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Focus on the Family is practically a nothing in Colorado Springs these days. It is just another big box church.
Sure but just pointing out the ridiculousness of the notion that the right is somehow more accepting. I was at an Anti Defamation League fundraiser last month. The group’s entire purpose is fighting hate groups. The vast majority of the groups they are tracking subscribe to right wing ideologies. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Focus on the Family is practically a nothing in Colorado Springs these days.
It is just another big box church.
It does seem that way, now a days...very quiet. And I agree...do what I did and spend a week wherever you'd like to move ( a week in Chapel Hill, NC and I thought I was in a sauna!)...act like a resident, as in, go to the stores you would go to get a feel for the people...even go to the DMV!
I told friends in NYC, laughing that the DMV there was like a prison with dull chipped paint with many standing in lines like in the Depression on the East coast...in CO it's carpeted with padded chairs with pleasant workers that you sit in front of...lol! Often with CNN captions to watch!
The people in the supermarkets chat with you! You could go in in a bad mood and come out smiling.
In NYC, Philly, Baltimore, BOSTON you go in feeling great, when you come out you want to
follow and slash the tires of the lady in line with you!
Funny thing...when I go shopping on the Northside of CS I often don't lock my car door...anywhere
else I do.
And it is cuz of that Church Family influence in the North.
Like I'm going to bother locking my doors at Whole Foods, Costco or Lowe's...right.
(Now, at Walmart I do, anywhere....somethin' about Wal-Marts and trouble...!)
Oh, I went away for a full month in April...my front door was unlocked the whole time....North of Downtown.
(Sure I have a German Shepherd with a doggie door and radios and lights on and 2 cars in the driveway...but still...)
I love CS.
The kids, btw, at Colorado College are tame compared to bigger schools, if that means anything...they might have a march for Freeing Tibet, sure ...but they are not having
drunken Fraternity parties keeping the neighbors up.
If they do, they have told all the neighbors saying sorry in advance, even, really. Nice kids.
We live in Loveland and enjoy it. It's small enough, especially if one lives in the old town area, to feel like a small community, with older homes, tree lined streets and friendly neighbors, yet large enough and centrally located in close proximity to other areas to give all the modern conveniences one could want.
As a few other posters have said, Loveland is basically an extension of Fort Collins, Boulder is only 45 minutes, RMNP an hour, the airport an hour and Denver an hour. There is plenty of local outdoor recreation in the area, including Horsetooth, Devil's Backbone and within an hour, RMNP and Indian Peaks. The area feels vibrant with a lot of growth, but of course that growth is bringing increased traffic and congestion. I can't speak of the schools and $350,000 will be pushing it as far as housing goes.
As a resident of Colo Spgs, I can give you some insight on things here. Hopefully someone else will chime in with Ft Collins info. The why is up to you.
As mentioned, size is a big factor between the two. Ft Collins will definetely have a smaller town feel than Cos within the city proper. However, outside the city things change a bit.
Larimer County(Ft Collins) is still a large farming community with a lot of rural farms and with smatterings of developments interspersed between them and the designated small census areas throughout the county. The whole area from north Denver to Ft Collins is this way. You may have to drive 30+ minutes to get to some big box stores while more basic stuff may be somewhat close. El Paso County (Colo Spgs) is the most populous county in the state, (trading positions with Denver every so often), but is far from being urban as it is very widely dispersed. Larimer County has access to a lot of natural rivers and streams and has a lot of standing water in lakes, ponds, irrigation, etc. El Paso County is much more like the high plains of a western movies with very little natural water, a lot of open space, fewer farms, but some cattle ranches and odd collections of bluffs and ridges. Ft Collins has a lower elevation line of mountain is immediately west that provide recreation. Cos has the monolith that is Pikes Peak with the rest of the ranges around town being considerably lower.
The CSU college campus is a very dominate feature in Ft Collins. Colo Spgs has the Air Force Academy, the fastest growing college in the state that is CU of Colo Spgs, and one of the most highly rated, small liberal arts colleges west of the Mississippi in Colorado College. None of them are dominate features within the city, but the AFA may get the most media coverage of the three because of their football program and dozen different NCAA collegiate sports.
Ft Collins down to Boulder has a large collection of high tech start ups and small manufacturing firms. Colo Spgs used to be called SIlicon Mountain because of the large number of tech companies that had large plants here. That has gone away in significant portions and we are leaning much more towards software now days.
Can't comment on Ft Collins public schools. Cos has a dozen different school districts in its area. Cheyenne Mtn D12, Academy D20, and Lewis Palmer D38 are all highly rated within the state based on pure test scores. Despite the overall performance of some districts, there are still some very high performing high schools in lower performing districts. Personal fit and compatibility with programs offered would be a bigger factor than just test scores.
D12 is on the south-west side of town pressed right up against Cheyenne Mtn. D12 has a legacy of high performance for the last 50 years and has been a well established upper extreme upper income area since its inception 100 years ago. Its in its last 30 years that it has added more middle income families and students.
D20 is in northern Cos from about Woodman Rd to the city limits. D20 was a single high school until 35 years ago and it has swelled to 7 different high schools over the last 20 years.
D38 runs from the city limits up to the County line in Monument. D38 was comprised primarily of ranch familes until the last 20 years when population in the areas has growth significantly. The original high school was rebuilt and a new high added to the district.
D20 and D38 are all upper middle income and higher areas.
Cos has four large military bases within the county. This brings with it a large influx of transitional and long term residents who bring with them a large range of different people. Diversity and tolerance within many parts of the city may be significantly greater than what you may encounter in Northern Colorado. We also have large populations of expat Asian and European persons who live here and have brought differing degrees of their culture with them. We also are a short 30 minute drive to Pueblo and its many Hispanic influences and festivals.
