Wellington

Wellington is what happens when Fort Collins gets expensive and the I-25 corridor still has shoulder room. Twenty minutes north of FoCo, the town has roughly tripled since the early 2000s and the rooflines show it, beige subdivisions sprawling east of the interstate. The upside is square footage per dollar and a genuinely small downtown that has not yet been gentrified into oblivion. The downside, for daters, is thin: the social scene is family-coded, the bars are few, and most adults under forty commute south for work and play. Treat Wellington as a launchpad to Fort Collins, not a destination in itself.