I've got a job offer to move to Fort Collins... what's the good, bad and ugly?

Closest airport?
Best coolest things?
Least coolest things?

Foco has an airport im told. Dia is your best bet.

Its at the base of the Rockies.

Real estate buy or rent is stupid.

Where in wa?

How much more you want?  Unfortunately Nothing is what it was 5 - 10 - 30 years ago. It's good when you want to buy food or eat at a decent place. Opportunity abounds depending on , again, what it is you like to do. If you're an outdoors type it's perfect. If you expect to pay less than $1K- $1500 per month rent, keep looking.
The_fly and a few others live in FoCo they can give you a better idea what 's in store.

South of Seattle, but still stuck in the liberal blackhole of King County.

So seriously you guys get like 300+ days of sun? How bad is the winter weather?

Winter is very mild in Foco.  lots of days are in the 60's or higher.  If it snows, it snows for a day then its gone by the end of the week.  Most snow i saw there was about 8". Melted the next day.

My job takes me up there daily for work, the traffic in town is horrendous. Some of the worst drivers I've ever encountered in my life. Has a lot of older areas, older homes for the most part. Lot of young people there, definitely a town for 20 somethings, but now into my mid 30's I find that type of people obnoxious, yeah get off my lawn!

There is tons and I mean tons of bars and resturants. Especially in the old town area off college ave.

Winter is not bad, it gets cold, we get snow, we get lots of sun. Snow doesn't stick around. I like the weather in CO save maybe 10-15 days a year. It's a non issue for most people.

If I was 18 and looking for a place to go to school, go to bars and smoke pot, ft Collins would probably be in my top 5 places in the entire country, if I needed to raise a family and spend my life there, not for me.

pretty much nails it

traffic is REALLY REALLY REALLY bad.  It can take 20 minutes to get from 287 (college aka main st) to the freeway.  it's like 6 miles on big 3 or 4 lane roads.  IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY.    

rent/housing prices are ridiculous.  (true for all front range).    

winter is really a non-issue.  There's always a week of cold weather and all the people bitch and moan about how winter is never going to end and the next week it's 60.  really.
it's very sunny here.

Really can't be over stated, he's right. My job is to drive around that city all day, so maybe I look at it differently than most would, but it's just god awful. It's not even an exaggeration to say that to travel 5 miles can easily take 20 minutes. There's also about 4-5 rail road tracks that go through various parts of town, used quite often. You want to be within a mile of your work if you want to commute less than 30 minutes a day

Others have answered, but my 2 cents


Closest airport?  In theory there's one in Loveland, but honestly you're gonna have to go to DIA, 90 minutes away.

Best coolest things? Least coolest things? way too vague to answer there.

There's a lot of bitching about traffic here, and it can be annoying at times indeed.  Its NOWHERE near Denver or LA levels of traffic.   The problem is you get idiots who want to live in the new burbvilles at the extreme ends of town (far away from the freeways) , and then commute in yuppie packs to Denver.  So all the freeway access roads get trashed from 7-8am and then again from 5-6pm.  I work in the middle of town, and I live 3 miles away.  Takes me 10 mins to get to work.  If you're gonna live here and drive to Denver every day, yeah you will spend plenty of time on the roads.

This, all the way.

Fort Collins is fantastic in the summer, when school is out. Traffic improves a great deal and there is a big reduction in stupid when the college kids all go home.

If you like the outdoors, Northern CO is a great place. Wide open spaces to the east and awesome mountains to the west.

its people like "thedave1164" that make the traffic up here so bad

How many times have you been voted number one?

Fort Collins - Liberal, hipster, stupid expensive college town.

Personally I'd avoid living in Fort Collins and choose an area nearby, preferably out East.

It's definitely his fault.

There are really two sides to Fort Collins.  You have the North Side of Fort Collins which is everything above Prospect.  This is your College Town//Hippie area with all the bars and restaurants.  Then South of Prospect and especially down by Harmony, you have all the new construction and Family/Yuppie area.  Lots of technology companies, but also a lot of restaurants and shopping.  

If you live in the South East part of town, then you can be down to DIA in less than an hour.  It can actually take less time to get to DIA than if you lived in some places of Denver.  Everybody else is correct about traffic inside of Fort Collins Itself.  It has gotten pretty bad over the last few years, but it depends on where you live vs. where you work.

Prices on housing have skyrocketed over the last couple years.  We sold our starter home four years ago and had a full price offer the first day.  This is now the norm and not the exception, so expect to pay more for housing.

As for things to do, options are limitless.  Pretty much everything you could want is about an hour away with the exception of skiing which takes a little longer.  You have all the options of a big city in Denver which is less than an hour away, but then you also have great hiking/camping/shooting/fishing very close to Fort Collins.  There is also a huge beer culture here.

ETA-  Winter as others have said is pretty mild.  We have a group of guys from work that go out and play Soccer every Friday.  For the last two years, there hasn't been a month that we haven't played outside.

Hey, you're the one that commutes.

It's still your fault.

I went to UNC and my wife went to CSU. I lived in Greeley and Evans and I worked in FoCo after graduation.
I really miss windsor lake.
I got married in Windsor and it's beautiful but it's getting stupid expensive. I really miss Northern Colorado

I enjoyed FoCo (as a 23yr old) FWIW. Good schools, pretty white collar. Amazing bars (drunken monkey), awesome activities.

