The New Peak View Park, Lakewood, Colorado

   Lakewood, Colorado has a new park, or rather, has finally been able to complete development of a park that's been in the works for about six years now.

   The park officially opened this past July 7th, but today was the first day I was able to drag my happy self the approximately 2.5 miles to check the place out.

   The 57.8 acres that constitute the park were purchased by the city of Lakewood (with a little help from Jefferson County Open Space) from the Taylor estate in 2018 for $6,811,465, which sounds high but was actually a bit of a bargain when you consider the entire 122 acre Taylor estate was up for sale in 2015 for $27.7 million.

   The $27.7 million price, it should be noted, did include an 11 bedroom, 9 bathroom, 12 fireplace, 19,373 square foot mansion, a couple of horse barns with a dressage ring, a boat dock on the reservoir, three servants cottages, tennis courts, a large outdoor pool, and a few other small outbuildings.

    However, since no one wanted to buy the whole estate, Vernon Taylor III, oldest scion of Vernon Taylor jr. and his wife Ann (who had purchased said estate in the 1950's) decided that dividing the property would be the way to go. 

   So he offered the mostly roly-poly hillside not-quite-60 acre parcel to the city of Lakewood for the aforementioned $6,811,465, and then put the mansion and the rest of the buildings, along with the remaining 64 acres, up for sale for $14 million. The truncated property failed to sale for that price, so it was then offered at absolute action in 2018. 

   The 64 acre property with the mansion was sold at that absolute auction on Aug 18th 2018 for $6,490,00, but the current appraised value is in the neighborhood of $7.8 million. 

   That's 64 acres of flat land, with a mansion, in beautiful Lakewood, Colorado, and with a new open space park virtually in the backyard, for only $7.8 million.

   Which would be a crazy bargain, because in todays real estate market a single acre of land in Lakewood goes for up to $500,000.

   But, hey, let me not waste time on all that pre-park development jibber-jabber! Let's take a look at what Lakewood has been able to do with the nearly 60 acres that the city purchased (again, with the help of Jefferson County Open Space) in 2018. 

            The parking lot (accessible from northbound Wadsworth or eastbound Morrison Road)

            This has got to be a great spot for sunrises and sunsets (east to the left, west to the right)

                 Looking east, with the meandering natural surface trail in left/center of the picture

                    There's a big mansion with riding stables and a nice pool behind this fence

                        This would be the other great spot for watching either a sunrise or sunset.

There is a bit more to be done - permanent bathrooms will be added in the near future, and the parking lot will be paved - and hopefully some trashcans will be placed near the benches. Walking through the park this afternoon I picked up a few discarded water bottles, a couple of empty adult beverage cans, and a few pieces of miscellaneous garbage that had to be carried up to the two refuse cans in the parking lot for disposal - not convenient, that.