Where would you suggest??? (Denver, Colorado Springs: real estate market, low crime, motel)

[wyoquilter]

We currently live in Sheridan, WY and even though it is beautiful, more or less friendly and has great schools, it lacks in other areas too. Mainly it lacks in shopping and non out doorsy types of entertainment, especially for kids.

We would love to find a place very similar to where we are currently living, but offers more or at least is closer than 2 hours away from more offerings.

We would like to be where we can clearly see mountains, we don't have to live right below them, but we at least need to be able to see them. Also we would like there to be good shopping, more entertainment, besides hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, boating....etc. all the outdoor stuff, great schools, city officials that have a head on thier shouldersand not other places and most of all low crime rates and very little if any drug problems.

We know it's a tall order but it would be nice to also find an area that doesn't have an over inflated real estate market. It would be great to find a nice comfortable 4 bdrm home on a nice sized lot for under $300,000.

I love Sheridan, but it is frustrating to not be able to buy the things we need. I ended up having to go to Billings, MT (a two hour drive away) just to find dress shoes for my young girls to wear for a wedding this past Aug. I couldn't find not even one stinking pair of white sandals anywhere in town.

It's even more frustrating that the only main entertainment for teens is parties with drugs and alcohol. We also have no real places where we can get younger kids together for B-day parties except at our homes. It gets a little old having 10-20 kids running around your home and trying to keep them entertained. Even a Chucky Cheese here would be a blessing.

My husband is currently part owner of an electrical company and I know he would like to stay in that line of work. I am a stay at home mom right now but wouldn't mind finding a part time job maybe doing motel work at a nice friendly motel.

So I am asking on behalf of my family and I, where in CO would you recomend for a family with 3 young girls to live that pretty much meets our needs? We wouldn't want to live in too large of an area, but don't want it to rural either unless there is a lot of offerings there. We do like to do some fishing, boating, camping and hunting, so we still need to have those things easily available, but we would also like more non outdoorsy types of activities as well. Like bowling, skating, either indoor ice or roller, indoor rock climbing, year round swimming, plays, musicals, museums, concerts, ...etc.

I'm not sure how soon we would be looking at moving, but if we had some ideas of some places we could move to, we could keep an eye on them to see what is changing.

Thank-you for your imput.

[Sockeye]

To be succinct, you live in a place I dream about living in someday. If you want whats apparently missing in Sheridan, Aurora might fit the bill for you. Plenty of deals on the overbuilt housing market right now. There are also a lot of motels.

[DOUBLE H]

Wyoqilter! What's up? I know Sheridan fairly well as a close friend of mine sold 2nd Chance cd's and tapes which is on the main drag there and took a job full time at the new Home Depot. You can also find temporary housing with quite a few motels in the Englewood area, along south Broadway.With both of these suburbs though, some parts are ok and some not. I understand the issue of shopping! Billings is 100 miles NW of you and can get dicey traveling in winter. If you decide on Denver, stay in the area for a week, maybe two weeks. It's a major move to make and even a more major decision to make. I'm aware of the drug meth problem up there but sadly it's everywhere. Hopefully some other posters can help you more. Good luck!

[Count David]

Try Logan, UT.

[jazzlover]

Having lived in both Colorado and Wyoming, and in both small towns and metro areas during my life, I have one piece of advice: stay in Sheridan. Unless you are willing to move to one of Colorado's metro areas, and deal with all of the crap that entails (traffic, crime, etc.), you will find most Colorado smaller communities have the same issues that you wrestle with in Sheridan. You will also find very few desirable places in Colorado that are any cheaper than Sheridan--many much more expensive. Another thing (and this will undoubtedly enrage some of my fellow Colorado posters)--most places in Wyoming, outside of some of the real "boom" towns like Gillette and Rock Springs, generally have much lower crime rates than most Colorado communities. I have business acquaintances who live in Sheridan who are pretty familiar with the crime situation there, and many a Colorado town would love to have such low crime statistics.

The other problem in Colorado, compared to Wyoming, is Colorado's perilous fiscal situation. Wyoming government is generally in great shape financially and is likely to stay that way with its Permanent Mineral Trust Fund. Thanks to TABOR in Colorado (do a search on that for a lengthy discussion), Colorado is living on the edge fiscally, and a big downturn in the economy (pretty darned likely, in my opinion) could really raise hell in things like school funding and basic governmental services.

