Does Colorado Hate Highlands Ranch? (Denver, Colorado Springs: mcmansions, condo, employment)

[DannyBanany]

I have been to Denver and Highlands Ranch numerous times, and I have always thought that it was a beautiful area with lots of great amentities and access to everything.

However, in doing research, it seems that many people loathe Highlands Ranch and label it a "bedroom community" and say that it is sucking life out of Denver. People call the homes "cookie-cutter McMansions" and "everyone drives a tan SUV".

Do most people from Colorado hate Highlands Ranch?

[Charles]

I doubt it. Some people like it. Some people don't. Depends what you want. If you want urban vibe, soul, nightlife, hip places, singles scene, historic architecture, and diversity, then you probably won't dig on Highlands Ranch. If you would hate your neighbor parking his car on his lawn or seeing blue tarps on vehicles and you like predictability, uniformity, modern, safe intersections, modern schools, and family amenities then you would probably appreciate Highlands Ranch.

This is the same everywhere in every town. I see the same discussions on the LA boards. Urbanites find a lot of Orange County and Ventura County nauseating.

[formercalifornian]

I think it's more of a love/hate relationship. It's a great place for young families who want good schools and lots of amenities, but it's also filled with lots of cookie-cutter houses & SUV's. It is what it is, and it's spreading south to Castle Rock. Sigh.

[ditto]

I cant stand Highlands Ranch. Take a picture of Aliso Viejo, Foothill Ranch, Laguna Niguel, etc. in South Orange County (CA) & you'll have a carbon copy of HR. This is not limited to HR (as mentioned by formercalifornian), but also Castle Rock, Parker, Lone Tree and other cities. I witnessed the exact same thing happen in S. OC during the late 80s and 90s. Pretty soon the area from Castle Rock to N. Colorado Springs will be filled with more cookie-cutter tract homes instead of open space. A new community can pop up in no time these days. Colorado is looking more like California every day, which is not a good thing at all. People who were trying to get away from it all in Cali are ending up back in the same place, just a little further east.

[vfrpilot]

I cant stand Highlands Ranch. Take a picture of Aliso Viejo, Foothill Ranch, Laguna Niguel, etc. in South Orange County (CA) & you'll have a carbon copy of HR. This is not limited to HR (as mentioned by formercalifornian), but also Castle Rock, Parker, Lone Tree and other cities. I witnessed the exact same thing happen in S. OC during the late 80s and 90s. Pretty soon the area from Castle Rock to N. Colorado Springs will be filled with more cookie-cutter tract homes instead of open space. A new community can pop up in no time these days. Colorado is looking more like California every day, which is not a good thing at all. People who were trying to get away from it all in Cali are ending up back in the same place, just a little further east.

Hey, didn't you just call me "a bitter pathetic ex-californian" for merely mentioning that OC had bad traffic and many developments with similar houses. Did you have a change of heart in the last day or so?
As for Highlands Ranch (or OC for that matter), it's a nice place for some folks. I can see the positives of having a small lot and lots of amenities for families. But like you, I prefer a little more space. But just think how many acres it would take to house that many people on 1/2 acre lots.

[formercalifornian]

I'm not sure it's a bad as southern California, Ditto. There's an awful lot of undeveloped land between Castle Rock and the northern Springs. That said, the Meadows is starting to look a bit like Highlands Ranch, and I swear if I see one more bleach-blond, gum-cracking, tummy-tucked, hyper-parenting, thirty-something woman driving her three or more "gifted & talented" progeny around in a Hummer H3, my head will explode!

Ah...so glad to have that off my silicon-free chest.

[Mike from back east]

People gotta have something to complain about besides the weather, and that's anywhere, not just here.

My late M-I-L used to complain bitterly about a nearby community called Sterling Park (SP, in Loudoun County, northern VA, the DC metro area), she called it cookie cutter and decried the use of metal siding and studs. SP was built by U.S. Steel in the mid 1960's, trying to create a market for the steel they produced. The houses were affordable and durable, didn't matter, my MIL lived in a brick home on 4 acres near the Potomac River. Truth is, her home was built by a farmer and his sons who converted their river bottom acreage into home sites to cash in on the growth of DC. Being built by amateurs, the house had all sorts of issues, the FIL hated to work on it, never did fix some of the issues, just shook his head and went on to build his own retirement home up in WV. I always thought my MIL's dislike of SP was ill-tempered, judgemental and uncalled for.

I grew up in Baltimore. Old industrial city. Block after block of row homes. One block extends at least a full quarter mile, an endless string of identical brick fronts with Baltimore's legendary set of four white marble steps. New? Hell no, they go back a hundred years. Total sameness. But you know what? For some reason, nobody ever referred to them as being cookie cutter.

We later lived in the suburbs. More identical row homes, dating to the late 1940's, early 1950's. Sturdy, plain, affordable. Then we got a SFH in a neighborhood built about 1954. Hundreds of 20x40 starter homes on a slab, a mere 800 sq ft. Except for color, they were 100% the same.

IMO, a 30-story condo tower with hundreds of units counts as cookie cutter too. One outside facade on that structure and it's the same for all 30 stories and 300 dwelling units.

Cookie cutter has been around a long time. Before suburbs. IMO, the only way to avoid that is to go total custom on lots of several acres, a very expensive choice, usually a McMansion, arguably an extravagent use of land.

Most homes built in any community are usually very alike in looks. Same for mobile homes and modulars too.

Not sure there's anything we can, or should, do about it. Some of the people griping about it, like my late MIL, just seem to want to poo-poo what others have, be it of lesser value or more.

