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

Happy Friday. The Grand Parade marches through downtown tomorrow at 10, the heat is finally taking a weekend off, and Wednesday morning the school buses are back on their corners. Summer is packing up. Before it goes, I've got the story of what 4.9 million dollars bought on the old church land behind Dutch Ridge, and a 300-unit surprise sitting in county paperwork on Alkire. Curb spots go early on parade day. So does this issue.

Finding a good counselor close to home is one of those things you don't think about until you need it, and then it's the only thing you think about. So it's worth knowing that CARTO Counseling is right here in Ken Caryl. Ash Anderson is a licensed professional counselor with a master's in clinical psychology, and she works with the everyday heavy stuff that doesn't need to be a crisis to deserve attention. Grief and loss, life transitions, anxiety and depression, parenting, stress, and relationships (including relationship to self) that could use some untangling. Most of her clients meet with her in person, and telehealth is there for the weeks when getting across town just isn't happening.

Learn more or reach out at cartocounseling.com.

The old church site behind Dutch Ridge sold for 4.9 million dollars, and the paperwork tells quite a story. If you've watched the dirt moving near Kipling and Coal Mine and wondered what's coming, here's what the county's own records say. The congregation there, incorporated back in 1928 and known in its final years as Impact Church of the Nazarene, sold its 10.77 acres in June of last year and dissolved itself seven weeks later. The buyer is GMCD Westend LP, a Delaware partnership registered in Colorado ten days before the closing and run from an office suite in Toronto. The approved plat carves the land into 103 lots, 51 detached homes and 52 attached, under zoning that allows up to 109 units, and the brokerage that sold the site has announced Dream Finders Homes as the builder. No Dream Finders company owns a lot there yet, and no home permits show up in the county's files. My favorite detail from the files: the church steeple's cross was actually a disguised cell tower, and an active county permit calls for replacing it with a three-sided clock tower. Future buyers should read the tax fine print, because the lots sit in their own metro district, about 172 mills against roughly 99 for the houses across the fence. That's roughly 75 percent more property tax on the same dollar of home. And current neighbors should know the county's own engineers opened a violation case against the project in June, citing an unauthorized impoundment and, in the county's words, an illicit discharge beyond the approved limits of construction, along with neglected erosion controls. That case was still open as of Thursday. I sent questions to the builder's land executive, a buyer-side principal, the seller's broker, and the metro district's counsel. None of them responded by my Tuesday deadline. When someone does, you'll read it here.

Meanwhile, county paperwork just revealed something big for Alkire Street. A site development plan filed July 20 proposes a 300-unit senior living facility and associated infrastructure at 5649 South Alkire, up the street from the building the Summit Steak Bar is moving into. The application is in the county's earliest review stage, the part where staff checks whether the paperwork is complete, so nothing is approved and no developer is named in the file yet. But 300 units would be a major project for that stretch. I'm digging into who's behind it for a future issue.

Tomorrow is parade day. The Western Welcome Week Grand Parade steps off through downtown Littleton at 10, wrapping about 11:30, and the early forecast says bring a rain layer just in case. Around it, downtown stacks the 66th Maker and Crafter Fair from 8 to 4, the Doggie Splash and Pupsicle Bash for the water dogs, and South Platte Park's Reptile and Amphibian Showcase at Bega Park on the east end of Main Street from 10 to 4. In Ken Caryl, Rockin' in the Ranch brings free live music to the Ranch House soccer field at 5, and the bookmobile at the future Deer Creek Library on Bradford runs a paper-making hour at 1.

Tonight, Welcome Week winds down gently. The Depot Art Gallery's 65th anniversary show runs 11 to 4, the community quilt show and used book sale goes noon to 6, and the Elks host a pig roast with live country from 6 to 11.

Sunday closes the 98th Welcome Week. The Bradford Memorial Duck Race runs noon to 3, and the Littleton Symphony plays a free American Festival concert at Hudson Gardens at 6, with the Littleton Youth Ballet and a pipe band opening. The Pokémon GO crew is at Bega Park for Nickit Community Day, 2 to 4.

