Dwell magazine stated in April of 2002, that Prospect New Town in Longmont, Colorado (30 min north of Denver) is the “coolest neighborhood in America”, a statement I wholeheartedly agree with.  Prospect is not just cool, it’s fucking COOL.  There is no place anywhere that looks like it, it’s unique.  There have been some articles written about Prospect, some I’ve written myself, and there’s a great chapter on it in Karrie Jacobs’ book “The Perfect $100,000 House”–(book is highly recommended and Karrie is also the author and editor of the Dwell piece on Prospect).

Prospect New Town is the strangest, most interesting, and most colorful neighborhood in the world I would hazard to say. Started in 1997 on what used to be a tree farm, Prospect is a new urbanist neighborhood that mixes neo-traditional architecture (Craftsman, Victorian, Praire, Farmhouse) with well, crazy bat-shit modern aspects.  Some houses are traditional, some are modern, some are a mix of both. Some defy description. You have to see the place to believe it.  This wonderful, crazy place wouldn’t exist without its developer, who has the perfect name to go with the place–Kiki.  Kiki Wallce. Kiki is, like Prospect, cool as shit. 

 Originally Kiki told me, Prospect was going to be a normal McMansion subdivision (which the city of Longmont turned down for some reason), but then Kiki saw a piece on Duany-Plater Zyberck and new urbanism in the Wall Street Journal when he was flying somewhere.  He said he knew right then that’s what he wanted to do with the land, so he called them up, and they did the planning for Prospect.

The first houses that went in were all neo-traditional and while beautiful, pretty safe.  Kiki and Mark Sofield, the town planner, decided to shake things up a bit and started introducing homes that were strikingly modern.  Apparently some of the original homeowners weren’t expecting to live down the street from angular, wild houses and threw a fit.  I’ve interviewed a lot of people who live in new urbanist communities and they were all passionate about their neighborhood, and all had ideas about what it should look like, so I can only imagine the racket that was raised about some of the new houses–and I can see their point in a way (although I love the modern houses, I can see how they might not be to everyone’s taste). But Kiki–which is one of the reasons I think he’s so cool–didn’t care, which is why Prospect is so awesome. Kiki, unlike most people in the high risk field of real estate, has balls with a B.

Up until that point for the most part, modern architecture and new urbanism did not mix.  There are a few modern homes and buildings in Seaside, but they are far outweighed by the neotraditonal.  Kiki says his mixing the modern in with the neo-traditional didn’t sit well with some members of the Congress for the New Urbanism, but again, he didn’t care much what other people thought, even the “experts”. And lucky for us, because now we have Prospect. So, to the review:

Downtown Portion: Excellent. Prospect’s downtown is a 5-10 minute walk from all homes in the development, and consists of a series of funky, modern, BRIGHTLY painted 3 story buildings (BRIGHTLY means yellow, orange, neon green, periwinkle).   First floor retail, 2nd and 3rd floor office and residential.  There are some very fun shops in Prospect, including my favorite–House Gifts and Decor, a fun home store.  The downtown also has Solar Village, which is neato–a mixed-use building 100% powered by renewable energy.

Architecture (how non-cookie cutter): Prospect is the hands down winner in this category, even counting every single new urbanist community in the U.S.. No house is the same, and many are spectacular colors. The older part of the neighborhood has more of the traditional architecture, and the newer part more of the modern. The only comment here really is the price.  Because the houses are unique, they are expensive.  Right now you can’t get into a single family home for less than $450K (and that’s down because the market sucks).

Parks: Prospect has a few parks and for the most part they’re OK, but nothing special.  They are putting in what looks like a really fun playground, but I have to go back up and check it out.  Knowing Kiki, it’s awesome.

Community: Excellent.  I interviewed lots of people in Prospect, and they all say how fun it is.  They have tons of events formal and informal, and everyone’s friendly.

In short: if you are at all into new urbanism and/or architecture, you must visit Prospect.  It’s at the intersection of 287 and Pike Rd. on the south side of Longmont.

I answer about 1500 of them a day.  Out of those, around 1000 require me to make a decision of some mundane type–”Mom, can I have a popsicle? Mom, can I, can I, can I”.  It can be really exhausting.  However, the other questions–the ones that don’t require a decision but instead an explination–are one of my favorite parts of parenting because when your kid asks you about something in the world, you can answer however you want! Or as Homer says “Kids are great, you can teach them to hate the things you hate”. My answers are always based in science, always. I think about everything in a critical, scientific way–there are no exceptions, no subject exempt from this. 

My daughter’s questions range from the amusing:

-Do spiders have families?

-Can frogs drive?

-Why are trees green? (Never ask someone trained in biogeochemistry this question, the answer is 10 minutes long)

-Why is a there a pyramid on the one dollar bill?

To the heavily extistential, theological or epistemological :

-Is there a hell? (she saw it on the Simpsons episode where Homer steals cable)

-What does our cat think about?

-What happens after you die?

-When will I die?

-Where did we come from? (this required a clarification I wasn’t sure if she was asking where babies came from or people in general–it was the latter.  Another 10 minute explination).

When you take nothing for granted in the world, you come up with some really interesting questions.  What freaks me out sometimes however, is thinking about how other people might answer their kid’s questions–if they say “don’t ask”, “who cares”, or worse “that’s a stupid question”.  There is no such thing if you are forming your framework about reality.

Many of the questions my daughter asks are at heart, questions about science, most of which I can answer or explain correctly, but a few (like, why don’t we name black holes?) I have to look up.   You don’t need graduate training in science to raise a toddler but considering the questions she asks, it sure helps.

A neighbor of mine travels frequently for work.  He goes to many exotic places, and everywhere he goes, he tries to buy a vase and bring it home for their collection.  A few months ago he went to Taiwan.  He bought a large, bulky vase there, and had to carry it through several different airports during his 10 plus hour plane trip back.  When he got home, he was getting ready to place it on their shelf and turned it over.  It said “Made in Taiwan”, which prompted him to think “I carried this thing on all my planes and through the airport and I could have probably bought the fucker in Pottery Barn”. 

——————————————————————–

My husband and I were eating dinner, celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary in a very, very nice restaurant in Las Vegas when the following conversation took place.

Me: “What are you thinking about?”

Husband: “There were two women sitting at that table over there and one of them was drinking a Corona, they got up to leave and I was wondering if they were lesbians”.

Me: “I was thinking about string theory“.

Both: Laughing much too loud for the super fancy place we were in