Denver - Auraria
Is Auraria a Good Place to Live:
Location and Getting Around: Bordered by actual Cherry Creek (basically Speer Blvd), South Platte River (basically I-25), and Colfax to the south to form a rough pizza slice shape. Speer, I-25, and Colfax are all main thoroughfares for Downtown Denver.
Housing Options: 5 residences sold in 2021. 0 of them were houses. As shown below, the Auraria neighborhood is largely occupied by other uses. What remains are some 100+ year old historic buildings that have been converted to residential lofts.
Shopping and Entertainment: Ball Arena and Elitch Gardens Theme & Water Park are the main entertainment within the neighborhood boundaries though 16th Street Mall, Union Station, and everything else Downtown Denver has to offer are all within blocks of Auraria.
Parks and Rec: The neighborhood borders actual Cherry Creek and South Platte River. Confluence Park is nearby and offers a cool kayak run for Denver adventures that can’t make it to the mountains.
Land Use: The large majority of land is occupied by the 150-acre Auraria Campus, shared by the Community College of Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and University of Colorado Denver. Ball Arena (and its many parking lots), home to the NBA’s Denver Nuggets and NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, take up another large swath of land. Elitch Gardens Theme & Water Park is the other main resident in the Auraria neighborhood. The Auraria neighborhood has potential to undergo a huge amount of development in the coming decades with rough plans in place to develop Ball Arena parking lots and possible relocate Elitch Gardens. The typical downtown of hi-rise condos and office buildings are currently just across Speer Blvd, but that might change in the coming years with literally millions of square feet proposed for 55 acres at Speer, Auraria Parkway, and the light rail transit lines. The River Mile Project is another 63-acre development along the South Platte River that is estimated to take 25 years to build out and forever alter the skyline of Downtown Denver.
Interested in More Information: Talk with someone that has researched metro Denver ad nauseam - market stats, newspapers, city planning documents, zoning possibilities, upside potential, concerns, schools, crime, new developments, neighborhood websites, one area vs another, etc. Chat with Matt - send me a text at 303-524-2086 and we’ll schedule a time to talk. Or, if it’s easier, send an email to MatthewJamesLong@GMail.com.