Cos also has pockets of significantly different neighborhoods. As its grown, different parts of town have taken on personalities with the eras they developed in. However, the city did not grow a lot its first 74 years. It was until after WW2 that it really took off and the quantity of housing here will reflect that. Old Victorians can be found on the west side, Edwardian around the downtown area, post war around that, then an ever expanding ring of modern designs. Newest places will be north and east of the city as these are the areas to most recently boom. Very distinct neighborhoods have developed throughout the city as a result. As mentioned previously, the political and social demographics also follow this growth with more liberal neighborhoods in the west and central areas moving through more moderate zones surrounding those area and into the newer and typically more conservative outer rings of the metro.
Thanks to Pikes Peak, Cos is also a global destination annually for race car drivers during the PP Hillclimb and for runners during the PP Ascent. As the flagship training center and headquarters for numerous US Olympic governing bodies, we also see a lot of different US based talent coming to the area for training throughout the year. International guests also regularly attend training programs here as well.
Ft Collins and Cos regularly pop up on best of lists from a variety of sources from family places, retirement places, places to live, places to work, etc. Either choice could be a very good one, so long as the choice aligns with not just high school choice, but expectations from the rest of your family, recreational activities desired, work, and overall quality of life that best aligns with your expectations.
We are definitely planning a visit to see both areas, and to make a decision about which place we should settle in. Having this kind of information helps me to go into the areas with some ideas of what I’m looking at, which is so nice. To have local point of views is invaluable.
To let you, the OP, know, we are Seniors (almost 70) and will be visiting Loveland next summer for a possible move to there. I'm posting because, with your family, Loveland could be much slower and smaller than you'd like. The "smaller" and "slower" is exactly what we are looking for, but we will be retired at the time of our move.
Loveland isn't a big, major city in any way, shape or form. Like already stated, your family would have to drive to either Ft. Collins or Denver for "big city" stuff.
...your family would have to drive to either Ft. Collins or Denver for "big city" stuff.
Only Denver offers "big city stuff". Fort Collins is just a larger version of Loveland, with additional youthfulness and little more modern vibe. Compared to Denver, these two smaller towns are about the same.
As I have posted many times in many threads & will get disagreed with again, I found COS, VERY conservative & VERY religious & yes, people shoving it down my throat constantly. If you look at my prior posts, I have given many examples. I also live in 80920 & I moved from a very liberal large city, so moving here was extreme culture shock. It still is in many ways, 17 years later. I have been told that there's no crime up here b/c "God has a protective fence around this neighborhood". Not Mike's from Back East, mind you, a few blocks away, just my neighborhood LOL. I had an Obama sign in my yard (how many years ago now?), we were the ONLY ones anywhere near here with that & 10 years later, we were still "oh that house with the Obama sign" at the HOA meeting & when I wished an elderly neighbor recently "good luck" on something, she said "dear I wish you would pray for me". That's just a few examples.
But, as a liberal agnostic/atheist, I still have managed to make friends & be ok living here & actually had good relations with the neighbors on my immediate street (even though we agreed on nothing lol). I wouldn't say we are comfortable, as we will never be 'like' our neighbors. We will always stick out like sore thumbs (& we're not crunchy granola types, we're both educated professionals with white collar jobs). That said, it's better than it used to be. I have been told repeatedly on this forum, that it's not the whole city, it's just up here in 80920, between Focus & New Life LOL. Maybe that's true, that's all I know b/c I like new houses & upscale areas & up here tends to be where those are in COS.
On the plus side, it's very beautiful here, the weather's fantastic & there are a lot of outdoor activities. We have decided to stay, even though it's so diametrically opposed to our beliefs b/c the pros outweigh the cons. IDK where you're coming from, but it's a very family oriented place & pretty 'small town' if you're from a big city, like I was. Tons of chain restaurants. Have to go to Denver for most art & cultural activities. But Denver is only an hour from the north end. Well, it used to be...traffic is a much bigger issue now. But, many of the shopping & dining activities I had to go to Denver for, have been built here now. The 'upscale' lifestyle center is also in 80920, with all the formerly Denver only retail stores. I think we're even getting a Lululemon finally. We have 2 Costco's now, about 10-15 minutes away (when I moved here, I used to have to go to Denver). The airport is tiny & cute, which is great for getting in & out easily, not so great if you're a frequent traveler, as their aren't many non-stop flights.
I don't know anything about Loveland, but I would think it's even worse, as it's pretty small & I suspect very cowboy conservative (but maybe without the massive fundamentalist Christian element), but I really don't know that's just a guess. I think both cities might be a concern if your DH will have to look for another job at some point in time. My DH & I could never live here if we didn't work at home from employer's elsewhere in the country. It's not a exactly a happening town for professional jobs & the few there are, paid very low, the last time I checked (years ago). I would think Loveland is worse, but maybe a closer commute to Denver? Just be aware that COS does not lend itself to daily commutes to the Denver area. It may look that way on the map, but traffic has become a HUGE problem & the weather (you go over a pass called Monument Hill) to get there, can be dicey at certain times.
Believe it or not, we love it here, but I do think it's super conservative & religious. Also, if you're not used to HOA's, they abound here. It's very hard to find suburban (or even somewhat rural) housing in a non-HOA area. Your housing budget though seems in line with the area.
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I’m sure Focus on the Family is inviting all the gay atheists over for cookies and telling them how much they respect their lifestyle.
