One sign of the brisk success CalAtlantic Homes is having with its historic redevelopment of Green Gables Country Club into a master-planned residential community is the profile of people that are purchasing at Green Gables: lots of urban buyers such as builders find at high-end Denver city communities like Lowry and Stapleton, rather than just suburban profiles.
“We’re selling to people who often were looking at 100-year-old bungalows in areas like Mayfair, Sloan’s Lake, Washington Park or Highlands, where they get nowhere near the size and features we have here at Green Gables Reserve,” says Dan Nickless, Colorado Division president for CalAtlantic Homes. “They discover they’d probably pay as much or more so for a small, older house as they would for a new home here. And thatap before they figure in what they’ll need to fix up and improve.”
At Green Gables Reserve, just east of South Wadsworth at Jewell, about 20 minutes from downtown Denver, those buyers tour three neighborhoods of CalAtlantic home designs: single-family models (including popular ranch plans); a series of ranch-style paired patio villas with low-maintenance features and attractive options for finished basement space; and, a new collection of two-story paired homes, with the size and features of single-family homes at considerable cost savings.
All three of those types have the space that urban dwellers dream of, along with basements and attached garages. CalAtlantic’s two series of single-family homes, from the $530s, create an even wider disparity for the buyers comparing them to older, urban homes. A Serene three-bedroom-plus-study plan with a tandem three-car garage has over 3,000 square feet, priced from $594,990. Like others in the collection, it has prominent outdoor living spaces, and the model shows an option for a main-floor multigenerational suite that would work for live-in grandparents.
Thatap all before visitors discover how CalAtlantic has preserved the extraordinary site features of the former country club, as the Denver area’s most unique community master plan. Near the southern end of the community, CalAtlantic is completing its renovation of Green Gables’ Turn House — a lodge that was the halfway point between the golf course’s front nine and back nine — as a spectacular community center with resort-styled pool. Itap set to open this summer. Just beyond, work is underway on re-creating Green Gables’ beach along 40-acre Ward Lake as a private beach club exclusively for Green Gables Reserve members. Neighborhoods are wrapped in trails, including a central open-space corridor with views of Mt. Evans.
CalAtlantic has a choice of sites for its single-family homes that overlook that open space, and/or offer a walkout basement. Nickless says that with those, and with the choice of ranch plans you can tour here in the single-family and patio villa models, itap no surprise Green Gables is drawing buyers from surrounding neighborhoods in Lakewood, looking at this as an opportunity to downsize into a very attractive ranch.
“Do we want to pop-the-top on the old place, or come here and get the lake and all of the amenities?” said one buyer, coming from Denver’s Mayfair neighborhood, who will commute north from here to Interlocken. Meanwhile, just as at large master plans in Denver, buyers here have the close access to urban amenities thatap a major attraction for urban buyers — including a walk-to Starbucks, and to shopping, dining and entertainment at Lakewood’s Belmar, two miles north.
Green Gables Reserve is in unincorporated Jefferson County, surrounded by the city of Lakewood. To visit, take Wadsworth south past Belmar, two more miles to West Jewell Avenue, and turn east on Jewell to the entryway at South Pierce Street, then turn south a block to the models. Or from U.S. 285, take Wadsworth north to Jewell, then turn east.
The news and editorial staffs of The Denver Post had no role in this postap preparation.