In town of Erie, half-in, half-out of Boulder County, commuters find allure in the prices…and the lifestyle
When you drive through the town of Erie on your way to see a great looking custom ranch in an alluring neighborhood, you’ll pass right down County Line Road…Boulder County to your left, Weld to your right. “This is a town at the tipping point, coming into its own,” says Mayor Andrew Moore, who points out the new rec center, new library…new park where the Erie Lady Tigers will play. (They’ve played in the state’s 3-A division final game for all of the past 12 years, and took the title ten of those times.)
Mayor Andrew Moore of Erie, left, joins builder-owners Cat and Kirk Velarde and their Kentwood Cherry Creek agent Paula King, in front of a 5-bedroom ranch on the re-sale market at $597,000.
And don’t forget new Erie High School, on the Weld side of town on the way out to I-25. A few years back Erie was losing students, due to open enrollment. Now ACT scores, Moore notes, are way up…and the school is actually drawing enrollments from other towns. “This is so much closer to downtown,” says Kentwood Cherry Creek agent Paula King, who lives in Erie Village, where she’ll show you the 2,699-foot, 5-bedroom ranch that has another 3,000 down in the basement, with movie screening room and other goodies. It’s at $597,000…a “steal” King says…all the more so if you live in Boulder proper, where, she adds, it would be priced well over a million.
Builder Kirk Velarde did it in 2003 as his personal home in Erie Village, where he’s built five of the surrounding homes. Velarde and King both note that the buyer profile is heavily ‘California’–relocating families taking advantage of lower prices and a 12–minute commute into the high-tech Gunbarrel corridor. King was headed to an afternoon get-together the Erie Village locals refer to as “FACs”——Friday afternoon cocktails——saying goodbye to a neighbor moving BACK to California. But that, says Mayor Moore, is not the trend.
“ConocoPhillips is still expecting 7,000 employees (at its campus on the Boulder Turnpike),” said Moore, who in his other life is an exec at Sun Microsystems. “Even if they end up with 3,500, that’s still larger than Sun.” Erie already has commuter “Jump” bus service into Boulder…and is close to a site for a multimodal station that would be part of a future expansion of FasTracks.
“We didn’t get hit as high in foreclosures here,” Moore adds, noting that Erie’s 100 home starts for 2009 is up from last year, and ranks as some of the largest construction underway in Boulder County.
WHERE: Custom ranch plan in Erie Village, 5 bedrooms. 1306 Allen Ave., Erie
PRICE: $597,000
PHONE: 303-601-2880
