Denver Real Estate Listings, Denver Homes for Sale, Denver Condos, Denver, Colorado, CO

Denver Real Estate Overview

The City and County of Denver is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Colorado. It is located on the plains just east of the Rocky Mountains and forms the heart of the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area. The central downtown district is on the east side of the South Platte River, near its confluence with Cherry Creek, approximately fifteen miles from the foothills.

Denver is the county seat of, and shares the same borders with, Denver County — one of the few consolidated city-counties. According to 2004 census estimates, the city is the 25th-largest in the United States. The Denver Regional Council of Governments estimates the 2005 population of the city is 579,744. The population of the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area was about 2,830,000, making it the 22nd-largest metropolitan area in the U.S.

Denver is nicknamed "The Mile-High City" because its official elevation, measured on the fifteenth step of the state capitol building's west side, is one statute mile (5,280 feet , or 1,609 meters) above sea level. The elevation, as surveyed at the Denver International Airport, is 5,431 ft (1,655 m). Also, a row of seats in the upper deck of Coors Field, home of Major League Baseball's Colorado Rockies (NL), is marked in purple (one of the team's colors) to indicate that the row is one mile above sea level.

Denver Neighborhoods

Denver has 79 neighborhoods that the City and community groups use for planning and administration. Although the City's delineation of the neighborhood boundaries is somewhat arbitrary, the City's definitions of its neighborhoods roughly correspond to those used by residents.

Denver also has a number of neighborhoods not reflected in the City's administrative neighborhoods. Sometimes these neighborhoods reflect the way people in an area identify themselves; sometimes they reflect how others, such as real estate developers, have defined those areas.

Among the neighborhoods commonly spoken of are historic and trendy LoDo (short for "Lower Downtown"), part of the City's Union Station neighborhood; Capitol Hill, Washington Park; Uptown, part of the North Capitol Hill neighborhood; Curtis Park, part of the Five Points neighborhood; Alamo Placita, the northern part of the Speer neighborhood; and the Golden Triangle, roughly the Civic Center neighborhood.

Denver Transportation

Most of Denver has a straightforward street grid oriented to the four cardinal directions. Blocks are usually identified in hundreds from the median streets, identified as "0", which are Broadway (the north-south median) and Ellsworth Avenue (the west-east median). Colfax Avenue, the major east-west artery through Denver, is 15 blocks (1500 North) of the median. Avenues north of Ellsworth are numbered (with the exception of Colfax Avenue and a few others), while avenues south of Ellsworth are named.

There is also an older downtown grid system that was designed to be parallel to the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek. Most of the streets downtown and in LoDo run northeast-southwest and northwest-southeast. This system also helps with snow removal; if the streets were in a normal N-S/E-W grid, only the N-S streets would get sun. With the grid pointed to the diagonal directions, the NW-SE streets get sun to melt snow in the morning and the NE-SW streets get it in the afternoon. The NW-SE streets are numbered, while the NE-SW streets are named. The named streets start at the intersection of Colfax Avenue and Broadway with the block-long Cheyenne Place. The numbered streets start underneath the Colfax and I-25 viaducts. There are 27 named and 44 numbered streets on this grid. There are also a few vestiges of the old grid system in the normal grid such as Park Avenue, Morrison Road, and Speer Boulevard.

Denver Highways

Denver is primarily served by the interstate highways I-25 and I-70. I-25 runs north-south from the New Mexico border through Denver to the Wyoming border. Likewise, I-70 runs east-west from Utah to Kansas. The intersection of the two interstates in Denver has been locally termed "the mousetrap." Additionally, I-76 begins from I-70 just west of the city in Arvada. It intersects I-25 north of the city and runs northeast to Nebraska where it ends at I-80.

A highway expansion and transit project, dubbed "T-REX", is currently under construction. The project includes the addition of extra freeway lanes and a light rail line in the I-25 corridor between downtown Denver and the Denver Technological Center. The massive project is slated to be finished in fall of 2006.

Denver Mass Transportation

Mass transportation throughout the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area is managed and coordinated by the Regional Transportation District (RTD). RTD currently operates more than 1,000 buses serving 10,000 bus stops in 38 municipal jurisdictions. Additionally, RTD operates two light rail lines (the C Line and the D Line) with a total of 15.8 miles of track and serving 24 stations. Current RTD local fare is $1.50. FasTracks, an expansion project approved by voters in 2004, will allow light rail to serve cities such as Lakewood, Golden, and Aurora. Commuter rail lines will serve Boulder, Longmont and the Denver International Airport, while light rail is already under construction to the southeast as far as Lone Tree in the I-25 corridor as part of a reconstruction of the highway. The new line will be completed in late 2006.

Denver Airports

Denver International Airport, the sixth busiest airport in the world, fifth in the U.S.

Also: City of Denver, Colorado Official Website