Improvements ahead for Valley Hi Golf Course and neighborhood | Bob Loevy (2024)

Last week, we reviewed the city-owned Patty Jewett Memorial Golf Course and the surrounding neighborhood of early 20th-century homes. This week, we look at a second city-owned golf course, Valley Hi, and the 1940s neighborhood built to support it.

Valley Hi was a project started by Roy Pring and the Pring family to turn part of their 30,000-acre ranch into a private golf course and surrounding homes. The 18-hole golf course was located south of Airport Road at 610 S. Chelton Road. The adjoining neighborhood to the north of the golf course was mainly composed of two streets— Valley Hi Avenue and Wellshire Boulevard.

The homes built on those two streets were designed as large one-story and occasionally two-story ranch houses. They were built on half-acre lots, some with private wells for watering lawns, which made large lawns affordable. Some of the homes had two fireplaces. The style was mid-20th-century modern.

An effort was made to see that the lots adjoining the golf course were sold to golf club members. The homes were built and sold over a more than 20-year period from 1956 to the early 1980s. The golf course was acquired and operated by the city of Colorado Springs in 1975.

Although located right in the middle of a city, the Valley Hi neighborhood has the feel of a distant suburb. The streets are comparatively narrow, and there are no sidewalks and few curbs and gutters.

A notable resident of the Valley Hi neighborhood was Larry Ochs, a well-known Colorado Springs city councilman who served as the city's mayor back in the mid-1970s.

About 50 original homes make up the heart of the Valley Hi neighborhood community. Unlike some neighborhoods in the city, the Valley Hi neighborhood does not have a formal neighborhood organization.

There is no state organizational charter or neighborhood elected officers. There is no neighborhood board of directors that regularly meets each month to tend to neighborhood needs.

Instead, there are residents like Jeanette Caproon. Every year, she hosts a neighborhood Christmas party in her Valley Hi home. Other residents host outdoor neighborhood parties in the summertime.

Many of the homes have two-car garages with a wide paved area in front of them. The paved area makes the perfect place to set up a neighborhood party, which can be moved indoors into the garage and lower floor of the home in case of inclement weather.

Another favorite neighborhood project, according to Caproon, is going for rides on e-bikes. On certain summer evenings, a group e-bike ride may include a visit to nearby Hillside Gardens, where three different bands will be playing music.

In the fall, Valley Hi neighbors get together for a Pie-Palooza at the home of Janette and Paul Stalemo. There is plenty of pie and plenty of socializing.

Jeanette Caproon is currently organizing a neighborhood effort to improve conditions at the Valley Hi golf course clubhouse. Problems there have included a leaky roof, mold, fouled air conditioning, asbestos problems, and more.

The city government is currently considering a number of solutions to these problems.

Caproon said she and other residents of the Valley Hi neighborhood are opposed to rumored city plans to tear down the existing clubhouse and replace it with a brand new building.

There are written references suggesting that Jan Rutenberg, an architect in Colorado Springs, designed the clubhouse at Valley Hi golf course, but Caproon is searching for architectural drawings that prove that is the case.

Proof that it is a Rutenberg designed building will strengthen Caproon’s arguments for preserving the existing clubhouse, which has beautiful views of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

The Valley Hi experiment reveals there is more than one way to provide for neighborhood-level government in Colorado Springs. Although lacking the usual state charter and elected officers and a board of directors, the Valley Hi neighborhood has come up with its more informal way of getting the neighbors together both for entertainment and to improve the neighborhood.

They have their own unique method — organized action on the part of one or two neighbors to get things done by the whole group.