Boulder: Businessweek is calling it ‘America’s Best Town for Startups’–where newly arrived engineers can rock-climb one moment, kibitz with colleagues over their iPads the next in funky Wi-Fi cafés. Today you can tour a community that’s sold 15 homes in the past 30 days, many of them to buyers arriving for those sorts of attractions…offering them a lifestyle that puts it all together, even the café, in one sustainable setting.

Peloton’s rooftop pool deck looks out of a view of the Flatirons, and anchors a $6 million community recreation center that’s one of many gathering spots for residents.

The Peloton, on the Boulder Creek Trail near the Twenty Ninth Street mall, has plowed through 34 sales since January, to buyers arriving from Atlanta, New Jersey, Long Island…as well as metro Denver. “They’re a highly educated, tech-savvy group,” says Peter Cushman, Peloton’s senior vice president. When the market dropped last year, Peloton dropped prices 20%. “We’ve been on a tear here ever since,” he adds. more »

Third-grader Jack Davidson is at work building a scale model of downtown’s landmark D&F Tower for his class project at Bromwell Elementary. Meanwhile, interested buyers can arrange a tour of Jack’s house, designed in 1911 by the same Frederick Sterner who a year earlier had penned the Renaissance lines of the 325-foot tower — at that point, the highest building west of the Mississippi River.

RE/MAX Professionals agent Rike Palese shows off 820 Gaylord Street in Denver’s historic Morgan’s district, a block from the Denver Botanic Gardens.
It looks almost as if Sterner devoted as much brick to this stunning 3-story Craftsman at 820 Gaylord Street, a block from the Botanic Gardens, as for his downtown spire. With a huge side yard to work from (three city lots that the Davidson family has kept immaculate), Sterner brought the entry in from the south side, through a magnificent entryway that so few homes, even very expensive customs, have today. more »

“I love front porches,” says Lisa Coyne, who grew up in a hundred-year-old house in California, and now has a brand-new one with a big porch and other turn-of-the-century charms, beside Stapleton’s vast Central Park. She and husband Kevin are among 30% of Stapleton buyers who are making moves-up within Stapleton…and you’ll see why when you tour the ‘Oxford 5’ by Parkwood Homes, the model they picked.

For their move-up in Stapleton, Kevin and Lisa Coyne chose the same floor plan as the Oxford 5 model by Parkwood Homes, open today near Stapleton’s vast Central Park.

In a year when many builders are offering models that look like Swedish furniture stores indoors, Parkwood has gone the other way — straight back to the classic look of colonial towns with names like ‘York’ or ‘Middlesex.’ There’s nothing ‘minimalist’ about the Oxford 5; it’s flush with gables and spindle stairs and lush wainscoting to waist high. Company President Jack Fleury developed the style for Gaithersburg, Maryland; and then heard about Stapleton’s community design — oriented to recreate the appeal of an older, Eastern town. more »