Your weekly field guide to Littleton, Ken Caryl, and the SW Denver foothills

Happy Friday. The first week of school is nearly in the books, the bus stops have found their rhythm, and the weather is about to trade heat for thunder: one more 96-degree day, then four straight days of storm chances. Inside, the county opened a second case against the development behind Dutch Ridge, I tracked down who's behind the 300-unit senior project proposed for Alkire, and the new Ziggi's has posted its opening week. Do the dry-weather things today. The rest of the week can get wet.

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The county opened a second violation case at Westend Ridge on Tuesday. Quick catch-up if you missed last week: the 103-lot development on the old church land behind Dutch Ridge, at Kipling and Coal Mine, has carried a county erosion-control violation since June. The Friday I reported that, a Saturday storm was a day away. When it hit, mud and water came off the site into the backyards along West Ontario Place, neighbors' photos show sections of the retaining wall's top courses came apart, and one family says their neighbor's basement flooded. I drove the street that afternoon and saw the mud myself. The story made the Denver TV news the next night. Now the county's own records show what came next: Tuesday's case, opened by Transportation and Engineering, is for illicit discharge, the county's term for anything leaving a site that's more than clean stormwater. A violation case is county enforcement against a property, closer to a code citation than a courtroom. It is not a lawsuit, and nobody has sued anybody. The question I took to everyone involved this week: who owns the wall and the drainage that just failed to hold a storm? The metro district that taxes the future homes there answered on the record, through counsel Jennifer Ivey: the district owns no property within its boundaries today, is not involved in building the wall, and is not expected ever to own it. Its founding plan says drainage improvements get handed to a homeowners association after they're built, and there are no homeowners yet. Which leaves the wall and the drainage with the development side for now. I put questions to the builder announced for the project, the developer's project lead, the wall's engineer, and the county. None of them responded by my Thursday deadline. The county's new case suggests its engineers, at least, are not waiting on anybody's answers.

Meanwhile, the Alkire senior-living mystery has a name on it now. Last week I told you a 300-unit senior living facility had landed in county paperwork at 5649 South Alkire, with no developer named in the file. I said I'd dig. Here's what the records show. The property owner on the county application is MWSH Littleton LLC, an Oregon company registered to an address in Salem. And the trail points at Bonaventure Senior Living, the senior-housing operator based in that same city: the county's older files for this exact parcel carry cases titled Bonaventure of Littleton going back to 2017. An earlier pre-application, closed this spring, described 170 units. The current filing says 300, and it's still in the county's earliest completeness check, so nothing is approved and nothing is being built. But if the paper trail holds, the operator behind that stretch of Alkire has been circling it for nearly a decade.

This morning, actually: the future Deer Creek Library on Bradford runs Toddler Time at 10:15 and Preschool Time at 10:45, outside on the east lawn while the weather allows.

Saturday belongs to the dogs. Doggie Dip Day takes over the Ranch House pool in Ken Caryl from 9 to noon, three 50-minute sessions of Fastest Fetch, Farthest Jump, and a doggie paddle race. It's $13 for residents, $17 for everyone else, registration required, vaccinated and sociable dogs only, one adult per dog. Also Saturday: the Pokémon GO crew runs Mega Starmie Raid Day at Bega Park downtown, 10:45 to 1, and the farmers market holds its 8-to-1 slot on Nevada Street.

Sunday, TrailMark turns up the volume. The neighborhood's social committee brings Darling Revival to Hogback Hill Park at 5:30 for the summer's third Concert in the Park.

Tuesday is the thinking night. The League of Women Voters' media series continues at Columbine Library, 6 to 7:30, this week on propaganda and polarization. Up on Bradford, Active Minds gives a Colorado history talk at the Deer Creek site at 6:30. And the Ken-Caryl Ranch Metro District board meets at 6 at the Ranch House, per the district's calendar, with the agenda not posted as of Wednesday.

The regulars: Wednesday Raid Hour at the Clement Park skate park, 5:50, and Hudson Gardens runs its G-scale garden railroad Saturday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings, 9 to noon, free.

