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After one year in the Seattle area I can't wait to get back to Northern Colorado. There are some great things about Seattle and I'm glad I gave it a try but the weather, traffic and cost of living were just too much.
I am looking to come back to the area and we are thinking about the Wellington area for its location. My best chance for employment right now looks to be at my previous employer in Cheyenne, WY. We would much prefer to be closer to Fort Collins for a number reasons so the Wellington area looks to be a good choice.
There looks to be some great real estate options in the area but two of my main concerns are-
1.) Feedlot smells, how bad is it in Wellington? Is it just occasional when the wind is the right direction, or constant in Spring/Summer
I had buyers who purchased a newly built home in Wellington a few years back, and the builder required they sign a clause n the contract acknowledging the fact that there is a dairy nearby and that odors may be present. That being said, I rarely notice any odors when I am in Wellington. The dairy is on the north-west part of town and is not a huge operation, like a feed lot would be.
In speaking to an associate who lives in the neighborhood closest to the dairy (Buffalo Creek), he said that the odors are noticeable occasionally, but usually only of it has been raining or if the wind is in the right direction. He also says it doesn't keep people inside. Of course, people have differing levels of tolerance.
Qwest and US Cable are your sources for high speed internet in Wellington. I believe that US Cable will have up to 3mbps in most of town. I understand that Qwest has up to 7mbps, but only in the center of town, and most of the subdivisions will be around 1.5mbps. If the difference in speed is a concern, please contact the providers directly.
There are some good real estate options in town, with some more coming on the market in the next few days, including attractively priced new construction. As long as the interstate is open and the weather good, the commute is very reasonable.
Ouch, that internet service might be a problem for us. The Qwest service at 7mb would be acceptable. Are there any other areas you would suggest for an easier commute to Cheyenne?
We lived in Cheyenne for a year before moving to Seattle. We loved the FoCo area for a number of reasons. I can't believe the difference in the weather between the two towns. It can be windy, and freezing in Cheyenne and you drive down the hill to FoCo and its calm, 10 degrees warmer, and the sun is out!
I am aware that the commute is going to cost us. I lived in northern Wyoming for 8 years and did a lot of winter driving so I know what to expect. The good thing is that due to the nature of my work, I should be able to work remotely on the worst weather days.
Wellington is probably one of your best options for ease of commute to Cheyenne.
Depending upon price range desired, another option would be the neighborhoods just east of I-25 and Mulberry (Hwy 14): Clydesdale Park and Vista Bonita.
Timnath also has some attractive options in new construction, but you will be dealing with the Harmony interchange on I-25. It is not too bad from the Timnath side right now, but the next few years may bring significant changes to that area.
With either of these alternatives, however, you may run into the same issues with the internet. They are on the outskirts of town, where the demand is not as concentrated for service, and therefore, the incentive for installation of infrastructure is not as great.
A few Fort Collins subdivisions to consider would include Maple Hill, Brightwater Landing, and Richard's Lake, and maybe Hearthfire. These are located just west of the brewery in NE Ft Collins, and have pretty simple access to I-25, and would be a pretty quick drive to Cheyenne.
The Northern Colorado to Cheyenne commute issue has been widely discussed on the Colorado and Wyoming forums for several years. You may want to go through those old threads.
While it's not too long a distance or time for a commute, it's a very iffy and problematic drive when weather conditions drop. As you have seen, the weather front passages and conditions are quite different in Cheyenne and Fort Collins many times through a winter season.
Even if I-25 is open, that doesn't mean it's a good drive during many storm or icing condition days. I've driven it many times to see quite a few vehicles off the highway due to low visibility/black ice/high gusty wind conditions. That doesn't include the days when I-25 will be closed due to those conditions becoming fairly extreme ... which can make the commute impossible for a few hours, a day, or even a couple of days; these conditions can (and do) happen several times a winter, or more. The Cheyenne Ridge area is pretty brutal for climate changes and extreme conditions and highly variable through the course of any 24 hour time frame ... that's 20 miles of some challenging conditions that you'd be taking on twice a day for a commute. People can and have been doing it for years ... but it comes down to whether or not it's worth it to you; I can bet that on a couple of white-knuckle driving days you may have cause to seriously question the wisdom of needing to be out in those conditions on a daily work schedule.
You might want to check in to the differences in taxes between Colorado and Wyoming, too. It could be a significant hit on your income where Wyoming has no state income tax and generally lower taxes on property with lower valuations on most comparable residential housing. What you are setting up is a situation where you're looking at the lower earnings of the Wyoming job market but taking on the higher costs of the Colorado market.
IMO, if you are going to work in Cheyenne, your income and access will be better utilized by living in the close-by Wyoming area. I think your housing dollar will go further in Wyoming, too, than in the housing market in the Fort Collins region.
