Central Park vs. Park Hill: The Boundary That's Moving Under Both Neighborhoods

In January 2023, Denver City Council approved a measure that most Park Hill homeowners never noticed passing. Local coverage summed it up in one line: the vote "creates five metropolitan districts in Park Hill." At the time it sounded like paperwork attached to a golf course fight. Three years later, it is the detail that quietly rewrites the comparison every Denver East buyer thinks they already understand.

For years, the shorthand for comparing Central Park and Park Hill went something like this: Central Park is newer and comes with a metro district tax, Park Hill is older and doesn't. That rule of thumb is still mostly true today. It is also already out of date at the edges, and the edges are exactly where a lot of current buying activity is happening.

The Comparison Most Buyers Bring In

Central Park, the master-planned community built on the old Stapleton airport site, and Park Hill, the historic neighborhood next door around City Park, get compared constantly because they sit side by side and solve for similar things. As of February 2026, Park Hill's median sale price sat around $670,000. Central Park's ZIP code carried a median list price closer to $720,000 as of December 2025. Close enough that most buyers treat the two as interchangeable on price and let lifestyle break the tie: newer construction and a rail stop in Central Park, mature trees and Craftsman bones in Park Hill.

The tax conversation usually gets flattened into a single sentence: Central Park costs more every month because of the special district. That sentence is directionally correct, but it treats "Park Hill" as one tax zone when it is quietly becoming several, and it treats "Central Park's extra layer" as a fixed number when the underlying debt schedule shifts every year.

What the Extra Layer in Central Park Actually Pays For

Central Park's tax bill carries a line that homes in most of Park Hill do not have: a special district levy collected through the Westerly Creek Metropolitan District and passed through to Park Creek Metropolitan District, the entity that financed the roads, parks, and utility lines built when the old airport site was redeveloped starting in 2000. Park Creek's own long-term finance plan put the adjusted total mill levy at 66.852 mills as of 2024, with more than 97 percent of that revenue going toward debt service on the bonds that paid for the infrastructure and only a small operating slice covering maintenance. That number gets recertified annually and moves with assessed values, but the structure behind it doesn't change: Central Park owners are paying down long-term construction debt on the neighborhood they're standing in.

On top of that, most for-sale homes in Central Park also carry a Master Community Association assessment, running roughly $58 a month as of January 2026, which funds the pools, programming, and shared amenities the neighborhood is known for. That's separate from the district levy and separate from any sub-HOA a specific block might have.

Layer it out and the picture looks like this:

Park Hill homes typically carry only the first layer. That's the whole reason the old shorthand exists. It's also exactly the assumption the golf course vote started to erode.

The Line That's Moving

The Park Hill Golf Course closed in 2018 after operating since 1932. A private developer, Westside Investment Partners, bought the 155 acres in 2019 and spent years trying to build on it. Residents pushed back hard enough to pass a ballot measure blocking development on the site, and the fight over that land became one of the most closely watched local land use disputes in the city.

The January 2023 council vote that created the language everyone remembers, "creates five metropolitan districts in Park Hill," was part of the deal that eventually let the city take a different path entirely. Rather than build housing on the old fairways, Mayor Mike Johnston negotiated a land swap in 2025 that let Denver acquire the site outright, the largest single private land purchase in the city's history. Voters approved $70 million in bond funding for the project that November through the 2025 Vibrant Denver Bond, and the design team at Sasaki finalized a framework plan in January 2026 after community engagement that ran from August 2025 through that January. When it's finished, Park Hill Park will be Denver's fourth-largest park.

That's the headline. The metro districts are the footnote that matters for anyone comparing tax bills. Because the golf course deal moved through a package that included creating metropolitan district authority inside Park Hill's boundaries, the parcels closest to the new park are on a path toward carrying their own version of what Central Park owners already pay: a special district levy layered on top of Denver's baseline rate, tied to infrastructure built around a specific piece of land. The rest of Park Hill, the blocks along 33rd Avenue and the streets closer to City Park, isn't affected by this and has no reason to be. But "Park Hill has no metro district" is no longer a blanket statement you can make about the whole neighborhood. It's a statement about distance from one particular 155-acre site.

The Question Isn't Which Neighborhood. It's Which Certificate.

This is the part that actually changes how you should shop. Comparing Central Park to Park Hill as two monolithic tax zones was always an approximation. Now it's an approximation with a visible expiration date, at least for addresses near the new park. The fix is the same one good agents have always pushed for, just with more urgency:

• Pull the specific parcel's current mill levy certification from the county assessor, not a neighborhood-wide estimate.
• Ask directly whether the property sits inside any of the five metropolitan districts created by the 2023 council action, and if so, what the current levy and debt schedule look like.
• Request the Master Community Association budget and any sub-HOA documents for Central Park properties, since dues and district taxes are calculated separately and both show up in your monthly number.
• Confirm the numbers against the most recent certified levy for the tax year you'll actually be paying, since these figures get recalculated annually and a two-year-old blog post about either neighborhood is already stale on this point.

None of this means one neighborhood is a better financial decision than the other. It means the neighborhood name has stopped being a reliable shortcut for the tax math, on either side of Colorado Boulevard.

What the Money Actually Buys

It helps to remember what these layers pay for, because the extra cost in Central Park isn't abstract. The Westerly Creek and Park Creek structure is the reason Central Park has the Shops at Northfield, Eastbridge Town Center, and the East 29th Avenue Town Center all built out as part of the original redevelopment, along with the trail network that connects to Bluff Lake Nature Center and the A Line station that gets residents to Union Station in about 13 minutes. Stanley Marketplace sits just outside the district boundary in Aurora but functions as an extension of the same lifestyle the district financing helped create.

Park Hill's amenities are older and already paid for. City Park, the Denver Zoo, and the Museum of Nature and Science have anchored the neighborhood for generations, and the 33rd Avenue corridor's cluster of independent restaurants grew up without needing a dedicated financing district behind it. That's the real trade being made when you choose one neighborhood over the other: pay into new infrastructure through a special district, or buy into infrastructure that's already built and settled. The golf course project is the first time in decades that Park Hill has taken on the first kind of trade rather than the second, and it's worth understanding exactly where that boundary sits before you assume your future address is on the settled side of it.

A Couple of Questions Worth Asking Directly

Will this raise taxes for Park Hill homeowners who aren't near the golf course site? No. The metro district authority created in 2023 applies to the districts tied to the golf course redevelopment specifically, not to Park Hill as a whole. Homes several blocks away from the new park are not automatically pulled into that structure.

Does a higher mill levy mean a worse deal? Not on its own. Central Park's special district levy financed real infrastructure that residents use daily. The point isn't to avoid districts, it's to know the exact number before you write an offer, since it changes your true monthly payment by a real amount and should be part of how you compare a Central Park listing to a Park Hill one at a similar price point.

Comparing these two neighborhoods well means treating the tax structure as address-specific research, not neighborhood reputation. If you're working through this exact comparison right now, or trying to figure out where a specific Park Hill block sits relative to the new park's district boundaries, Lisa Taylor can pull the current numbers for the parcels you're actually considering. Let's Connect.