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

Happy Friday. The forecast finally has rain in it, a whole wet stretch of it, and fall arrives on paper Tuesday evening at 6:05. So this is the weekend the sprinklers get a break before they get shut off for the season. Inside: Walmart's Coal Mine store has asked Jefferson County for permission to deliver groceries by drone, a 300,000-square-foot sporting-goods store is lining up for Mineral Place, and the jack-o'-lanterns at Hudson Gardens light up tonight. Dig out the rain jacket. You remember where it is.

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Cooler weather is just around the corner, and now is the time to protect your sprinkler system before the first hard freeze.

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Open Space Solutions LLC is a locally owned and operated business serving Ken Caryl, Morrison and the southwest foothills. Owner Richard Rominger personally handles your sprinkler winterization, making sure your system is properly prepared for Colorado's winter weather. Open Space Solutions also provides sprinkler repairs, spring start-ups, lawn care and grounds maintenance.

Call Richard at 720-775-5921 or visit openspacesolutionsco.com. Read the Google reviews. Mention the Hogback Post when scheduling.

Scheels wants to build a 300,000-square-foot store at Mineral Place, and the City of Littleton has already done the math on what it's worth. Tuesday night the City of Littleton's council signed off on the deal that gets it there, 6-1. Council Member Merrill Stillwell was the no, calling it "Denver Broncos money" decided between a Thursday announcement and a Tuesday vote. Scheels, the sporting-goods chain whose Colorado stores are in Colorado Springs and Johnstown, is under contract to buy about 14 acres at 700 West Mineral Avenue, the Mineral and Santa Fe site where Costco is going up. The city's timeline: construction starting early 2027, doors in spring 2029, 550 jobs, and $135 million a year in projected sales. In exchange, for 30 years after the store opens, the city keeps 40 percent of the sales tax it collects there and rebates the rest each quarter, about 55 percent to Scheels and 5 percent to the developer. On the city's own year-one example that's about $2 million a year for the city and $2.8 million back to Scheels. Before anyone calls it a giveaway: the rebate only pays out on sales that actually happen, so an empty lot costs the city nothing, and any future tax increase voters approve stays with the city. And this is the City of Littleton's sales tax. Most of this list lives in unincorporated Jeffco, so it isn't your city budget on the line. You're the customer they're counting on.

Two smaller items rode along. With Scheels in, the developer's original incentive ceiling drops from $29.5 million to $25 million, so the city isn't counting a second anchor twice. Costco's deadline to open under its own incentive deal moves a year, to October 1, 2027, after about six months of what the city calls ordinary construction delays. The city now pegs that opening for spring 2027. Both riders passed 7-0. One more line off a staff slide: In-N-Out is "moving forward on 1st pad site." That's the city's phrase. The city's own site-plan file for that restaurant has read "under review" since May.

Walmart has asked Jefferson County to let it deliver groceries by drone from the Coal Mine store. The filing reached the county on September 9, and the one document in it is a letter from Walmart's law firm asking the planning director to rule that drone delivery counts as an accessory use of the Supercenter at 13420 West Coal Mine Avenue. Accessory use is the zoning term for something that comes with the store, like its parking lot. The partner is Wing, the drone company owned by Google's parent, which already flies Walmart orders in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Charlotte. The letter describes an 18-stack drone charging pad on the property, run off temporary battery storage, with fencing and landscaped islands around it, and a delivery radius it puts at roughly six miles. From that store, six miles covers most of this zip. The noise numbers are Walmart's, so read them as a pitch: the drones cruise above 150 feet at 43 decibels, reach about 63 while lowering a package, and the letter compares both to an idling delivery truck. Walmart met with county planners in June. What it has now is a request, not a permit, and the county hasn't answered. Wing's own map lists no Colorado metro, which makes this the first paper trail I've seen for drone delivery anywhere near Denver. If one ever lowers a bag of groceries onto your porch, I want a photo.

Tonight the pumpkins come on. Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns opens at Hudson Gardens on South Santa Fe, a lit trail of thousands of hand-carved pumpkins, 7 to 10 PM tonight, Saturday, and next Friday, then select nights through November 1. Tickets are online and the event runs rain or shine, which matters this weekend. Also opening today: the Chatfield Farms corn maze on Deer Creek Canyon Road, Fridays through Sundays 9 to 5 into November, $22 for adults and $14 for kids.

Saturday: Hudson Gardens runs its monthly bird walk, 8 to 11, $15 to $20, twelve spots, meet at the Welcome Center. Nevada Street's farmers market runs 8 to 1, with one Saturday left after this one. The bookmobile at the future Deer Creek Library site on Bradford hosts Talk Like a Pirate Day, noon to 2, crafts and a treasure hunt. And the Pokémon crowd gathers downtown at Bega Park at 1:45 for the Staraptor raid day, which runs 2 to 5.

Sunday is the last day of Restaurant Week. The specials at more than two dozen downtown and Aspen Grove spots come down after the 20th.