If you are surviving financially in Sheridan, I would strongly recommend staying there. I happen to think that Sheridan may be the nicest town in Wyoming. The amenities of a bigger city may be nice, but I find them much more refreshing as a trip there for a few days a few times a year, rather than dealing with living in an urban area all the time.

Really, I don't think you know how good you already have it.

[COflower]

Colorado Springs is a bit bigger than you probably want but it fits the bill. With the US Army troops coming into town, housing is bound to pick up (sucks all over the place though) so electrical work may pick up very soon. C Springs is very family friendly. In fact, it's more a family place than many larger places.

The other place would be Ft. Collins. Also a very family friendly place. I am not sure about the housing situation up there or the job situation but both cities are close enough to Denver to get in the bigger city ammenities. Ft. Collins is a smaller city than C Springs.

I suggest a road trip to get a feel for things. Cruise through the various threads around here using keywords of things you may have not thought about for this post and see what the people are talking about.

Good luck.

[Shuffler]

One of my friends has family in Sheridan and loves it there. Why would you want to leave the simple life there for the chaos of the Front Range? For SHOPPING?? Wow.

[PokerMunkee]

Check out Woodland Park! It's at 8500', right next to Pikes Peak. $300,000 will get you a nice house. If you go outside the city a little bit, you'll be able to get a few acres. Search around Divide if you want some land. I suggest www.coloradohomes.com to search for houses.
The town has about 7,000 people, so a decent amount of stores to support them. We have a Super Wal-Mart (only a few years old) and a small hospital. A couple restaurants (no big chains yet) and pretty much every fast food is here (except Chik-Fil-A!). If you need to hit up the big city, Colorado Springs is just a 15 mile drive down the mountain.

WP is about 1.5-2hr drive to Breckenridge and Keystone for some great skiing. There are some nice size reservoirs only 30 miles from here, which is very popular for camping and fishing. Denver is about 1.5hrs from here, which isn't bad if you want to see a sporting event, concert, etc.

[wyoquilter]

Thank you everyone for some town ideas.

I know some of you may think we are nuts for wanting to leave Sheridan, WY. But really it's not all that it's cracked up to be. We are not wanting to leave just because of lack of shopping, but it would be nice to have more than just Wal-Mart, no matter how "Super" it is.

The biggest issue is, we have children who are well on their way to being teens and there is absolutely nothing for teens to do here. The biggest pass time for them is drinking, drugging and having sex because there is nothing else for them to do. A large percentage of teens are busted for minor in possesion at least three times before they reach 18. We have a fairly high drop out rate in High School and are starting to have a high Teen Pregnancy rate as well.

I'm not exagerating any of this. We have already had one daughter make it through high school here and it was by the skin of our teeth. She never got into any trouble with the law, but that was by shear luck as most of the kids she hung out with liked to party and were always wanting her to come along. Most of the time she was a designated driver and thereby wouldn't drink or do drugs, I put that on our raising. But still she should never have been put into those kinds of positions because there was nothing else to do. She even tried making new friends, but most of the kids were all the same. The ones who weren't are so religiously uptight that they would only hang with others that were religiously uptight or of the same faith.

Sheridan is for the most part great for raising younger kids and it's super nice if your done raising kids. But it isn't so great if you are a teen or a parent of a teen and even a young adult. Sheridan is still the same as it was when I was a teen living here and I hated it and was bored out of mind here. I know it's normal for teens to be bored, but my boredom was way beyond normal because there was nothing to do that wasn't outdoorsy besides drinking and getting into trouble.

We don't want to leave Sheridan permantly, unless we find another place even better. We just would like to find a place that we can get our kids raised without worrying if they are out drinking and if they will come home alive or without hurting someone or pregnant.

[tfox]

I'd look at Fort Collins. Nice town, and I think it's probably the size you're looking for (about 120k people or so in town). As a college town, it does have a lot of cultural diversions and things to do for its size. If FC lacks anything you need, you're about an hour to Denver. To get a house on a large lot for under 300k, look to the north of town. About the only complaint on FC is that its job market is a bit underpowered compared to Denver's, I figure it's got to be better than anywhere in Wyoming.

Whenever you're homesick for Wyoming, Cheyenne is only about 45 minutes away from FC, Laramie only an hour, and you can cheer on your Cowboys when they come to Hughes Stadium and get beat by CSU. (just kidding...)