Scouting trip...limited time...what to see? (Denver, Aurora: middle-class, how much)

[rumline]

My wife and I are flying out next week to check out the Denver suburbs for a future move. This isn't house hunting, we just want to get a sense of the various areas to determine if we can see ourselves living there. Due to the kind of properties we are interested in eventually buying and our budget, most listings are in the SE Aurora / Centennial / Parker area, so that'll be the overall focus of our trip. This forum has been a great source of info but we just want to get a sense of the areas first-hand.

We have notional ideas of driving through neighborhoods in the evenings once people get home from work as well as walking around some malls/shopping areas. Does anybody have any recommendations of specific things to check out that will help us see what day-to-day life in these areas is like and what the areas have to offer?

[mic111]

I always like to check out the local grocery store to see if I like the vibe.
Cleanliness, modern or overcrowded, selection, etc are all important to me.
If you walk your dog take a walk on the local trails/parks to see if you like the vibe and feel safe.
Drive around at rush hour in the morning and evening to see if you are OK with the traffic patterns and to give you a feel for what they are like.

[Gorges]

For SE Aurora, walk around the Southlands outdoor mall. Go to the Beacon Point/Southshore neighborhoods and park along Arbor Dr, near the Beacon Point community center. From there you can take a trail to the reservoir. In addition to the neighborhoods mentioned, visit the Tallyn's Reach, Saddle Rock (north and south), and Blackstone neighborhoods. Visit Grandview and Cherokee Trail high schools just to see how huge they are. Go to the new King Soopers shopping center at Arapahoe and E. Smoky Hill and note how the shopping areas (even Southlands) are easily accessible to many of the residential areas. When driving southwest down Arapahoe from E. Smoky Hill (Tallyn's Reach), check out the view (if the muck we've had lately ever clears.) Finally, take the back roads from SE Aurora to Parker (via Gartrell/Rockinghorse/Iinspiration Dr.) It's beautiful.

Have fun!

edited... This is more South Aurora, but definitely check out the Trails Rec Center at Orchard and Buckley, as well as the residential areas in that area.

[Claire S.]

Originally Posted by mic111

I always like to check out the local grocery store to see if I like the vibe.
Cleanliness, modern or overcrowded, selection, etc are all important to me.

This is a great idea...we often forget how much time we spend in our local grocery stores each week.

If there's a neighborhood pool that allows non-residents, go. It is an easy way to chat with locals about the area and neighborhood. Parks are also nice, but folks tend to be reserved or keep to themselves more.

Also, if you like beer, visit the neighborhood breweries.

[rumline]

Originally Posted by Gorges

For SE Aurora, walk around the Southlands outdoor mall. Go to the Beacon Point/Southshore neighborhoods and [snip]

Wow thank you for all the specific recommendations! We will try to find all the places you mentioned.

Originally Posted by mic111

I always like to check out the local grocery store to see if I like the vibe.
Cleanliness, modern or overcrowded, selection, etc are all important to me.
If you walk your dog take a walk on the local trails/parks to see if you like the vibe and feel safe.

Great suggestions. We are dog owners so we'll be checking out the off-leash area of the Cherry Creek State Park. It seems sick and twisted to voluntarily spend some vacation time sitting in traffic, but that's probably a good idea as well.

Originally Posted by Claire S.

If there's a neighborhood pool that allows non-residents, go. It is an easy way to chat with locals about the area and neighborhood. Parks are also nice, but folks tend to be reserved or keep to themselves more.

I definitely would not have thought of that. We're used to not really talking to people at parks etc, but you're saying that at pools people are more open to socializing? That's very interesting.

[Claire S.]

Originally Posted by rumline

I definitely would not have thought of that. We're used to not really talking to people at parks etc, but you're saying that at pools people are more open to socializing? That's very interesting.

That has been my experience at the pools in my current hood. Maybe being half-naked around strangers makes everyone more social.

[Gorges]

Hope you have a good time and the weather cooperates. Let us know how it goes.

[rumline]

OK I wanted to share my impressions with the forum so here's the "quick summary" of the findings from my trip. Sorry, I didn't have time to write a shorter one.

