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

Happy Friday, and happy Labor Day weekend. The holiday front-loads the good weather: three days around 90 with only slim storm odds, then Labor Day itself turns wet by afternoon. Chatfield's swim beach has one weekend left in it, the Pokémon crowd takes over downtown both mornings, and the old golf course's senior co-op finally has a unit count and a price sheet. The dogs get Saturday. The grill gets Monday, weather permitting. Let's go.

That 6,400-square-foot space going in at Kipling and Chatfield? It's Redline Athletics, a youth training center run by Jonathan and Nissa Fuller, two military vets raising three (soon four) kids of their own. They coach speed, agility, and strength for athletes 8 to 18, mostly in small groups, with one-on-one and team sessions too. The pitch I liked: youth sports have gotten plenty intense on their own, so the training here is built to make kids faster and harder to injure without grinding the fun out of it. They're aiming to open the doors November 30. Founding memberships are on presale now, with discounts up to 30% off, for life.

Grab a founding spot: fill out the short form at redlineathletics.com/location/littleton.

The old Deer Creek Golf Club has a unit count: 59. Readers keep asking what is going in on the empty course at 8135 Shaffer Parkway, over on Ken Caryl's Plains side, and the answer is now drawn to scale. The Village Cooperative of Ken Caryl would be a 62-and-over ownership building, one structure with surface and underground parking and a single entrance onto Shaffer. The architectural site plan on file with the county labels the footprint in plain type: Ken Caryl, 59 units. The company's website doesn't publish that number and neither does the county's case description.

Price isn't on either one. A company price sheet dated July 1 lists every home, and shares run from about $196,000 for 1,007 square feet to about $393,000 for 1,713, with monthly fees between roughly $1,700 and $3,370. The monthly reads steep until you see what's folded into it, which is property taxes, insurance, all maintenance inside and out, an underground parking space, and the gas, water, sewer and trash. Electricity stays yours. The company says more than 40 percent of the homes have been reserved since its June launch, and four floor plans read sold out on its site, with two more down to a single home.

For the people who walk out there, the applicant's letter tells the county it intends to grant an easement preserving public access to Deer Creek Nature Park, and the building would sit outside the Massey Draw floodplain.

Then the caveat that outranks everything above it. Nothing is approved. The county's file holds one pre-application, and it closed June 4. No site development plan has been filed, no permits exist, the plan sheet itself is stamped not for construction, and the county still lists the golf club's company as the owner of record. It's the second senior-housing project to turn up in the county's files this summer, after the one proposed on South Alkire. The company runs an information seminar Wednesday, September 16 at 1 PM at the Hampton Inn on Shaffer Parkway.

And the Plains just picked up four more building permits in a single day. On August 25 the county logged four permit applications at 11961 through 11991 West Laurel Place, each for a new multi-family building of three or more units, at addresses so new the map services haven't caught up to them. The county's records place the parcels in a filing called Ken Caryl Ranch North Plains, and the owner of record is NADG Ken Caryl Ranch LP, part of North American Development Group, the developer behind the Ranch's Plains parcels. This week all four applications moved from intake into the county's plan-submittal stage. Nothing is issued and nothing is vertical. But between these four, the co-op above, and the senior project on Alkire, the flat side of the zip is generating paperwork faster than anywhere else I watch.

This morning: the future Deer Creek Library on Bradford does its Friday storytimes, toddlers at 10:15, preschoolers at 10:45.

The weekend belongs to the Pokémon. The Littleton GO crew runs the Mega Finale Saturday and Sunday, meeting at Bega Park downtown at 9 and walking the downtown blocks until 2 both days. The event itself runs 10 to 6 each day, Mega Mewtwo X on Saturday and Y on Sunday.

Also Saturday: the farmers market runs 8 to 1 on Nevada Street, the bookmobile takes its 11-to-3 shift at the Deer Creek site, and Hudson Gardens runs its free G-scale garden railroad from 9 to noon, with a Tuesday encore.

Monday is Labor Day. Every full-service Jeffco library is closed, with the online library and the express location in West Arvada picking up the slack. And Chatfield's swim beach, open since Memorial Day, closes for the season after Monday.

Wednesday: Raid Hour at the Clement Park skate park now runs 6 to 7.

Next-weekend flag: TrailMark's Movie in the Park lands at Hogback Hill Park on Saturday the 12th.

The Summit Steak Bar is open. The countdown banner is gone, the reservation book is live, and the steakhouse in the old Bevy's building on South Alkire now posts real hours: 4 to 9 Sunday through Thursday, 4 to 10 Friday and Saturday. A summer's worth of what's-happening-with-that-corner emails, officially retired.