ETA: I'll agree. Communting from Greeley (10th and 52nd) to Harmony/JFK was a breeze except for fucking Harmony. Seriously, 20 minutes from Harmony to I25

Yep - too many bars, IMHO.



Yep, and this happened just in the last few years.  It's gotten really shitty.  The drastically increased train traffic is a giant magnifier to the fuckery that is the traffic.

Look at Loveland as a possible alternative.

I'm near Horsetooth and Lemay, and I get to DIA at least twice per month.  I can usually do it in 60 minutes flat, my door to the parking garage at the airport.



A friend of mine just sold his house; got ten offers in a half day, and all the offers were above asking price.  He sold for 12% more than his asking price.

You must be using the toll road or taking county roads? It's about an hour from harmony to i270 alone assuming no traffic. Heck, your location to i25 at 3pm would easily take 15 minutes if not more by itself. I use horsetooth or drake to Ziegler a lot as it's faster than timberline/harmony and it's still a long run to the freeway.

Being on the east side of ft fun. we run 257 through milliken - 60 - 85 - 470. In traffic i can do DIA around 60 min average. Windsor,Platteville & Milliken are notorious revenue generators.

Hell yes - E470.  

I used to work about 10 mins south of I25 and 270.  Did that commute for 7 long years.  It was heinous.

It's worth the toll to avoid Denver completely.  

The guy's coming from the Seattle area and you're all warning him about FoCo traffic and home prices? I think you'll be fine on both fronts.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/05/10/larimer-county-migration/27078003/

Not like it was 25 years ago, but then again no place is. People are bitching about traffic because they remeber the old days.

That said, rent and real estate are rather expensive...If you fish for trout, welcome to paradise...Great beer and good food are all over the place.

And yeah...DIA is the way to fly.


Hospitals are in the top ten of the country. The have great RNs.

Moved here from SoCal 8 years ago and have never looked back.  Traffic?? Please people.  There are more cars here than out on the plains, that's true.  I wouldn't exactly call it traffic...

Definitely family friendly college town vibe.  Friendly people.  Yes, things are building up.  Yes the housing market is tight right now.  Some of those things go with living someplace pretty cool.   Lots of sunshine and plenty to do.  Active people.  Great beer.  Quality seems to be the ethic--from schools to hospitals to quality of life.

The closer you are to the college, the more you deal with the college crowd.  The farther west you are, the farther from I25 if you have to commute.  I live about as far west as one can get and I love it (Drake Ave and Overland Tr.).  Foothills, mountains, weather, (relative) quiet...

Makes sense why people seem to follow the speed limit exactly through there now.

Despite what some have said, I think Ft. Collins is one of the best cities (>20K pop.) on the front range. Not nearly as far left as Boulder/Denver, yet still has great music, booze/brewery, food scene.

If you're a paddler, the Cache la Poudre and it's tribs offer miles and miles (>40) of class II-V whitewater.

If you like mountains, you have access to the west of town to some of the best wilderness areas in the sate as well as Rocky Mountain National Park.

Great road and mountain biking nearby too.

Biggest outdoor drawback is proximity to lift-serve skiing. Yes, you can ski backcountry off Cameron Pass if you know your avalanche protocols but if you want to ride a lift you're either going to suffer through a day at Eldora ski area which is 21 miles west of Boulder or you'll have to drive to Summit/Eagle Co., which means 3 hrs one way to ski.

Ft. Collins is a great town. It's safe, still reasonable (for the front range), has just enough of the young college vibe but still offers a great sense of community and a very livable, manageable lifestyle.

With the average home selling in the $375K + range, what do you consider a reasonable, livable, manageable lifestyle?  Is it great if you like the outdoors within a 30 min drive, then yes.
If you like sitting on lemay for 30 min waiting for 2 trains then no. I just came back from ft fun. Spent 40 min zig zagging around town to go from horsetooth & stover to north college .  
It's a great place if one rides a bicycle, driving IMO, fuck no. If one comes to CO (ft fun) or anywhere along the front range w/out a good amount set aside for housing, confirmed jobs and a solid plan, they're screwed.

http://www.coloradoan.com/topic/5dfbcca8-72e7-4f44-ba4f-fae9950046cb/fort-collins-homebuying/

It's all about perspective. Yes, I consider Ft. Fun all those things. Please tell me where you don't have traffic west of Hwy 287 on the frontrange?

From the Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_26926334/boulder-home-prices-going-through-roof

Four-bedroom, two-bathroom homes in Boulder list for an average price of $835,516, double the average seen in Highlands Ranch and more than four times the number for Monte Vista, according to a report Wednesday from Coldwell Banker Real Estate.

After Boulder, Castle Rock, including the Castle Pines area, was the second-priciest area, at $750,840. Evergreen was third, Westminster fourth and Denver fifth, with an average listing price of $494,127.

Thornton, at $313,054, and Aurora, at $296,962, represented the cheapest options for that size of a home in the metro area surveyed.

At $231,893, homes in Greeley are among the most affordable in the state but don't come with the trade-off of economic stagnation.

In Colorado Springs, the average listing price was $223,060, the second-lowest average in Colorado of the areas studied. Monte Vista offered the biggest bang for the buck in Colorado. Average listing prices there were $178,680, with no premium for the amazing San Luis Valley scenery.

You want cheap, head out to the prairie, go to Springs, or Greeley. You want to be next to or at least near the foothills (other than springs), plan on paying, and dealing with some traffic. For better or worse, that how it works these days along the front range.

By frontrange standards, the Fort is sill reasonable.