Denver’s Chaffee Park neighborhood enjoys approval from the city council that allows accessory dwelling units (ADUs). Increasing the number of ADUs (aka carriage houses, casitas, granny flats or in-law suites) has the potential to add much-needed and more affordable housing to Denver’s inventory. (Denver City Council allows ADUs in the Sloan’s Lake and the West Colfax neighborhoods, too.)

How many ADUs spring up is a matter of speculation; there are minimum lot-size requirements and not-so-minimum costs associated with building them. But these decisions give buyers interested in these areas something to ponder: Possible parking problems and the chance your grown son might get too comfy in the granny pad out back.

Be that as it may, Chaffee Park has much to recommend it including the ADU option: Located minutes from the city, the Pecos Junction rail station (62^nd Avenue and Pecos) and Regis University, it serves up stunning downtown views, and depending on your address, mountain vistas too.

The neighborhood itself is bounded by 52^nd Avenue on the north, I-70 on the south, Federal Boulevard to the West and the railroad tracks along Kalamath Street to the east. Unlike many of the traditional North Side neighborhoods, which sprouted in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Chaffee Park is relatively new, coming of age during the post-WWII boom with new small Minimal Traditional-style homes (think small ranches) filling in farmland and mixing with the older houses already there.

Just to make things confusing: The park located in Chaffee Park isn’t Chaffee Park, that park’s in Sunnyside. The park in Chaffee is officially unnamed but dubbed 51^st and Zuni Park by city parks and rec. Everyone else calls the little emerald-cut-gem-of-a-park with the big city views Zuni Park, which is the site of the annual fitness-food trucks-and-fun Skyline Festival.

There’s a quirky quaintness about Chaffee Park. A giant AT&T tower, purportedly part of the company’s efforts to extend telephone bandwidth with microwave relay stations in the 1950s, stands like a Cold War sentry over the neighborhood on the Adams County side at 52^nd and Pecos.

There’s also the mixed-income, green development Aria Denver, with its mix of contemporary apartments, condos, townhomes, community garden and the remodeled Marycrest convent (now co-housing), which is growing to maturity at 52^nd and Federal Boulevard (they even have a Starbucks). Even better, the Sisters of St. Francis still live on the property, lending this laid-back, treed neighborhood a sense of quiet continuity.

With its proximity to the Highlands, there is nothing undiscovered about Chaffee Park. Nonetheless, it has that under-the-radar vibe that makes you feel like you’ve stumbled on a very special place.

Chaffee Park Highlights
Population: 5,116
Location: North of downtown Denver via an eight-minute drive
Housing stock: Some early 20th-century homes but primarily post-WWII ranches and smattering of new builds
Public schools: Denver Public Schools
Public high school: North High School
Nearest hospital: Saint Joseph Hospital, Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center
Nearby parks: 51^st and Zuni Park
Fun fact: Chaffee Park environs were home to Denver’s first shopping center built in the late ’40s at 48^th Avenue and Pecos, which originally housed a J.C. Penney’s and Safeway.