If some people talk like they hate HR, it reminds me of my MIL. I think some are jealous of HR and it's location, rec centers, or whatever. Some people are going to complain, judge, find fault or cast stones, no matter what.

I grew up poor. We got kicked out of places a lot, had no safety net then. I live in a nice house now, am secure, glad as hell for my current lovely home, be it cookie cutter in someone's eyes or not. It's Thanksgiving week, I'm grateful. More people should be.

[ditto]

Originally Posted by vfrpilot

Hey, didn't you just call me "a bitter pathetic ex-californian" for merely mentioning that OC had bad traffic and many developments with similar houses. Did you have a change of heart in the last day or so?

No, I didn't call YOU a bitter pathetic ex-californian. No change of heart - I know the negatives about both locations.

[tfox]

The short answer to your question is: no, the bad memories have long since faded about Highlands Ranch, but there is some old memories there (which are rapidly becoming ancient history). I for one have declared an end to bashing the suburbs, however.

Anyway, some history... In the 80s, people were/are very upset about sprawl, and Highlands Ranch seemed to represent that in the 1980s and 1990s. Prior to this, we Coloradans shot down our Olympics bid because we were scared of the growth and sprawl that it would bring. Of course, it came anyway, but the scale and scope of Highlands Ranch was heretofore unprecedented in Metro Denver, so it definitely became a target of opposition. National Geographic did a memorable article about how suburban sprawl was eating up America's open spaces (which it is), and Highlands Ranch was featured as the epitome of sprawl of the worst sort imaginable, complete with "before and after" pictures of pristine rural countryside transformed into row after row of cookie-cutter houses. (In hindsight, that was an unfair characterization, compared to some of the monstrosities we're seeing today.) At the time, it was worse that was wholly built by one single California Company called Mission Viejo homes (whose development rights were later acquired by Shea Homes), which had built similarly sized "communities" in Southern California, including the namesake Mission Viejo in Orange County. Mission Viejo was exactly the kind of development that most Coloradans didn't want. That name was unfortunately chosen, because this was a time when everyone and their brother had a "Native" bumper sticker (whether they were or not) right next to their "Don't Californicate Colorado." There was a sense that the same greedy developers that had ruined Southern California had run out of virgin land there and proceeded to spoil our land. Plus, the gigantic "Highlands Ranch" (that is, the namesake large cattle ranch that preceeded the development) would have been a great opportunity to put such a huge area of land into open space. It would have provided a barrier to check growth to the south, define the "edge" of the Metro area, and been a great amenity for southern suburban residents; instead the opportunity was lost in the worst way: to a massive development the scale of which was unprecedented in Colorado.

Well, of course, it's been 25 years since Mission Viejo bought the huge piece of land. That's a long time ago. Highlands Ranch and Mission Viejo were disliked not because of what they were but the growth that they represented.

Time passed. I think most people have softened their attitude toward Highlands Ranch and Shea Homes (who currently owns Mission Viejo's development rights). Certainly, of all the developments in the area we see today, Highlands Ranch actually is far from the worst offender -- in some ways for its time it was quite progressive, in hindsight. From the beginning, the neighborhood was carefully controlled and planned -- quite a contrast to the haphazard, random mess you see today threatening to eat up Weld County -- that's infinitely worse in my opinion. Indeed, there are a number of things that Mission Viejo did that in hindsight were quite responsible, including providing about half of their total land as open space, providing a southern edge to their neighborhood, as well as being fairly generous with allocating land for parks and trails. They actually managed to get some primary employment in the development, breaking down a bit of that rigid 70s/80s "separation of uses" idea of urban planning that has gotten us into the mess we were in. Amazingly enough, Highlands Ranch is probably today considered a more desirable place to live than ever, even though it's actually 25+ years old -- many suburban subdivisions are starting an irreversible decline at that point as people seek bigger, newer, shinier, further out. That hasn't happened in Highlands Ranch.

Sure, Highlands Ranch is sprawl. I think, though, hindsight has shown that it's not nearly as bad as we thought it was going to be. Frankly, we have to avoid being hypocritical; most people in Metro Denver live in what is for all intents and purposes "sprawl." The fact that sprawl might have been built closer in in the 70s versus the 90s makes no difference. To make matters worse, in the last 10 years, the close in neighborhoods have now become very expensive, for the most part, meaning that ordinary Americans really have no choice BUT to live in sprawlville if they want to own their own single-family home. And frankly, I grew up in a single family home on a suburban-type street and I see why the next generation of Americans wants the same thing.

Now, I live in the city -- but I've watched my city-center neighborhood go from affordable alternative to the suburbs to upper-class enclave in the span of a few years. I've lost all taste for put-downs of the suburbs and "cookie cutter" and all that. I'm watching Central Denver being a central enclave of the wealthy while Highlands Ranch becomes the area where the average middle-class American can afford to live. Not being wealthy myself, I'm not happy about that situation.

I'm happy to see the city of Denver revitalized, but at what cost? If I were buying my first home NOW, it would probably be in the older suburbs -- I couldn't afford to live where I do. And I despise that snooty, classist stuff, which is why I've given up Highlands Ranch bashing.

[formercalifornian]

Originally Posted by tfox

And I despise that snooty, classist stuff, which is why I've given up Highlands Ranch bashing.

Tell you what, I'll send all the "bleach-blond, gum-cracking, tummy-tucked, hyper-parenting, thirty-something [women] driving [their] three or more gifted & talented progeny around in Hummer H3s" to live in the city, and you can come out here to the exurbs. Deal?