DC metro area, which is KNOWN to be in the top five WORST traffic cities, this place is a BREEZE.

Data supporting most of my remarks is found in the homepage of city-data, not these state forums, and also see my post in Other Topics for more sources of data.

Black Forest is an area here that is heavily wooded with evergreen trees. If you want a few acres for critters, that's the area, zip 80908. Roughly, BF is bounded by Hwy 24 on the South, Hwy 105 on the North, Powers Blvd on the West and the open plains on the east (about Meridian Road). The further east from Meridian Road you go, the more grassland prairie you are in, largely treeless, for a 700+ miles to St Louis. But LOTS of land for critters. In BF you can get the acres and trees you may wish for in order to have horses or longhorns or whatever. There is a crossroads out there with a few businesses, but right now BF is an un-incorporated area, more a state of mind than a stated town. Then again, you can go west, into Teller County, and you get into real mountains, heavily forested, ranch country, with more winter weather than you probably want, but lots of land and open spaces w/out desert heat.

I don't hear of any culture clash btw Hispanics and Anglos in this area that I'm told exists in places like southern New Mexico (esp Albuquerque). Our Realtor is a woman who is 3rd or 4th generation Hispanic, married to a USAF officer of Lebanese heritage - lovely people, (stunning daughters!) who are now our personal friends and not just prior business acquaintances. Our Mayor is Lionel Rivera, who is doing a fine job, point being, an Hispanic man was elected Mayor in a 75% majority Anglo city. The stats are also found on the main homepage of this site. The data for Col Sprgs is 75% white and 12% hispanic. There are stats also for each zip code on the main page, but the zip-code-level stats don't list Hispanic separately, so their numbers are apparently in the numbers for the white category. I don't think this town has any real problems with diversity.

Weather here is mild. Drier all year than the coasts, summers are cooler than back east or the desert, winters are colder than the coasts. Still, with the dryness here, the cold isn't so bad. We had one or two nights in December when it hit -15 but that didn't last long. I feel warmer here than I did in the DC area, where even damp cold air of +35 really makes you shiver. In the daytime in January, I usually only wore a sport jacket over a long-sleeve shirt, not the overcoats they wear back east. With all the sunshine, what snow we get here melts quickly. Don't be fooled by the TV news that always shows a jack-knifed semi on I-70 near Eisenhower Tunnel. That's up in the "high country" way west of Denver, a whole other world from down here, or from Denver for that matter. Here, think in terms of I-25 as being the dividing line, the further east the milder, the further west in the high country, the worse the winter weather and the heavier the snowpack. There is no snowpack here in town, only up on top of Pikes Peak, which you can see on the Pikes Peak Cam website, http://www.pikespeakcam.com/ Summers here are mild, some people don't have A/C, some have swamp coolers, some have A/C. We tend to get some evening thunderstorms in June-July and some mild rains now and then. We get some +90 summer days, but if you live in southern AZ, that's a chilly day for you <grin>.

There are plenty of resevoirs, rivers and trout streams for rafting, fishing and the like. It suprised me when I moved here, but we do have boat dealers in this town.

[starling]

Mike, COS sounds like a GREAT place to live..in fact I know it is because I lived there for 5 years, but unfortunately employment opportunities don't always allow us to live where we would like to live. My husband's company shut down in COS, so we were forced to move to AZ, where we had lived before. This place (Gilbert AZ) is becoming too unbearable (commute/growth/heat) and we would like to move back, but can't find a job that pays same or better
salary. We have live in Texas, Idaho, Colorado, Tucson and Gilbert AZ, so pretty much all of the Southwest. Everyone of those places has its advantages and its challenges. Colorado Springs is no different...the fact of the matter is you go where the jobs are, unless you are self employed, which is a challenge in itself. All of the things you said about COS are true, but there is "no heaven here on earth", and COS is no exception, though it might be as close to heaven as anywhere else in the US. Would love to move back but we don't hold the future in our hands.

[shroom]

Mike,
Your informative posts re Colo Sprgs have me rethinking my planned relocation to Prescott, AZ (after 43 yrs in the SF Bay Area & Silicon Valley, and 13+ yrs in the God-forsaken desert of So NV). Your area sounds as though it may be as close to Utopia as we mere mortals can find, and my interest has been piqued.

However, I have Dobermans (they truly are lap dawgs ) and am active in Doberman Rescue. Thus, I am concerned about breed specific legislation ("BSL") that seems to be sweeping Colo and a few other states. Are you aware of any such legislation in Colo Sprgs & environs, be it current/pending/proposed? Has the State of Colo taken any position on BSL, or is it leaving the issue to individual jurisdictions?

Thanks, and am grateful for the info you have been sharing.