Ziggi's grand-opening week is locked in, as promised: next Thursday through Saturday, August 27 to 29. The shop's own site confirms the dates for the drive-thru at Chatfield and Sangre de Cristo, and the lineup it posted earlier this month runs buy-one-get-one drinks Thursday, small dirty sodas for a dollar Friday, and a Give Back Day Saturday with 20 percent of sales going to a local organization the shop hasn't named yet. If a specific deal is what gets you in the car, it's worth a call first, 720-726-2024. Either way, the drive-thru that's been taking shape on that corner for months is about to start handing coffee out a window.

The fire ban loosened this week, with a catch that matters here. On Tuesday the sheriff moved unincorporated Jeffco from the Stage 2 ban down to Stage 1 restrictions. The catch: Jeffco Open Space parks and Denver Mountain Parks sit in a Stage 2 ban at all times, so on the trails themselves, Deer Creek Canyon included, nothing has loosened at all. The summer's two weekday closures are also still running. Upper Plymouth Creek closes Monday through Thursday, 8 to 4:30, which keeps the full Black Bear through-ride a Friday-through-Sunday move, and the Lair o' the Bear flood repair holds the same weekday rhythm, with the county still saying late August for the finish. With storms in the forecast most afternoons, this is an early-start weekend.

Labor Day flights sneak up fast. Event and Airport Transportation runs Sprinter vans that seat up to 10, one vehicle for the whole crew and nobody circling the DIA garage. Book ahead at limolimo.limo for the best availability. The cutoff is one hour before your pickup time. Local and licensed, Colorado PUC LL-03624.

The school funding question got its green light Thursday night. I told you I'd report the details once the school board acted, and it has: the board voted to send two measures to the November 3 ballot. The first is a $73 million a year operating increase, aimed at staff pay and career and technical programs and watched by a citizens' accountability committee. The second is a separate $60 million a year capital measure for buildings, technology, and maintenance. Together that's a $133 million annual ask landing on November ballots, and every home in 80127 pays Jeffco school taxes, so this one is coming to your mailbox either way. Ballot language goes to the county clerks by September 4.

If Kipling has felt slower than usual, it's not you. The county is replacing the traffic signals at two Kipling Parkway intersections, Progress and Alamo, swapping the wire-hung lights for new poles with mast arms. Expect lane closures and short delays on weekdays between 8:30 and 3:30 through September. No full closure is planned, and the existing lights stay on until the new ones take over.

Two weeks ago I said the growing shelf would get interesting. It's growing. There are 190 homes on the market in 80127 now, up from the mid-160s a month ago, the highest count I've logged this summer. And this week the market's two ends closed within days of each other. A five-bedroom on Snowy Owl Lane in Ken Caryl's North Ranch, up in the Valley, listed in March at $1.7 million, took two price cuts, and closed Monday at $1,525,000, about $175,000 under its original ask after five and a half months. A one-bedroom condo at the gated Fallingwater community on the Plains side did the opposite, pending in six days, closed at $310,000. Long waits at the top, footraces at the bottom, and more choices in between every week.

An Ozone Action Day alert runs until 4 this afternoon, with the highest ozone expected on the south and west sides of the metro, which is us, so if ozone bothers your lungs, save the hard outdoor efforts for evening. Otherwise, Friday is summer's last big swing, 96 and sunny. Then the pattern flips: Saturday hits 92 with better-than-even storm odds in the afternoon, Sunday's odds reach two in three at 90, Monday holds 91 with storms likely, and Tuesday cools to 87 with more of the same. Saturday morning looks like the window for the Doggie Dip and the farmers market, with the radar quiet until about 3. After that, keep the umbrella in the car and let the lawn take its chances.

Denver Water's latest weekly scoreboard puts the system at 73 percent full against a 95 percent average for this point in the year, and Antero Reservoir has officially hit zero percent, 12 acre-feet left in a bowl built to hold more than 20,000. A wet storm week won't refill anything by itself, but it rests the sprinklers. The two-day watering schedule is still the rule, so water your two days, let the sky cover the rest, and we'll check the scoreboard again come fall.

That's the week from the foothills. Get the errands done today, cheer somebody's dog through the Farthest Jump tomorrow, and if you make Ziggi's opening week, tell me what the line was like. I'm keeping score on that corner.

Joey

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