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

Happy Friday. The new Ziggi's is selling 16-ounce dirty sodas for a dollar today, the steakhouse on Alkire finally has an opening date, and up in Ken Caryl's Valley, Saturday's storm has roofer yard signs sprouting faster than the bindweed. Inside: what the retaining-wall files at Westend Ridge have been saying all along, your legal rights when a roofer knocks, and a carnival on Sunday that doesn't care if it rains. The soda's a dollar. The rest of this is free.

The Post is free because two local sponsor spots a week pay for it, and one of them is open. So here's the neighbor-to-neighbor version of the pitch: 1,750 households in this zip get this email, and about 6 in 10 of you open it every single week. If you run a local business, or you know the one that belongs here, hit reply. I read every one.

The Westend Ridge wall cleared the county's safety minimum by one one-hundredth, and the family next door called that out in writing nine and a half months before it came apart. Quick catch-up: the 103-lot development behind Dutch Ridge has carried county violation cases since June, and the August 15 storm pulled apart the top courses of the retaining wall above the backyards on West Ontario Place. This week I read the wall's own engineering file. Last October, the developer's team asked the county to swap the wall's specified block brand for a different one. The county's geologist sent it back, because the approved calculations were built on the original block, and made the engineer redo the math. The stamped recalculation came back in January: the tallest three-tier section clears the county's global-stability minimum by 0.01, a factor of 1.31 against a required 1.30. Passing is passing, and engineers design near minimums all the time. But the county's file shows a neighbor saw it coming. In a written comment filed last October, the family next door warned that "the original design only meets the safety factor requirement by 0.01" and that swapping materials without a full redesign left the county no way to know the wall still complied. The writer builds retaining walls for a living. The county did force the full recalculation, the numbers came back at 1.31, and in August the wall's top courses came apart in a storm. Why is a question the record doesn't answer, and I won't guess: the engineer's stamped letter concludes the block weight doesn't control the design, the county approved the change, and both violation cases are open. One more plain fact from the files. The metro district that will tax the future homes is governed by a board drawn from the development side, including a land executive of the announced builder and a principal of one of the development companies. That's standard for a new Colorado metro district until residents move in and take the seats. It also means that for now, every chair at the accountability table belongs to the same side. I sent questions to the developer, the builder, the wall's engineer, and the county's engineers a week and a half ago. Nobody has answered.

Meanwhile, the Alkire senior project just shrank in the county's file, from 300 units to 170. Two weeks ago I told you a 300-unit senior living facility had landed in county paperwork at 5649 South Alkire, and last week I named the Oregon owner behind it. Both weeks, 300 was the number in the county's own case description. As of this week, that same description reads 170. No new documents have appeared in the public folder, so whether the county corrected an entry or the project trimmed itself, the record doesn't say. For what it's worth, 170 exactly matches the pre-application that closed this spring. The filing is still in the county's earliest completeness check, and nothing is approved.

Today, actually: it's day two of Ziggi's opening week at Chatfield and Sangre de Cristo, and the deal is a 16-ounce dirty soda for $1. Saturday is Give Back Day, with 20 percent of sales going to a local organization the shop hasn't named yet. The future Deer Creek Library on Bradford runs its lawn storytimes at 10:15 and 10:45 this morning.

Saturday: the farmers market holds its 8-to-1 slot on Nevada Street, and the bookmobile parks at the Deer Creek site from 11 to 3.

Sunday is the carnival. 5280 Gymnastics, the gym on Shaffer Parkway, throws its annual Carnival for a Cause from 2 to 6, honoring founder Jim Trammell with games, a bounce house, and unlimited open gym. Kids are $35 with ten game tickets included, adults get in free, and proceeds go to Blood Cancer United. Bonus: it's indoors, and Sunday is the wet day.

Tuesday is a doubleheader. Mahjong for Everyone debuts at the Deer Creek site, 1 to 3, first Tuesdays going forward, and the library's listing shows no cost or sign-up. That evening at Columbine Library, the League of Women Voters' media series takes on AI and democracy, 6 to 7:30.

Thursday: TrailMark's Food Truck Thursday runs 5 to 7:30 at South Field Way by TrailMark Park. And as always, Wednesday Raid Hour at the Clement Park skate park, 5:50.

The Summit Steak Bar opens Monday, August 31. After months of a live website with no date, the steakhouse moving into the old Bevy's building on South Alkire has put it on a banner: opening August 31, dinner from 4, reservations through its site. That corner has been this newsletter's most-searched mystery all summer. Now it's a dinner plan.