Cell Service
My wife and I have Verizon smartphones, and we typically get good service here in LA. Sometimes bad inside buildings, but outside is generally bulletproof. In Denver, our data service was very spotty. Many times I'd pull over to check out a park or house or something, then want to put in another destination and poof no data service, or I'm holding the phone up at various angles trying to get the webpage to load with one bar. We restarted our phones multiple times, pulled the battery etc, and it didn't seem to get more reliable.

What is the best provider in the Denver area?

So if you saw a black Hyundai creepily driving and stopping throughout your neighborhood last week, pay it no heed, it was just me trying to find a #@$*()&!@ signal for my Google Maps to work. Speaking of driving...


Driving Impressions

1) Stop Signs
I spent two entire days driving ~400 miles along various roads all around the Denver metro area. The first thing that hit me is the lack of paint on the roads identifying stop signs. Here in LA they look like this:


Whereas most of the neighborhoods I drove around lacked both the "STOP" written on the road as well as the line indicating that there was a stop sign. Now I understand the hubbub about people not trimming their trees around stop signs, because several times I encountered this situation, minus the crosswalk:

There were several intersections that I blew through that I should have stopped at because I didn't see a sign or line. Then I got really conservative and started stopping (or at least significantly slowing) places that I didn't need to stop at until I could verify there was no sign there, which made the people driving behind me super happy. They shared their appreciation for my careful driving with some friendly gestures and words.

It's just something I'm going to have to get used to, I suppose. (the lack of line and "STOP" on the roads, not the gestures)

2) Bi-polar Drivers
The other thing I noticed was that on the highways there are some seriously bipolar drivers. I tended to stay in the slower of the middle lanes (if available) or the slow lane and move with the flow of traffic. Multiple times I had people drive around me and very quickly cut back in front of me, apparently to say "you're going too slow, @#%#$*&!!!" but then <10 seconds later they would move over into a slower lane and stay there after I breezed past them. I'm used to "***hole drivers" here in LA, and I prefer them to moron drivers, because at least here the ***holes are consistent in their ***hole-y-ness and drive predictably. They generally just want to go faster than you do and are cutting you off because they see an opening in the wall of cars to advance their way down the road, usually not because they are being vindictive. I had previously not encountered the bi-polar driver as I did in Denver. Maybe "passive aggressive" is a better term?


Neighborhoods

These are going to be some high level generalizations based on the limited aspects of each city that we saw. We tried to explore a lot of different subdivisions but I realize that we didn't get to see every area of a given city. If my generalizations are wrong, please correct me and provide examples to the contrary.

1) Eastern Centennial / SE Aurora
I was surprised by the variability between the different subdivisions here. Some had large and luxurious houses, others had much older and smaller houses, others had nicely-kept 1990s houses, others had somewhat run-down 1990s houses. I liked the older neighborhoods in the western 2/3s between CC St Park and E-470 because they had significant numbers of mature trees, and the neighborhoods were free of the cookie-cutter feel because houses were different enough. The new construction areas closer to E-470 were nice, but had a very different feel due to lack of shade/tree cover and felt more cookie-cutter.

Another thing I liked about most of the "older" neighborhoods was a prevalence of privacy fences in backyards. In many of the newer eastern developments, there seems to be a widespread choice to have split-rail fences along the sides and especially backs of each property, the result being that one can easily see into and, to a lesser extent, walk between the backyards. I'm not sure what drives this choice, maybe people are voyeurs or something, but we prefer full fencing unless the property backs to green space. I assume if these fences are in place then the CC&Rs will most likely prevent anybody from putting in a "non-view" fence.

One thing that I felt at the time was an apparent lack of stores close to the neighborhoods. Other than the bigger shopping areas by Arapahoe and Parker and Southlands malls, the stores in the neighborhoods were places that people don't really go all the time, like Joe Bob's Accupuncture or Jane's Pet Supplies or something. Upon returning to a computer I looked again and felt that my initial assessment was incorrect, but that's the vibe I got while driving around. Lots of 7-Eleven's also.

To the gentleman that suggested we check out Tallyn's Reach, wow those houses are beautiful! With prices to match! Our jaws dropped after we turned onto Davies Drive. Unfortunately they all seem to have been afflicted with that Split-Rail Syndrome, which unless we had a huge lot backing to green space is a deal-breaker for us.

