How Long Will The Influx Last? (Denver, Dove Creek: apartments, rental, new construction)

[Teckeeee]

Originally Posted by davidv

There are more Federal offices in Denver than any other city except for Washington, DC.

What Federal Offices are you referring to? I tried to ask this in another thread and received no response.

I am still baffled so many are moving here. Why? Colorado's unemployment rate is 7.5% the last I checked so it's not like our economy is booming.

Sure you have a few moving here for the Marijuana fools gold but no that many I have heard of

[davidv]

Originally Posted by Colorado xxxxx

What Federal Offices are you referring to? I tried to ask this in another thread and received no response.

I am still baffled so many are moving here. Why? Colorado's unemployment rate is 7.5% the last I checked so it's not like our economy is booming.

Sure you have a few moving here for the Marijuana fools gold but no that many I have heard of

Start with the Denver Federal Center.

Add:
- USPS
- Buckley Air Force Base
- NREL
- NOAA
- 10th Circuit Court of Appeals

There are about 40,000 federal employees in the metro area. These jobs contribute about $6.6 billion to the area's economy.

[davebarnes]

Originally Posted by Colorado xxxxx

What Federal Offices are you referring to?

Aurora has the 2nd largest concentration of NSA spooks outside of Fort George Meade.
I think the new facility in Utah may change that.

[Teckeeee]

Originally Posted by davebarnes

Aurora has the 2nd largest concentration of NSA spooks outside of Fort George Meade.
I think the new facility in Utah may change that.

That one I did know about. I also heard a rumor that the domestic division of the CIA was moving here too. And that Threat Fusion Center in Lakewood.

[Indigo Cardinal]

Originally Posted by Colorado xxxxx

What Federal Offices are you referring to? I tried to ask this in another thread and received no response.

I am still baffled so many are moving here. Why? Colorado's unemployment rate is 7.5% the last I checked so it's not like our economy is booming.

It may depend upon which fields these people are in. My field had tanked in the early 2000's, and now seems to have rebounded--to the point where recently, my department opened up two positions, and only had three applicants who called back/showed up. And these are good-paying jobs with slightly above-average benefits. I've been averaging two calls and/or emails a week from recruiters in my field wanting to know if I'd be interested in changing positions. One recruiter outright told me that almost everybody in my field in Colorado who wants a job has one, and could probably change again without too much hassle (unlike ten years ago, when we were all begging for anything we could get).

They also seem to be doing a lot of medical center construction, light rail construction, and a few other projects near where I live in Aurora, and I seem to remember reading somewhere those are projected to bring in 30,000 jobs (how many of them are expected to be permanent and how many temporary I'm not certain) into the Aurora area.

[Colorado Rambler]

Originally Posted by robertgoodman

This spring Denver's watersheds snowpack hit 95% of average. 2012's spring snowpack was bad for Denver's watersheds so being slightly below normal this year did not fully refill the reservoirs, but the year before that in spring of 2011 our reservoirs were overflowing.

This is a very common misunderstanding. One swallow does not make a summer and one good year or two or three does not make an over-all climate trend. Think of getting dealt a great hand of cards down at the local casino. You may get four aces a time or two, but in the end the house always wins.

The NOAA classifies Denver as D1 basically because reservoir levels are lower than normal (primarely because of 2012). But around Durango and Cortez it's D3 and it's D4 in SE Colorado so it's understandable the doom and gloom coming out of there.

Yes, it's understandable. The only part of Colorado more hard hit than we are is the south eastern plains. I am not a lone voice crying in the wilderness, however. The light should be going on for Front Range residents as well. Colorado Springs has had not one but two devastating wild fires. This is unheard of. I have lived in Colorado for more than 50 years and I have never seen anything like the fire seasons that are fast becoming Colorado's new norm in all that time before.

Go up into the mountains around Golden or Evergreen with someone like Idunn or grab a biologist from CU-Denver who can show you what's happening to the trees right outside of Denver, as well as in Rocky Mountain National Park. You don't have to come out to Dove Creek to see the impact of the drought. It's right there in the foothills of the Front Range. The forests are dying - laid waste by the triple whammy of drought, warming and the resulting insect invasions. To the untrained eye those trees may look OK, but they're not. Those trees are already dead. They just don't know it yet.

Yes climate change is real, but how it impacts drought conditions in various parts of the country to my knowledge has not achieved consensus within the scientific community.

The unanimous consensus of the scientific community is that a disasterous global warming trend is already under way and it won't get better any time soon. We are on the cusp of hitting 400 parts per million of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere. Every single scientist who has not been bought out by special interests will tell you that there's no coming back from that - not in your life time, not in the life time of your children, not in the life time of your grandchildren.

Everywhere won't be hit by drought, BTW. Parts of the eastern US are experiencing unsual amounts of heavy rain. This destroys a farmer's harvest of hay as surely as drought does.

