Happy Friday. Two things a lot of you have been waiting on finally moved this week. The Shea Homes fight in TrailMark has a date, and Los Dos Potrillos turned the lights back on yesterday. Both are below. So is a weekend worth spending outside, because the oven turns on Monday and doesn't shut off. Consider this your last comfortable one for a while.

No sponsor up top this week. Which means if you've got a favorite spot out here, a shop, a dentist, a contractor, the place you'd actually recommend to a neighbor, forward them this issue. I keep it to two ads, I write them myself, and I'd rather this space go to somebody you already trust than to whoever finds me first.

The Shea Homes hearing finally has a date. TrailMark's HOA says the city council hearing on the 27 new Shea homes is set for Tuesday, July 21 at 6:30 p.m., the same night as the Metro District meeting. The fight is over the vacant lot just north of the fire station, where more than 450 residents have signed a petition backing those 27 homes over a commercial building. The Planning Commission heard it April 27, and by the HOA's own account that one didn't go well, with a couple of vocal commissioners adamant about keeping the lot zoned commercial. The odd part is that Shea, per that same writeup, says it has no intention of selling the lot or building anything commercial there either. The city hasn't posted the July 21 agenda, so I can't tell you where in the night it lands. If you live in TrailMark, keep the evening free.

And the school district's November ask has a number: 135 million dollars. In Issue #13 I told you a Jeffco ballot question was coming straight for your property taxes. Here's its shape. The district's community advisory group has recommended a 75 million dollar mill levy override for salaries, career and technical programs like welding and culinary, and per-student payments to charter schools, plus a 60 million dollar capital mill for building maintenance and technology. Nothing's on the ballot yet. The board votes this fall on whether to send it to voters. Back in May, Board President Michelle Applegate put it about as plainly as an elected official can: "It scares the hell out of me to put this on a ballot, but I believe personally that we must." It all lands the same week Superintendent Tracy Dorland stepped down. A district asking for 135 million while it hunts for a new leader is a harder sell, and the board knows it.

Council's been dark. July 7 and the July 14 study session were both cancelled. July 21 is the night that matters, the sewer rate study is still expected there, and the agenda still isn't posted. The second it is, you'll get it here.

The huge one this weekend costs nothing. Pokémon GO Fest 2026: Global runs Saturday and Sunday, July 11 and 12, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. both days, free for the first time, for the game's tenth anniversary. Mega Mewtwo X shows up Saturday, Mega Mewtwo Y on Sunday. You can play from anywhere, but our local crew is basing out of Downtown Littleton both days with activity sheets for kids, challenge bingo for the adults, a figure hunt, and giveaways. Any ten-year-old in your house has known this date for months.

A free concert in Ken Caryl you don't have to be a resident to attend. Rockin' in the Ranch is Friday, July 17, 5 to 7 p.m. on the Ranch House soccer field. The Placebo Effect plays classic rock, there's a food truck and a bounce house, and the Ranch says plainly these are open to residents and non-residents both. Worth flagging, because most of what happens up there isn't.

Two more free concert nights. The Littleton Museum's lawn series has The ThreadBarons on Wednesday, July 15, 6:30 to 8, playing Americana. Bring a picnic, leave the alcohol home, leashed dogs are fine. Then Clement Park's amphitheater has Little Moses Jones on Thursday, July 16 at 7, doing R&B and hip hop. The Museum series wraps for the year on July 22 with Dakota Blonde, so that's your last lawn night.

And one more Pokémon thing, for the committed. Super Mega Raichu Raid Day is Saturday, July 18, 2 to 5 p.m. The local group gathers at Bega Park during that window.

Same as every week. The Downtown Littleton Farmers Market is on Nevada Street Saturday, 8 to 1, about forty vendors deep. Raid Hour is Wednesday, meet at the Clement Park skate park at 5:50 and walk until 7.

Still nothing on Hornbuckle. I said I'd pass along the carnival's new date the second they announced it. They haven't. Their own site still shows the June 27 date the wind blew out.

The green chili is back. Two weeks ago I said I'd flag it here the day Los Dos Potrillos reopened. That day was yesterday. The Littleton location on West San Juan Way opened at 11 a.m. Thursday, a little over four months after the March 3 kitchen fire shut it down. Ramirez Hospitality Group didn't just patch it up, either. They remodeled the whole 7,389-square-foot space and added something they're calling a Wall of Traditions. I suspect the parking lot will tell that story for a couple of weeks.

The novelist down the street. Ron Lamberson and his wife have been in TrailMark for 22 years. Original owners. He majored in creative writing with the full-time dream, then wrote off and on for years, until a book he read in the early 2000s finally got him off the bench. The kids were small and the corporate jobs were loud, so he wrote 250 words a night, every night, after everything else was done. A year of that and he had a novel.