And a preschool is moving into West Bowles. A county permit issued last week details a 5,912-square-foot interior build-out at 8906 West Bowles Avenue for Ivybrook Academy, a half-day preschool for the 18-months-to-6 crowd, and the school's own site is already enrolling its Littleton campus for the 2026-27 year.

The rules didn't move, but one repair dropped off the closure list. Unincorporated Jeffco holds at Stage 1 fire restrictions, with the standing catch that Jeffco Open Space parks and Denver Mountain Parks are always in a Stage 2 ban, so nothing is looser on the trails themselves. Upper Plymouth Creek still 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, the one the county kept saying would finish by late August, is no longer on the county's closure list at all. No reopening announcement, just a clean page. Sunday looks soggy, so the big rides belong to today and tomorrow.

Labor Day weekend is one Friday away. Event and Airport Transportation runs Sprinter vans that seat up to 10, one vehicle for the whole crew, DIA run or concert night. 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.

Saturday's storm left more than puddles, and now the roofers are knocking. The cell that crossed the zip Saturday afternoon put a flood advisory over Littleton with up to an inch and a half of rain, and a reader in Ken Caryl's Valley reports hail came with it, counting about six roofer yard signs within sight of each other and describing the door-to-door crews as "circling us like vultures." The county's permit desk backs up the pattern: complete re-roof permits landed on two Valley addresses this week. Before you sign anything on your porch, know your Colorado rights. A roofing contract has to be in writing. A roofer who offers to cover or eat your insurance deductible is breaking state law, and that deal can free your insurer to ignore the estimate entirely. If your claim comes back denied, you have 72 hours from the written denial to walk away, with your deposit returned within ten days. One more number for perspective: by the state's own data, hail makes up 49.8 percent of the average Jefferson County homeowners premium. Wildfire is 6.1 percent. The thing that hits your roof, not the thing on the ridge, is what you've been paying for all along.

Your electric bill goes up Saturday. The state Public Utilities Commission signed off on Xcel's rate increase on August 20, and the new rates take effect August 29. The average residential bill climbs 4.77 percent, about $5 a month. That's the mild version: Xcel asked for $9.94 a month, and the commission cut the request roughly in half before approving it. Buried in the same decision is the part worth passing along to a neighbor. There's a new $20 monthly bill credit for income-qualified residents 65 and older, and for anyone in Xcel's Percentage of Income Payment Plan, energy costs are now capped at 2.5 percent of household income instead of 6. Details at puc.colorado.gov.

Three quick ones. Littleton's citywide 25 mph speed limit passed first reading on August 18, the city says, and gets its public hearing and final vote Tuesday night. City streets only. The five pickleball courts planned for Ken Caryl's Community Park cleared a county hurdle: the grading application now shows Plans Approved, with the district's own packet saying construction should begin during August. And one from a reader's windshield instead of the files: Summit Ridge Middle is back in session, and the school zone on Coal Mine near Simms is live again.

The shelf keeps growing, and the sorting keeps getting sharper. There are 192 homes on the market in 80127 this week, the highest count I've logged all summer. The closings tell the two-speed story. A four-bedroom townhome on Elk Head Range Road, on Ken Caryl's Plains side, listed at $500,000 in late June, survived one buyer falling through, and still closed at $487,500 in under two months. Meanwhile a four-bedroom townhome on West Fair Avenue needed ten months, six price moves, and a relisting to finally close at $349,990, about 16 percent under where it started last October. Priced right, you're done by Labor Day. Priced hopeful, you're feeding the shelf.

The weekend splits neatly in half. Today hits 92 and Saturday 93, each with about a one-in-four chance of an afternoon storm. Sunday the pattern tips over: 89 with a coin-flip chance of storms, and Monday looks like the wettest of the bunch at 85. Tuesday dries back out at 86. And for today only, the state has an ozone alert running until 4 PM, so if asthma is in the house, morning is the better half of the day. Anything outdoors wants the front half of the weekend. Sunday, be the person who planned the indoor carnival.

That's the week from the foothills. Grab a dollar soda today, lose to somebody's kid at carnival games Sunday, and if a roofer knocked on your door this week, tell me what the pitch was. I'm collecting them.

Joey

Subscribe | Forward to a neighbor | Advertise with us