No, scientists can't forecast that Denver or Dove Creek will get exactly X amount less precipitation in the year 20XX. But scientists CAN tell you that we are experiencing a climate shift that will force us to change just about everything we now currently do from the crops we grow or don't grow in a given region to the coastal cities which find themselves partially or completely covered by the rising seas. Denver won't have to worry about THAT one, at least.

[ShipOfFools42]

Originally Posted by Indigo Cardinal

It may depend upon which fields these people are in. My field had tanked in the early 2000's, and now seems to have rebounded--to the point where recently, my department opened up two positions, and only had three applicants who called back/showed up. And these are good-paying jobs with slightly above-average benefits. I've been averaging two calls and/or emails a week from recruiters in my field wanting to know if I'd be interested in changing positions. One recruiter outright told me that almost everybody in my field in Colorado who wants a job has one, and could probably change again without too much hassle (unlike ten years ago, when we were all begging for anything we could get).

They also seem to be doing a lot of medical center construction, light rail construction, and a few other projects near where I live in Aurora, and I seem to remember reading somewhere those are projected to bring in 30,000 jobs (how many of them are expected to be permanent and how many temporary I'm not certain) into the Aurora area.

Honestly, the "jobs in my field" part of the equation is not the major dominating factor in my decision to move anywhere. I'm still quite young, and I live a very simple lifestyle. I don't require a huge paycheck. I'm realistic, however, and I do realize that jobs are important, but everyone I know who has moved to Colorado and busted their ass to get a job has ended up getting one very quickly. It just hasn't been a problem for anyone I know. Other places I'd like to move to (mostly northern New England) are worse off, generally speaking, and they have a higher cost of living as well.

I appreciate all the input folks. I really wasn't trying to start a water thread, because I've read a lot about the water situation out there and am well aware of it. It's another bridge the average citizen will just have to cross when we get to it. The reason people move to Denver, as far as I can tell, is that it's beautiful, the job market (while it could be better I'm sure) is quite good, and compared to other urban areas, which is where I'd like to be, it has a lot going for it. Places in the Northeast don't have the same beautiful surroundings as CO does, and it takes a lot longer and more effort to get out of the city up there. There are exceptions, like Portland, ME (which is an option for me but very different), but Denver is pretty well situated compared to most urban areas of the country.

So yeah, I'm not moving to Denver to make $60k my first year of work or something. There are plenty of ugly places in the Midwest and the South for that. There are intangible benefits to living in CO that far outweigh the cultural desert I live in now, even though there are more jobs and lower cost of living here. I'm just kind of testing the water here, if I may be allowed that expression in the Colorado forum.

[Colorado Rambler]

Originally Posted by ShipOfFools42

I'm just kind of testing the water here, if I may be allowed that expression in the Colorado forum.

LOL! I really didn't mean to derail your thread with my off hand comment about Denver's future water supply. I'll start a thread about it in a more appropriate part of the Colorado forum if anyone else wants to help beat that particular dead horse into a dusty grave.

[Willy702]

I'm sorry but I always find the running out of water warnings a myth. I lived in Vegas for 13 years and trust me every year there was "about" to be a water shortage looming. Some nut job got on TV and said Vegas is going to run out of water supply if it doesn't do something in 18 months...and this was in 1993. Meanwhile a million more people moved there since then, the drought got worse, Lake Mead looks like a disaster as a water reservoir and guess what, Vegas still isn't out of water.

Water authorities find ways to make it work. The drought conditions brought on smart restrictions in Vegas and I wouldn't be surprised to see some of them adopted here. There you can only water one day a week during Nov-Mar. Oh the horror the grass dies in February and people whine its the water when every lawn I had there died only in spots where the sun didn't shine in winter. They fine you aggressively if you waste water and they make it tough for new grass to be added to homes. At first these were emergency standards for bad snowpack years, but then they just became permanent. As a result even with more people in the Las Vegas valley today, water use is lower than it was a decade ago. Technology and smart restrictions can make what seems an unsustainable growth pattern very manageable.

Denver and the metro area blew their opportunity this year by going on the radio and talking about how they were going to implement restrictions because of the low snowpack. They should have just left them in place even after conditions improved. My guess is they financially decided it was better to let people waste the water for now, but at some point you just have to be tough and say these are the changes we need to be sustainable in the long run.

[Colorado Rambler]

Originally Posted by Willy702

~snip~ Meanwhile a million more people moved there since then, the drought got worse, Lake Mead looks like a disaster as a water reservoir and guess what, Vegas still isn't out of water. ~snip~

That's because Vegas has rights to a bunch of Colorado's water. Today Lake Mead, tomorrow Dove Creek.

Let's allow the OP to get some actual answers to her question. The appropriate place to post about Colorado's and the rest of the West's water supply is HERE.

ETA: I'm going to quote your entire post and give you a more reasoned reply tomorrow (actually today, I guess) in the thread I gave you a link to above. Right now I'm finally going to get some sleep.