Tuesday is the first day of fall, and Denver Audubon marks it with Native Plants for Birds, 6:30 to 7:30 at the Deer Creek site, a talk on backyard habitat and a nudge toward the library's art call, which closes Sunday the 27th. Marker drawings of Colorado nature, any age, dropped at the site during a program or at Columbine Library's front desk on West Bowles. Tuesday is also the Foothills Park & Rec board meeting, 6 PM at the Peak on South Ward, and a neighbor is bringing a lake to public comment. More on that below.

Next Friday, the 25th, is the last Wine Walk of the year, 4:30 to 7:30, check-in outside Denver Beer Co on West Main, $30 in advance and $35 at the door. And Columbine Library's pumpkin-carving contest takes in-person votes Tuesday the 22nd through Sunday the 27th.

Two weekends out: TrailMark's sixth annual Chili Cook-Off is Saturday, October 3, 4:30 PM at Hogback Hill Park on West Trailmark Parkway. Firefighters judge, every dollar goes to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, and everyone's welcome to eat and vote. If you live outside TrailMark and want to bring a pot, the organizer asks that you text her first, Lori Ross at 303-437-4563, per her flyer.

The rules haven't moved yet. The mud will. Unincorporated Jeffco is still at Stage 1 fire restrictions, and Upper Plymouth Creek in Deer Creek Canyon Park still closes Monday through Thursday. That swaps on Wednesday the 23rd: the weekday closure moves to Meadowlark Trail in the same park, same 8 to 4:30 hours, for a culvert replacement, and Upper Plymouth Creek reopens. What changes this weekend is the forecast: a wet Friday and Saturday with more chances Sunday, and Jeffco Open Space closes Deer Creek Canyon and Hildebrand Ranch outright when the trails turn to mud, with partial closures at Mount Falcon's Morrison side and Matthews/Winters. Check the county's alerts page before you drive up, and if the tread is soft, ride the road.

The 25 mph vote has a result, two issues late. The city clerk's office says the City of Littleton's council passed the citywide 25 mph ordinance on September 1, 7-0. Same fine print as before: it only changes streets inside city limits that have no posted limit, so most of this list, in unincorporated Jeffco, is untouched.

The former Old Crows Antiques building on West Bowles has a rezoning application on file. The county logged it September 10 for 10081 West Bowles, on the Plains side of the zip. That's the whole story so far. The file holds no narrative and no site plan, the owner of record is an Englewood LLC, and nothing in county paperwork names a tenant or a use. A reader first asked about that building in April. A rezoning is the first real move on it, so I'm telling you now, and I'll tell you what it's for when the plans hit the folder.

A neighbor is taking Blue Heron Park's lake to the Foothills board Tuesday. The lake at the park on South Quail has sat mostly empty this year, and neighbors on the Westridge side have been working the district about it since summer. On Tuesday one of them plans to stand up in public comment and ask the board to write the lake's restoration into the district's master plan. The district's written position, from its July board packet, is that the water isn't its to keep: the reservoir's storage right only dates to 2017, water that arrives outside of free-river conditions has to be released downstream under Colorado water law, and the basin was rebuilt in 2015 as a stormwater detention pond. Both sides have that in writing, which is more than most neighborhood fights start with. Public comment is open at every Foothills meeting.

August's numbers are in, and one in three homes sold over asking. Redfin's monthly tally for 80127: 202 homes closed in August at a median of $709,593, a typical 17 days to go under contract, and 31.6 percent of them sold above list price, up eleven points from last August. The shelf finally dipped too, 197 active listings this week after four straight weeks of climbing. The two-speed story hasn't changed, though. A three-bedroom on West Fair Drive, just off Simms, listed at $525,000 and closed last Friday at $575,000, $50,000 over, in 25 days. Up in the Valley, a 4,800-square-foot house on Desert Willow Lane listed at $1,350,000, sat 84 days, and closed the same Friday at $1,250,000. Price it like the neighbors and you get a bidding war. Price it like a dream and you get October.

The pattern breaks. Today hits 81 with showers and storms rolling in by afternoon and likely into the night, Saturday tops out at 78 with more of the same, and Sunday cools to 73 with a smaller chance. The nights drop to around 50. Monday dries out near 74, and Tuesday is fall on the calendar and, judging by the lows, on the thermometer too. No alerts as of this morning. Put the hose away. The lawn is about to get watered for free.

A reader asked what the mess is in the Costco parking lot, and the answer is that it's Costco's own project. That store technically sits inside Denver, not Jeffco, so the paperwork lives in Denver's files: an addition on the receiving end of the warehouse plus a remodel, under a $5.6 million building permit issued in June, with EV chargers and a new transformer permitted in August and September. No finish date appears anywhere in the record. If you've got a "what's going in there" of your own, hit reply. This section runs on them.

That's the week from the foothills. Go see the pumpkins, get your tomatoes on Nevada Street while the market's still running, and tell me what you think of a Scheels at Mineral. I've heard from the city. I'd like to hear from the people who'd actually shop there.

Joey

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