I was going to say I have clients in Maple Hill who commute Cheyenne daily and he makes it there in about 35 minutes, so I wouldn't say that is a bad commute as there won't be any traffic. Weather may be the only concern but that could be a problem anywhere regarding a commute. The builder in there has just a few lots/homes left and most of the people that live there love it!
I was going to say I have clients in Maple Hill who commute Cheyenne daily and he makes it there in about 35 minutes, so I wouldn't say that is a bad commute as there won't be any traffic. Weather may be the only concern but that could be a problem anywhere regarding a commute. The builder in there has just a few lots/homes left and most of the people that live there love it!
I always get a laugh out of those who don't do this commute, but know somebody who does/did it and it apparently isn't a problem from the reporter's perspective.
I beg to differ.
Due to the nature of my regional contracting/consulting business, I've been on this section of I-25 many times during inclement weather conditions, and I had the luxury of choosing the time of my travel as opposed to someone who might have to make this roundtrip on a workday schedule each week.
I've seen hundreds of cars/trucks off the road in the stretch of I-25 through the years, and I'm sure that all of those travelers were confident that they, too, could make the commute without difficulty. The results speak otherwise.
As I've pointed out repeatedly on this forum, even though I-25 may be open to traffic ... that doesn't mean that it isn't a black ice and visibility obscured passage for much of the time as storm fronts move through during the winter season. It's a treacherous drive at best for many hours, and the storm passages can be very localized, changing mile by mile and minute by minute. A properly equipped vehicle still cannot overcome visibility that is reduced to little more than the hood in front of you. Fact is, folks have posted a fair number of you tube videos showing these Wyoming travel conditions, and an interested person need only do an on-line search to get an idea of what it's like to do this drive in inclement conditions. Again, it's one thing to do this drive successfully now and then ... it's another matter entirely to face these conditions on a daily basis, twice a day.
Indeed, I have friends here in Cheyenne whose principal wintertime income derives from their contracting to do the roadside clean-ups and salvage of the trucking loads that get spilled on the road. The wreckers cannot remove many trucks until the loads are removed from the trailers, and in some cases, cannot even get to the vehicles to be cleared until the cases and boxes of spilled merchandise are cleared from where they need to work and/or the roadway.
A neighbor of mine is a former sheriff's deputy and previously, a WYHighway Patrolman who worked that stretch of highway. He's mentioned to me that the prevalence of single-vehicle accidents along that stretch of I-25 is a big portion of the accidents on that road that they respond to. Typically, he's said, a driver will start sliding on one of the hills (either up or down) along the Cheyenne Ridge road section, sometimes pushed around by the intense wind gusts, and they will over-correct to keep the car on the road. At one point or another, they get a tire dropping off the edge of the pavement, and then they cannot get their vehicle back onto the road. In a minor incident, they come to a stop somewhere off the road without serious damage to a vehicle, if any. But the majority of single vehicle fatalities that he responded to for many years were of this nature, especially with people who were overdriving for the conditions at the particular moment of their roadway departure.
From your desk in the comfort of your home/office environment, it's real easy to pontificate that it's no big deal to challenge these driving conditions for a 35 minute commute. Statistics and actual accident scenes don't necessarily jibe with what you are asserting. I've personally witnessed the after effects of storm passages in the area way too many times, and I've had more than one time where ... once the road was opened and weather/road conditions were more favorable ... where it took me well over 2 hours to make it from Fort Collins/Harmony Road at I-25 to the I-25 & I-80 interchange, and that was in a well prepared/winter tired AWD or 4 x 4 vehicle.
No doubt, there are a number of people who have done this commute for years without incident ... but if they're being honest about the circumstances, they cannot assert that the trip doesn't have seriously adverse driving conditions through an average winter season and that they've not had their share of difficult travel through those years. Nor does it address that there are days when the road is closed to all travel and they cannot make the commute at all ... sometimes, the road is closed when they are at work and they're not heading home. One has but to see one episode of the major highways in the Cheyenne area closed to realize the amount of traffic coming through here and that the entire motel room capacity of Cheyenne as well as the parking lots of all the truck stops are booked out very quickly. I'm not far from the Antelope, T/A, and Sapp Bros truck stops ... and I frequently take the frontage roads homeward from Cheyenne ... where I get to see all the vehicles and semi's parked to overflow capacity at these three locations. Last winter, it was more than a dozen times that this happened that I saw the situation, and that doesn't begin to address the total number of times because I was home and didn't need to venture out those days, or was snowed in at my ranch here in SE Wyoming.
I'd strongly urge anybody who is considering buying a property in Colorado where they need to make this commute to make no decision until they've been here for at least an average winter so they can judge for themselves the severity of the situation. I think a real estate agent who poo-poos this concern is being disingenuous about the reality of this wintertime commute and the localized intensity of the storms along the Cheyenne Ridge. Some folks, obviously, have made their choice and are dealing with the committment ... others may not feel it's worth the exposure and will pursue other housing options.