2) Parker
I know it's been said many times, many ways, but dang, downtown Parker is cute! And I don't even use that word! I really liked how they were going for the small-town Americana vibe. Unfortunately most of that character evaporated by the time we got out west of Parker Rd where most of the houses and big-box stores are. The neighborhoods were newer and cleaner feeling than many in Centennial, and some of the areas had adequate tree coverage. We felt that Parker was nicer than the newer eastern developments in Aurora/Centennial, but not as nice as say Piney Creek. Many subdivisions were afflicted with Split-Rail Syndrome, but we saw plenty that weren't.

Northeastern Parker as well as The Pinery both have much larger lots and older houses, with a distinctly country feel, at least compared to everything else we'd seen so far. My wife thought it'd be weird to live outside of a "neighborhood" but I'll just have to work on her with that one. We drove down Parker Rd from Aurora during the evening rush hour and didn't find the drive to be bad at all.

3) Highlands Ranch
I was really expecting to not like Highlands Ranch. I'd read on here how it's all Stepford Wife territory and cookie-cutter boring houses all lined up. I didn't find that to be the case at all. In fact I think there was as much variation between houses within a given sub-'hood as there was in the older more character-y neighborhoods in Centennial. Basically, if you think HR is cookie-cutter, never go to Parker or Eastern Aurora/Centennial.

Regarding the Stepford Wife stereotype, we had lunch at the Which Wich near the corner of HR Pkwy and Lucent Blvd, and we did see one group of trophy wife types, but obviously that is not enough to draw any conclusions from. While driving down various residential streets we noticed people out on their front yards or porches hanging out with what I presumed were their neighbors. Seemed nice enough, although that's not our style.

I also liked the number and kinds of shops scattered around. It seemed familiar, which makes sense since my in-laws live in Mission Viejo and HR was apparently developed by the same company that did MV.

4) Western Centennial
This was a clear departure from where we'd been before. Houses ranged from "older and charming" to "older and rundown". We were mostly around Arapahoe between Broadway and Holly. No cookie-cutter-ness to this area, which is nice, but we didn't see too many houses that we'd be interested in, either.


Conclusion

Overall I'd say I liked the vibe in HR slightly better than the other areas. It seemed more upbeat and vibrant there than any of the other areas we were considering. This is highly subjective and I can't really explain my rationale any better than that.

We also checked out the Southlands mall and the Cornerstar mall, and everybody we saw there (midweek, middle of the day) seemed like normal middle-class people. No skinheads, gang bangers, drug dealers, panhandlers, richer-than-thou snobs, roving gangs of hipsters, etc like I'm used to seeing in LA suburbs. I also thought that if we were going to see snobby rich people it'd be at the Cherry Creek mall (which reminded us strongly of South Coast Plaza) but most people there seemed normal and down to earth as well. It was funny, most of the salespeople or food service people we talked to had just moved to Denver from some other state, and they all seemed rather happy.

We also drove around other parts of Denver and took the light rail to LoDo for an evening out, but I didn't really focus on those areas and it's outside the scope of this report. I will add that I was shocked (shocked!) that I never had to worry about getting stabbed or avoiding drunk overly-confrontational homeless people on the light rail like I would if we had taken the LA metro rail around 11pm.

[blondmoray]

"2) Bi-polar Drivers
The other thing I noticed was that on the highways there are some seriously bipolar drivers. I tended to stay in the slower of the middle lanes (if available) or the slow lane and move with the flow of traffic. Multiple times I had people drive around me and very quickly cut back in front of me, apparently to say "you're going too slow, @#%#$*&!!!" but then <10 seconds later they would move over into a slower lane and stay there after I breezed past them. I'm used to "***hole drivers" here in LA, and I prefer them to moron drivers, because at least here the ***holes are consistent in their ***hole-y-ness and drive predictably. They generally just want to go faster than you do and are cutting you off because they see an opening in the wall of cars to advance their way down the road, usually not because they are being vindictive. I had previously not encountered the bi-polar driver as I did in Denver. Maybe "passive aggressive" is a better term?"

Where you in your car? With California plates? If so, yes, they were giving you the bird in their own special way! There's a lot of anti-Californian sentiment in the Denver metro. Lose the plates ASAP.

[philberf]

That stop sign thing you noticed is EVERYWHERE in Denver, from Stapleton to the trendier neighborhoods inside Denver like Congress Park and Wash Park, out to the suburbs. I don't know what is up with that. It drove me NUTS.