Neighborhoods, Structures expand our coverage of real estate trends

One of the things I like best about living along the Front Range are the interesting neighborhoods — both new and old — that are the glue holding together the cities we live in.

I’ve been a Boulder resident since 1973, having moved here after my first job out of college in Kentucky. I rented a small Boulder apartment, and later shared a delightful house in Longmont’s Old Town while I worked on a weekly newspaper there.

When I was hired at the Daily Camera, I moved back to Boulder, renting within walking distance of the downtown newspaper in the Mapleton Hill neighborhood. Later I found a new apartment attached to a Victorian in the Whittier neighborhood at Mapleton and 22nd — a tip from Bill Jordan, who then was covering the Legislature for the Camera and had bought a small house on the same corner.

The Camera was an afternoon newspaper, and both of us got in early but often enjoyed walks through the downtown neighborhoods for lunch or heading home after work. We had to find routes that would not take us by the Good Earth bar, where happy-hour was a serious detour.

There was a place called Don’s Sausages on east Pearl, and it piped the tantalizing smell of sausages cooking on the grill out onto the sidewalk. There was no way you could walk by there at lunch and not stop in.

After a few other rentals, I bought my first house in Boulder’s Martin Acres, thinking I’d sell and move along in a few years. More than 20 years later, I’m still in the same house, having refinished a big basement and just last summer adding a patio deck and landscaping a back yard that had pretty much become one grassless dog run.

I commuted to Denver for 10 years, and living in South Boulder was a perfect hop onto U.S. 36.

When I bought into The Business Report almost 15 years ago, I simply stayed put in my friendly neighborhood of fellow “Martians,” enjoying the quick trip to work as well as being close to downtown, Chautauqua, friends, shopping & the list goes on.

All of this personal stuff is just my way of acknowledging how your neighborhood really defines who you are. I have friends who you couldn’t drag kicking and screaming into a new suburban neighborhood. They may not have a three-car garage — in fact, they may not have a garage at all, but they like the diversity of the older homes and mature trees lining their streets.

Other friends have custom-designed their home in new neighborhoods, and there’s certainly something to be said for a large modern kitchen, huge master bedrooms and Jacuzzi-style baths.

They look at an older home as a constant irritation of remodeling bills and leaky roofs.

You also have the new neighborhoods like Longmont’s Prospect or Erie Village that try to capture the close-knit neighborhood amenities — alleys, carriage houses, big porches, Victorian architecture, etc. — of an older community but with the modern amenities that come with a modern home.

Simply put, the Boulder Valley has something for just about everyone.

In this issue, you’ll find our first Neighborhoods section, as well as our second Structures section of 2004.

With Neighborhoods, we want to give you a brief introduction to the numerous communities found in Boulder and Broomfield counties. We have three more Neighborhoods sections this year, so we won’t get to everyone right away, but we’ll keep chipping away.

Structures, on the other hand, takes you closer to the companies and people building, remodeling and innovating architecturally throughout the Boulder Valley. Every Structures includes updated business lists of home builders, real estate brokerages, design builders, architects, etc. With six sections planned this year, Structures lets us report further on the region’s building industry that we identify by category in our Blueprints Directory in April.

I’m proud to say that since day one when I became the editor at The Business Report, coverage of the area’s growing real estate businesses — both residential and commercial — always have been one of our priorities. Now, Neighborhoods, Structures and Blueprints gives us even more room to write about the trends and issues in our regional real estate markets.

Have you ever been to a party when the subject of local home prices or the latest new retail or restaurant project have not come up?

I’m getting great new story ideas being sent my way to feature in upcoming sections. Please keep them coming.

Boulder Valley’s entrepreneurs aren’t just limited to high tech; the new ideas from builders, developers and real estate companies affect where we live and where we work every day.

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