What he writes, in his word, is escapism. New worlds, new cultures, high stakes. He's set foot in over 40 countries and all seven continents, and his three Kilimanjaro Club mysteries are each built on somewhere he's actually stood, moving from Italy to China to Prague. He's outlining a fourth now. His sci-fi comedy Heavy Metal Moon is the one he has the most fun with, and the sequel, Wormhole to Hell, should land closer to late October.

I asked whether the foothills find their way onto the page. Not really, he said. He's written on planes, in airports, in hotel rooms, on buses and trains, and in a lot of parking lots waiting for a kid's practice to end. He loses himself so completely that the room stops mattering. Twenty-two years of that, right up against the ridge.

Where should a neighbor start? He didn't hesitate. A Grave Invitation. Amazon's the easiest place to find it, the audiobook's on Audible, and he thinks the Tattered Cover over at Aspen Grove might still have a copy or two on the shelf.

You've seen Ron in the sponsor slot the last few weeks. This one's not an ad. I just wanted to give a neighbor a proper write-up.

And a date, at last. Ziggi's Coffee on Sangre de Cristo has been "opening soon" for months. Their own site now shows a grand-opening week running August 11 through 15, with dollar drinks and half-price food depending on the day.

The weekend is the window at Deer Creek Canyon. Crews are rebuilding tread, culverts, and drainage on Upper Plymouth Creek, so it's closed Monday through Thursday, 8 to 4:30, and open Friday through Sunday. Black Bear Trail stays shut through July 31 for the annual nesting-raptor closure, so hold that one for August. Apex is open again after closing back on June 22, when a bear made contact with a hiker's leg. That's the first reported bear attack in the state this year, and the animal was behaving like it had gotten used to people, so keep your head up out there. Dogs still aren't allowed at Waterton because of the bighorn herd, and the rattlesnakes are out on the warm rock where they always are. The fire ban below covers the open space too, so no campfire and no smoking once you're out of the car. A gas stove is still fine. Get up early and be walking back down before it bakes.

A flat 80 dollars, anywhere in Littleton to anywhere in Littleton. Event and Airport Transportation is running its Sprinter transfer deal into July, up to 11 passengers for the one price. It's a good answer to a summer night out or a group dinner downtown. Reserve at least an hour ahead at limolimo.limo. Local and licensed, Colorado PUC LL-03624.

The fire ban is still on, and it's the strict one. Unincorporated Jeffco has been under a Stage 2 ban since June 29, and the Sheriff's page still says it holds until further notice. No fires of any kind, including the one in your fire pit, your grate, or a developed campground ring. No charcoal, no open burning. The test is whether the flame can be switched off rather than put out, so the propane grill and the gas camp stove are both fine. A violation runs up to 600 dollars, and nothing in this week's forecast suggests the ban lifts soon.

The overnight work on C-470 is still going. Resurfacing between Ken Caryl and Wadsworth runs Sunday through Thursday nights, 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., with lane and ramp closures shifting around. It's scheduled through the fall, so if you're coming home late on a weeknight, give yourself an extra ten minutes.

The median says the market's cooling. The median is lying to you. Prices in 80127 are down about 2.2 percent from a year ago, with the median at 708,690. But the price per square foot is up four percent, and eight percent more homes sold this May than last, 210 against 194. Those don't contradict each other. The mix of what's selling has shifted downward. You're paying more per foot and buying less house, and that falling median is measuring the size of what sold, not the value of what you own.

Look at the last month of condo closings and you can see it. Five came in at or below 415,000. A one-bedroom at Fallingwater on Quail Circle went for 259,000, another in the same complex for 270,000, and a three-bedroom on West Dorado Place, ground level with a garage, closed July 6 at 307,000. The entry-level end of 80127 is where the action is, which is real news if you've been priced out and waiting. The top hasn't gone anywhere, mind you. A six-bedroom out in Ken Caryl Valley recently traded at 2,299,000.

Friday's the soft one, mostly sunny and 89, with maybe a thirty percent shot at a storm after one. Then the monsoon switches off. Saturday comes in sunny and 94, Sunday 95, no rain in either, about as good as a July weekend gets out here. Enjoy it, because Saturday is the coolest day on the board for the next week. Monday hits 97, Tuesday and Wednesday both 96, and the sky stays empty. No heat advisory posted, for whatever that's worth to you at 97 degrees. Water the tomatoes.

Foothills is running a Clement Park clean-up Monday, July 20, 10 a.m. to noon. Meet at the amphitheater. All ages, kids welcome with a grown-up. It's the sort of two hours that makes a park feel like yours.

And since Los Dos is back, I want to know what you're ordering first. Four months is long enough that people have been rehearsing. Hit reply and tell me. I read every one, and the good ones land right here, no name attached unless you want it.

That's the week from the foothills. Get outside Saturday, stay in Monday, and let me know what I missed.

Joey

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