Tuesday, a timely one at Columbine Library: the League of Women Voters continues its media series with Understanding and Confronting Bias, 6 to 7:30, free, no sign-up. Told you I'd flag it, and the series runs Tuesdays into September.

Also Monday: free movie night at Little Man Ice Cream downtown, 6:30.

Still standing: the farmers market, Saturdays 8 to 1 on Nevada Street, and Wednesday Raid Hour at the Clement Park skate park, 5:50.

The Bowles Crossing mattress store is officially Coming Soon. Better Mattress, the Colorado chain with stores from Arvada to Lone Tree, now lists Bowles Crossing on its own store locator, matching the tenant-finish permit issued at 8055 West Bowles in late July. No date yet. And the drive-thru coffee shop taking shape at Chatfield and Sangre de Cristo has a grand-opening week on its own website now. Full details next Friday, when it's officially next week's news.

The weekday-closure summer continues, but the weekend is wide open. Upper Plymouth Creek at Deer Creek Canyon still closes Monday through Thursday, 8 to 4:30, for trail work, so the full Black Bear through-ride to Hildebrand Ranch remains a Friday-through-Sunday move. Up Bear Creek Canyon, the Lair o' the Bear flood repair runs the same weekday rhythm, with the county expecting to wrap it by late August. The fire ban holds at Stage 2 in unincorporated Jeffco. The difference this weekend: for the first time in a long while, you won't need to be off the trail by 10 to beat the heat. Watch the sky instead.

The parade ends, the party doesn't. Event and Airport Transportation runs Sprinter vans that seat up to 10, so the whole group rolls to Saturday's Grand Parade and home again in one vehicle. 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 buses are back Wednesday. August 19 is the first day for all Jeffco students, no staggered starts this year, which means school zones, crossing guards, and that first-week traffic crunch all wake up at once. Budget a few extra minutes on anything that passes a school. The district's own timeline has one more date attached: on Thursday the school board is scheduled to certify a funding measure for the November ballot. I'll report the details once the board acts.

And if you drive in Littleton proper, the default is about to slow down. The city council takes up an ordinance Tuesday setting a citywide 25 mile per hour speed limit, first of two readings. That's city streets only. Most of Ken Caryl and the west side of the zip is unincorporated Jeffco, where nothing changes.

More houses are selling here, not fewer. The zip's market numbers finally rolled forward this week: 263 homes sold in June against 208 the June before, a 26 percent jump, while the median held flat at about 710,000 dollars. On the ground, pricing still does the sorting. A four-bedroom on South Sheephorn Mountain in Ken Caryl Ranch North listed at 579,000, went pending in five days, and closed at 600,000, almost 4 percent over ask. Meanwhile a four-bedroom on West Fairview Avenue needed five months, five price changes, and one deal that fell through before closing at 570,000, about 10 percent under its original spring ask. Volume is up, patience is not.

The heat finally blinks. Friday tops out at 83 with afternoon storms likely, Saturday holds at 81 with another good storm chance, and Sunday stays in the low 80s with storm odds hanging on into the evening. Monday sits at 84 and mostly dries out, Tuesday brings the sun back at 90, and Wednesday starts sunny at 86 for the first bell with storms possible by pickup time. After the summer we've had, an 81-degree Saturday feels like a gift, even one that might arrive wet. Parade plan: sunscreen for the morning, a rain layer for the afternoon.

A reader shared a photo of a whole elk herd strung out along Deer Creek Canyon Road west of the hogback, taken earlier this summer.

Between the moose in the willows last week and this crowd, the canyon has been generous with its residents this year. If your camera roll is holding out on me, you know where to send it.

That's the week from the foothills. Claim your curb early tomorrow, wave at the duck race Sunday, and tell me what your first-week-of-school survival trick is. I'll pass the good ones along.

Joey

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