The holiday-weekend trail report is steady: no new closures, no loosened rules. Unincorporated Jeffco holds at Stage 1 fire restrictions, and the trails themselves stay stricter than that, since Jeffco Open Space parks and Denver Mountain Parks sit in a Stage 2 ban at all times. Chatfield runs under Douglas County's Stage 2 as well. Upper Plymouth Creek still closes Monday through Thursday, 8 to 4:30, and the posted closure makes no exception for holidays, so treat the full Black Bear through-ride as a Friday-through-Sunday move rather than betting on Labor Day. With storms likely Monday afternoon, the forecast agrees with the sign.

The dog deserves the holiday too, so here's every legal off-leash option within a short drive. The closest true dog parks are South Suburban's two free ones: Bark Park at David A. Lorenz Regional Park on East County Line Road, two fenced acres split into small-dog and big-dog sides, and Wynetka Ponds on South Lowell, the nearest one to our side of town. Both run 6 AM to 11 PM. The big-ticket option is Chatfield's off-leash area, 69 fenced acres with two ponds, on its own pass: $3 a day or $25 a year covering a handler and up to three dogs, on top of the park's vehicle pass. I checked, and no posted closure touches it, tree work included. If you'd rather rent the whole field, Sniffspot lists 187 private yards and acreages around Littleton for rent by the hour. South Suburban's fine print is worth knowing wherever you go: dogs licensed and vaccinated, three per person, no puppies under four months, and carry a leash even where it comes off. Two places that don't make the list: every Jeffco Open Space trail is leash-required, Deer Creek Canyon included, and Foothills' parks page lists no off-leash facility at all.

The roofer story now has numbers behind it. There's still no official hail record for August 22, not in the weather service's storm reports and not in the volunteer rain-gauge network, so what fell that Saturday lives on the record only as your reports and a flood advisory. But the county's permit desk moved. In the ten days after the storm, complete re-roof permits across south Jeffco ran at nearly triple the daily pace of the nine days before it, while re-siding permits actually fell. The local cut is sharper. Ken Caryl's Valley pulled zero re-roof permits in the days before the storm and eight in the days after, on streets from Blue Sage to Dawn Heath. A permit is a filing, not a damage tally, and none of this certifies what fell that afternoon. It's the county's paperwork pointing the same direction as your porches. Your rights when the next knock comes are in last week's issue.

Three short ones. Littleton's citywide 25 mph ordinance had its public hearing and final vote Tuesday night, and as of press time the city hadn't posted the outcome, so I'll have the result for you next week. The Front Range Passenger Rail board voted 14 to 1 last week to put a 0.33 percent sales tax on November ballots across the rail district, per the Colorado Sun, money for the planned Front Range passenger line. And the future Deer Creek library's art call is open through September 27, all ages, marker drawings only.

The shelf hit 195, and July's numbers finally rolled in. There are 195 homes on the market in 80127 this week, a third straight rise and a new summer high. The month-level stats say the growing shelf isn't a stall: 239 homes sold in July, up 3 percent on last July, at a median around $702,000, and the typical seller went under contract in 16 days. On the ground, a five-bedroom on Holly Oak, up in Ken Caryl's Valley, listed at $1,595,000, went pending in one day, and closed Monday at full ask. A two-bedroom on South Zang in Alkire Acres needed a price cut and 93 days to land at $440,000, under even the reduced number. More houses, same rule: get the number right and this market still moves in days.

The holiday weekend still splits, just later than it looked on Wednesday. Today is the hot one at 92, mostly sunny with a slim afternoon shower chance. Saturday holds at 89 and mostly dry. Sunday stays at 89 with storm odds around one in four, and Labor Day is the wet one: 89 with showers and storms likely by afternoon, better than even odds. Anything that needs dry ground wants Saturday. Monday's cookout wants a canopy or a garage-adjacent plan B. Grill early, eat before the radar fills in.

A reader came home from downtown Littleton's August Wine Walk with a group of twelve and a new favorite: Uptown & Country Boutique, the gift-and-clothing shop on South Rapp Street in Olde Town. Her verdict, which I can't top: "If you can't fill a gift need there, you're pretty hopeless." If a shop has won you over lately, tell me which one. This section runs on that kind of mail.

That's the week from the foothills. Give the dog its 69 acres, tip your cap to whoever catches a Mega Mewtwo at Bega Park, and if you know a legal off-leash spot I missed, I want to hear about it.

Joey

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