Leaving the Inner City for a Small Town

Once I decided that I would need to move outside of Denver to find a condo I liked for the price I wanted to pay, I focused immediately on Olde Town Arvada. Arvada was the site of Colorado’s first gold discovery in 1850 and remained a sleepy little town, six miles northwest of Denver expanding eventually into a large, generic suburb.

Today, the original town, now dubbed “Olde Town,” is a vibrant, charming small town complete with town square and a wide variety of mostly one of a kind shops and restaurants. Abutting Olde Town is “New Town,” home to big box stores like Home Depot, Lowe’s, Costco, OfficeMax and Petsmart as well a numerous chain restaurants, including Applebee’s, Ruby Tuesday’s, Cold Stone Creamery, Einstein’s Bagels, Chipotle, the inevitable Starbucks, and a 14-screen movie theater.

Adjacent to both New Town and Olde Town came Water Tower Village, which houses 600 row houses, cottages, lofts, and luxury apartments. The Village is pedestrian oriented with alley loaded garages, detached sidewalks, tree lined streets and two pocket parks.

And this is where I found the condo I wanted. A one-bedroom unit with laundry, cathedral ceilings, underground parking, a balcony/porch, 24-hour exercise room, and elevator service. Within three or four blocks, I will be able to walk to all the previously mentioned shops, theaters, and restaurants, plus the library, a park, and other services.

In five years, light rail will come to Olde Town, spurring additional development. Mentally, I’ve already disengaged from North Denver, my home of the past 33 years, and I’m getting to know Arvada. The staff at one Olde Town restaurant already knows me by name. I think I’m going to like it there.

Life Would be Perfect If I Lived in that House

“Like a new lover, a new house opens a floodgate of anticipation and trepidation and terrifying expectations fused with dreamy distractions. It’s all encompassing and crazy making. You can’t concentrate at work. You space out while driving.” At least that’s how Meghan Baum feels about it. In her book, Live Would be Perfect if I Lived in that House, Baum details her lifelong search for the perfect house.
I can identify. Although I can’t match her 18 moves in 15 years, my focus has always been on houses. My count is 11 apartments or houses, not including three times I moved in with my parents (in three different houses) in the 20 years before I bought this house. Maybe I should have been the family architect. As B, the architect, pointed out to me after a trip to Taos many years ago, my photos were all of buildings, with no people in sight. So, I’m not exactly a people person. Big surprise.
Baum describes people as witnesses. “I wanted someone to see my home, admire it, admire me, and then leave.” A persistent Little House on the Prairie fantasy led her from Manhattan to a farmhouse in Nebraska, and then another.
My vision involved a small, vacant, run down, falling over barn in an empty field on the way to B and SL’s first house in Broomfield, a suburb north of Denver. I pictured it remodeled into a one-room-plus-sleeping loft house just right for me.
Besides a lust for houses, another thing I share with Baum is a recurring dream about finding forgotten rooms in a variety of houses or apartments my nocturnal fantasies designate as mine. Apparently, these dreams are fairly common and indicate a desire to move on or explore new opportunities.
Oddly, I haven’t had that dream since we started talking seriously about the Auntie Flat. Maybe my house fetish is fulfilled by the reality. I haven’t finished Baum’s book, so I don’t know if she finally found a house she could commit to. I hope so, but if not, plenty of people will attest to the charms of a nomadic life.

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