Hale

I have lived in Hale for the past five years, and grew up in an adjacent neighborhood. I love it here. It's a beautiful neighborhood with a range of housing options. There are streets with the classic brick bungalows found all over older Denver, high-end condos, and inexpensive rentals. The revitalization and trendy neighborhoods around downtown have not quite reached this area yet, so the cost of living is very low for a central neighborhood. In fact, rents in many buildings here are less than they are in Capitol Hill, traditionally the neighborhood where people go for city living on the cheap.
Hale is far less well known, and is for some reason a bit of an open secret. The neighborhood is centered around a cluster of hospitals, so if you live on Hale Parkway like I do be prepared to hear ambulance sirens at all hours. I worked in this neighborhood when I did research at the Health Sciences Center, which moved out to Aurora. Developers were set to take over and rebuild the old site, but the deal fell through because the timing of it coincided with the housing crash in 2008.
I was secretly relieved by hearing that the development was stalled, because I was afraid that rents would skyrocket. Instead, the rents have stayed low because the student and faculty population in the neighborhood moved east, along with the ridiculous traffic congestion. There is still plenty of activity here to continue to support the restaurants and stores along Colorado Blvd. and 8th Ave, though.
There has been a lot of new high-priced condo and luxury apartment development along this stretch of Colorado Blvd already. Developers will eventually get the job done on the old campus, so both rents and housing costs will probably rise precipitously over the next several years. But in the meantime, I will enjoy my low rent for a great apartment, my proximity to City Park and downtown, and the great restaurants, park, and bars right in the neighborhood.

Residents of the Hale neighborhood, also known as Bellevue-Hale, are in for an interesting ride over the next few years. Its western edge, along Colorado Boulevard, was once anchored by a cluster of hospitals and medical facilities, including the University of Colorado Hospital and medical school as well as the VA Hospital. The Rose Medical Center is still located in the neighborhood, and the main campus of the National Jewish hospital is right across Colorado.

In 2007, the CU hospital and medical school moved east to Aurora, where the new Anschutz Medical Campus offers more room for future growth. The VA Hospital is also planning a move to the Anschutz campus after 2013. This leaves Hale with a large swath of real estate in a highly desirable location. Some of the existing buildings have been bought by other health care providers, but there is large-scale redevelopment being planned in the area once occupied by the CU system. The plans call for new retail, residential, and office space.

Hale is also bounded on the north by Colfax Avenue. This stretch of Colfax already offers a couple of coffeeshops and eateries – including an unusually high concentration of mouthwatering, Mom-and-Pop Ethiopian restaurants. Yet there are a few run-down or vacant retail spaces that hint at future potential – and with the Colfax redevelopment wave spreading east of Colorado Boulevard, it’s quite possible that new businesses and developers will pay more and more attention to the area.

Like Congress Park, Hale is an area that is highly accessible to all the work and play downtown, yet doesn’t have the clamor of a closer-in neighborhood like Uptown or Capitol Hill. (One thing it lacks is a walkable grocery store, although there is one in Mayfair, the next neighborhood to the east.) There’s a nice mix of housing here, from apartments to duplexes to modest single-family homes, which have held their value well in the face of the housing bust.

This is already a good neighborhood to live in. With the spreading redevelopment of Colfax Avenue, and the potential from the planned mixed-use enclave along Colorado, it’s likely that it’ll become even more vibrant, interesting, and desirable in the next few years.