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Painted Prairie

Aurora · Northeast metro

A 600-acre new-urbanist master-planned community in northeast Aurora, organized around the central High Prairie park. Known for design discipline you don't usually see in production homebuilding — alleys, front porches, and a varied streetscape that still looks intentional five years in.

What makes it distinct

Painted Prairie is one of the few production communities in the metro where strict design review actually shows up on the street. Every home must meet architectural guidelines covering facade variation, porch depth, garage placement, and material palette. The result: a streetscape that reads more like a thoughtfully planned urban neighborhood than a subdivision.

In 2022 it won NAHB's Best Landscape Community — unusual recognition for an Aurora community, where that kind of award typically goes to coastal master plans.

How the neighborhood is laid out

  • High Prairie park as the social anchor — splash pads, year-round events, farmers markets
  • Front-loaded porches with rear-alley garages keep cars off the streetscape
  • Cottages, townhomes, paired homes, and single-family mixed across blocks — not segregated by price tier
  • A new elementary school is opening inside the community, part of the Murphy Creek cluster

Home types

Painted Prairie mixes four product types across the same blocks — you can enter at a cottage and stretch to a full-size detached single-family on the same street.

  • Detached single-family

    ~2,000 planned ~70 available

  • Attached single-family

    ~600 planned ~22 available

  • Townhomes

    ~600 planned ~20 available

  • Cottages

    ~300 planned ~8 available

Builders here

About ten production builders rotate through Painted Prairie at any given time. The mix gives you breadth of price, plan, and style without ever leaving the community.

  • Pulte Homes
  • Century Communities
  • KB Home
  • David Weekley Homes
  • McStain Neighborhoods
  • Risewell Homes
  • Remington Homes
  • Scott Felder Homes

Location & commutes

  • DIA — ~10 minutes
  • Anschutz Medical Campus — ~15 minutes
  • Downtown Denver — 30–35 minutes via I-70 or 6th Ave
  • E-470 access for southern Aurora, DTC, and south metro commutes
  • Cherry Creek Reservoir and Aurora Reservoir both within 15 minutes

What Lin thinks

Painted Prairie is one of the very few production communities where you can buy a house and feel like you've moved into a real neighborhood — not a subdivision. The design discipline pays off: five years in, the streetscape still looks intentional rather than cookie-cutter weathered.

Strong fit for buyers who want walkability, want to be near DIA or Anschutz, and don't need to be inside a more established Denver neighborhood like Central Park. The range of builders means you can enter at a cottage in the upper $300Ks or stretch to a premium home over $900K on the same block — and the lower-priced product doesn't feel like an afterthought.