I'd also mention that this is an area where even the Post Office has days where they don't attempt to get mail delivery out. In fact, this last winter, we had a number of days where the main Cheyenne Post Office didn't get any of their mail in/out. On several days, Cheyenne did get their main delivery in, but were unable to get the day's mail out to the local post offices East of Cheyenne. So those little post offices were closed for the day because they had no mail to deliver nor could they get their afternoon mail out to Cheyenne. Conditions here weren't as bad as the I-25 stretch of road South of Cheyenne, either, because the Ridge typically gets more severe storm cells dumping moisture there than we get in the SE corner of Wyoming. Please also recognize that it's not necessarily the total amount of moisture or snowfall depth that is the primary problem ... it's the wind gusts/limited visibility/localized black ice formation that make driving conditions difficult. Of course, there are days where the snow depth is an issue until the plows can clear the roads ... and there are some storm fronts that come through with such severity that the plows simply cannot keep up with the snowfall. In recent years, when that happens, the WyHPatrol will close the roads rather than have stranded vehicles to deal with in addition to the snow to remove ... they've been much more pro-active about this than in prior years but the more limited funds and higher traffic count translate today into having to conserve their resources a bit more aggressively.
Great info, Sunsprit. This commute is not to be underestimated in inclement weather. The OP states a familiarity with winter driving in Wyoming, which may be helpful.
I should have clarified my posts to say that the neighborhoods I suggest to consider for housing are relatively more convenient to Cheyenne than other parts of Fort Collins, should the OP choose to live in Northern Colorado vs. living in Cheyenne.
As long as it works for the individual situation, it is always a good idea for someone new to an area to rent for a while to make sure that they are comfortable with the various things that go with a new community, including commute, neighbors, neighborhood, shopping and dining, and employment.
I was going to say I have clients in Maple Hill who commute Cheyenne daily and he makes it there in about 35 minutes, so I wouldn't say that is a bad commute as there won't be any traffic. Weather may be the only concern but that could be a problem anywhere regarding a commute. The builder in there has just a few lots/homes left and most of the people that live there love it!
I just realized where Maple Hill is located ...
to make it from there to Cheyenne City limits in 35 minutes would require averaging 75 mph for the entire distance.
Yes, 75 mph is the posted limit for I-25. But is that likely to accomplish on the surface streets in Maple Hill before you reach I-25, or on the surface roads into Cheyenne?
Anyway, I wouldn't think it prudent to do that speed when the road is wet, even with the grooves in the pavement ... think hydroplaning in this area ...
Nor would I think it prudent to contemplate 75 mph on that road in inclement conditions, let alone icing.
Also ... anybody who asserts there "won't be any traffic" on I-25 on that route has either never driven it on any average day or is missing something that I've seen many days recently when the highway has been reduced to one lane for all the construction in the area and travel is restricted to the lowest common denominator of the semi's on the route. Even with a 65 mph construction zone speed limit, I've been down to 35-40 mph more than several times this year. There's a lot of traffic on I-25, as it's the one major trans-continental highway linking all the way from Canada down to Mexico. With all the warehouses and regional distribution centers along the I-25 corridor in the area, semi trailer traffic is continuous and fairly dense along this route. Many's the time this summer where I could not do 75 mph along this stretch because you've got one semi rig trying to pass another up some of the grades at 10-15-25 mph slower than the posted speed limit and they do not yield the road to passenger cars .... It's also an interesting stretch of road during summer months when the motorcycle clubs start doing a lot of touring; I've had a fair number of encounters this year where the boys are out cruising at 5-10- even 15! mph slower than posted and you'll see a string of bikes in the right hand lane with a couple of their friends cruising slowly by at a mile or two per hour faster, blocking the left hand lane. I don't know what the point is that they're trying to make, but I can assure you that you will not be cruising past them at 75 mph unless and until they choose to yield the road to you. Come the weeks for Sturgis, and you'll see even more of these groups of riders and their behavior.
I'd also mention that the alternative road ... Hwy 85 ... has been seeing a bunch of roadway construction for the most recent years and there's been lower speed limits there as well as 1-way traffic with significant delays on that route. I've had more than one 15-20 minute wait for the traffic to flow in my direction, going to and returning from Nunn, CO for business trips in the last two years.
Ms Klein, I appreciate your vested effort to promote Colorado real estate to a potential newcomer and possible prospect. But your assessment of the real world driving conditions is rather suspect from the perspective of somebody who does this I-25 trip frequently .... especially when you characterize the adverse weather inclement driving situation as comparable to the problems that present "anywhere" in the region. It's not even close ... Fort Collins is indeed a much milder climate zone than what happens up the Cheyenne Ridge area North of Wellington due to prevailing weather patterns and altitude, and the Ridge is significantly more socked in than Cheyenne, too, during winter months.
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Wellington
