Where to relocate from Monument, CO ?? (Denver, Colorado Springs: how much, home, school district)

[shopsafe]

Folks, I have long been an avid reader of this forum as I have gotten a lot of great advice over the past years. I now have some questions to pose to this forum.

We currently own a local, handmade ice cream & gelato store just north of Colorado Springs. We are looking to relocate our business and our home sometime over the next few years. We want to be in a area with more activities for kids, great schooling, an area with less 'entitled' teenagers, an area with a neat downtown area where people still go to shop and eat. Maybe we are looking for a 'Pleaseantville' that does not exist, but I believe that it does. We love Colorado (LOVE, LOVE< LOVE it!), but we are looking for more than we get where we are now. I would love to relocate our ice cream and gelato store to a better area with more folks to draw from and in a town that supports locally-owned businesses. We are 'plain vanilla' folks and are looking for a similar area.

We have looked to Castle Rock, but want to know if there are other Denver suburbs that may be better suite for us and our business. We like the outdoors and would love to be in an area where bike travel is the norm.

Thanks so much!

[NW Crow]

Castle Rock would seem to me to be a fairly good target overall. I see that Golden was recommended in a similar thread on the Denver forum and that also is a good suggestion. I wonder if Louisville might meet enough of your desires. Median housing prices appears higher in all 3 though. Castle Rock up a step, Golden another, Louisville one more. Littleton appears to have a lower median housing price than these 3 and not much higher than Monument. It could also be worth further investigation.

[suzco]

One thing to think about before relocating: competition.

There's no shortage of "homemade" gelato and/or ice cream shops in the Denver metro area. To give you an idea, here's an article from the Denver Post (the article is a couple of years old, but the number of ice cream/gelato shops exhibits the usual cycle; some go out of business, others come in) listing some of those businesses. You might not find a market clamoring for ice cream/gelato. There's much of it already out there.

Frozen Treats

The Denver area has many places for frozen treats from high-end gourmet ice cream to guys pushing little carts with bells selling paletas. Here are some of our recent finds:
. . .

[NW Crow]

The frozen treats link above shows a shop in Louisville. None listed in Golden or Littleton. Castle Rock may or may not have been surveyed. The list was prepared 2 years ago though.

Found this link on Littleton's downtown. Historic Downtown Littleton
2 light rail stations.

[PAtoCO]

So would that be pikes peak gelato and ice cream? I was just there last Saturday and it seemed busy. Are D38 schools not good enough? How much better a school district are you looking for? I just moved to monument and my kids have more than enough to do. Haven't run into any entitled teens yet, maybe I haven't been here long enough.