Five Points

Five Points has long been synonymous with drugs and crime. While many parts of Five Points have gotten well past that image, some parts of it haven't - and for good reason. Although much of the area has changed for the better, there are still certain streets and areas I would avoid at all cost. I have a friend who lives in a renovated condo in Five Points and it is a very nice, classy place on the inside. You could never tell this from the outside as it is a bit drab and old looking. My friend is close to his job downtown (within walking distance) and loves his place, but there are certain aspects he doesn't care for. At any given time you can find yourself feeling ill at ease with some of the people who you can find roaming about at all hours of the night. This is just one area of the neighborhood, which can be very different from others.

For an example of diversity within the neighborhood, the average median income of those who live on the central and southeast side of Five Points is around $28,000, while those who live on the west side, near the new expensive condos is well over $90,000.

As Coors Field in here, there are also numerous bars and restaurants. This particular area of Five Points caters to the younger crowd and those who come for baseball. Parking in this part of Five Points can be difficult unless you're willing to shell out $20 to save yourself from having to walk. While this area is mostly touristy, I wouldn't care to walk alone at night anywhere in this area. The new condos by the baseball stadium can go for upwards of a million dollars, so the cost of living in Five Points is greatly diverse. As another reviewer said, there are some great, old warehouses that have been turned into art studios just west of Broadway near Walnut Street. They are very cool and hip, and have a feel all their own.

Over 50% of the homes in Five Points were built before 1939. While there are some older, single family homes here, I certainly wouldn't recommend this area for families with kids. In addition to the crime element, the schools here are just plain terrible. For example, Gilpin Elementary School rates a 1 on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest. The students here repeatedly score well below average on state testing standards, and have for years.

Five Points, maybe even more than "East Colfax", is a phrase synonymous with "really, really bad neighborhood". However, That reputation has changed along with Five Points itself. It's a neighborhood just north of downtown with a very checkered history. It's the core of a strip that runs through northeast central Denver that has had a rough and varied past. It's also the first to get turned around.
Five Points is locally famous for being a spot for bootleggers during prohibition, for being a residence of Jack Kerouac in beat years, and for being a neighborhood full of drugs, gangs, and crime that reached a peak of violence in the 1990s. It has reached a new incarnation as a wildly popular spot to live and hang out. There are artists, pub crawlers, and just about everyone else here nowadays. In fact, it has become a bit tragically hip. Despite the fact that there are still blocks here that are so rough that you'll get scared if you happen to take a wrong turn, Five Points is also so cool that you'll have to pay extremely high rents to live here.
There are fantastic restaurants, galleries, bars, and apartments here. There's Coors Field and Great Divide. Sports, galleries, and microbrews. That's Denver in a nutshell. Unfortunately, like I said, it has become so trendy that you might have a tough time finding reasonable rents if you'd like to stay. The Curtis Park area in particular is in high demand, but it's so close to downtown and so lively that you'll really have to pay a premium. This is a wonderful spot where there is always something happening, past and present, but everyone seems to have heard about it, so it might just be too trendy for its own good.

This eclectic neighborhood northeast of Denver’s Central Business District was known at one point as “the Harlem of the West.” In the early 1900s, it became established as Denver’s center of African-American population and culture, and at one point had dozens of jazz clubs hosting such greats as Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. Like many other parts of central Denver, Five Points was hit hard by urban decay in the 1960s and ‘70s and gained an unsavory reputation.

Unlike other neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill and Uptown, however, Five Points has been slower to shed its bad rap. Some pockets of the area remain in need of TLC, and possibly even caution if you're walking through alone at night. But this is a large neighborhood, and one that it’s hard to address in generalities. A block of shabby, bleary-eyed apartments gives way, the next block over, to well-maintained affordable housing, which is around the corner from the duplex that’s been fixed-and-flipped, with recessed lighting and granite counters. The former crackhouse has had its gingerbread wooden trim lovingly repaired and given a bright paint job, though you get the sense that a few residents in the neighborhood still wish it were there in its former incarnation. On Walnut and Blake, some of the old warehouses have been converted to galleries by artists who are drawn by the wide-open post-industrial spaces.

Five Points still maintains a strong grasp on its African-American heritage, but a large amount of Mexican-American and Mexican/Latino immigrant families have also made the neighborhood home over the last few decades, especially in its northern reaches where you’ll find some good taquerias and restaurants. Though Five Points is largely residential, a good handful of cafes, bars, and concert venues line the Welton Street corridor. The light rail and new bike lanes make it an easy commute for those who work downtown, and many people of all backgrounds are finding that Five Points is a good place to raise a family.