Central Denver
Cherry Creek
Denver’s walkable luxury district, and home base.
Photo: Sheila Sund, CC BY 2.0
Cherry Creek is where Varvara’s Compass office sits, at 200 Columbine Street, and it is the neighborhood most people picture when they think of Denver at its most polished. Sixteen blocks of boutiques, galleries and restaurants in Cherry Creek North, the Cherry Creek Shopping Center across First Avenue, and the Cherry Creek Trail running along the water toward downtown.
The housing is dense and varied for Denver: rowhomes and townhome duplexes, mid-rise condominiums, a wave of new construction, and a scattering of single-family homes on the quieter blocks north of Third Avenue. It is one of the few parts of the city where a car is genuinely optional.
- Location
- Southeast of downtown, bounded roughly by University, Colorado Blvd, 6th Ave and Cherry Creek
- Housing
- Condos, rowhomes, townhomes, new-build single family
- Getting around
- Cherry Creek Trail, Speer Blvd, 1st Ave; 10 minutes to downtown
- Nearby
- Cherry Creek North, Congress Park, Country Club, Hilltop, Washington Park
The district
Cherry Creek North grew up in the postwar decades as an open-air alternative to the enclosed mall, and it still works that way: tree-lined streets, outdoor dining, and more than 300 independently owned shops and galleries between First and Third Avenues. The Cherry Creek Shopping Center anchors the south side of First Avenue.
A significant amount of office and residential construction is underway north of First Avenue, which is changing the skyline block by block. For buyers that means a steady pipeline of new condominium inventory alongside the established buildings.
Housing character
Expect attached product first. Rowhouses and side-by-side duplexes built from the 1990s onward dominate the residential blocks, with mid-rise condominium buildings along the busier streets and new boutique buildings filling in. Single-family homes exist but are the exception, and most are recent builds that use the full lot.
Prices run well above the Denver median on a per-square-foot basis, and HOA structures vary enormously between buildings. Reading the association documents carefully is a bigger part of a Cherry Creek purchase than almost anywhere else in the metro.
Outdoors and around
The Cherry Creek Trail runs along the creek from the shopping center toward Confluence Park downtown and southeast toward Cherry Creek State Park, which makes it a commuting route as much as a recreational one. Washington Park, the Denver Botanic Gardens and Congress Park are each a short ride away.
Neighborhoods and subdivisions
- Cherry Creek North
- Cherry Creek East
- Congress Park
- Country Club
- Hilltop
- Washington Park
A note from Varvara
My office is here, so Cherry Creek is where I meet most clients for the first time. I keep an eye on the new-construction pipeline and on resale inventory in the established buildings, and I am happy to walk the district with you before you decide which side of First Avenue suits you.
— Varvara Lytkina, Broker Associate, Compass
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