As my wife and I were settling into our new home in Pueblo a few days ago, I read a couple of newspaper articles that confirmed to me that we made the right decision by moving here.

The Colorado Springs Gazette published a story last weekend noting that Colorado Springs and Denver ranked among the top 20 large cities in the country for housing sales during May. The second article was a lengthy piece in The Denver Post last Sunday about how Denver's construction industry is struggling to keep up with the demand for new houses.

So why should either of those stories matter to me or anyone else in Pueblo? I believe they are signs of the growth and prosperity that will be making their way here soon.

Consider these numbers: Zillow.com, a real estate website, reported the average listed sales price for a home in Colorado Springs was $309,000 last week. In Denver, it was $479,900. In Pueblo, by contrast, it was $189,000.

According to The Denver Post article I read, Colorado's population is expected to increase from roughly 5.5 million to 7.3 million by 2035. My point is that as Denver and Colorado Springs become more expensive and crowded, people who want to move to Colorado will be looking for alternatives.

Pueblo is well positioned to take advantage of that. Not just because of geography, housing affordability or more manageable traffic, although all of those are significant. Pueblo, as I discovered when I came here for my job interview with The Pueblo Chieftain, is a cool place to be.

On my first visit, I did some people watching at the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk of Pueblo. I went window shopping along Union Avenue. I admired the scenery in Lake Pueblo State Park. I ate my first slopper. I drove through residential neighborhoods throughout the city. There are still a million things I want to do. I can't wait to check out all the museums, attend events at the Colorado State Fairgrounds and chow down at the Chile & Frijoles Festival.

I think Pueblo's future will be even brighter than its present. Maybe I'm starting to sound like a Polyanna, but no one who has known me for more than five minutes would accuse me of that. If anything, I'm more of the cold-eyed realist who occasionally rains on someone's parade by pointing out the down side to a situation.

I moved here with my eyes wide open. I had a couple of friends from other parts of the state who tried to "warn" me that Pueblo has issues with crime, the economy, the schools, etc.

Those are common challenges facing many communities. In fact, I heard a lot of the same things said about Memphis, Tenn., when I moved there to work for the Commercial Appeal, that city's daily newspaper. I spent more than 10 years in Memphis, roughly half of the time covering city hall as a reporter and the other half as an editorial writer on the newspaper's editorial board.

During those years, I discovered that some of the criticisms of Memphis were valid. I wrote about them. When I became an editorial writer, I also wrote what I and other editorial board members thought could be done to fix some of the problems and make the community a better place.

Memphis hasn't solved all of its problems, but thanks to the hard work and determination of many of its residents, the city was a better place by the time I left there eight years ago for a communications job in Tennessee state government. Its downtown was being revitalized. New development was occurring along a formerly bleak stretch of the Mississippi River waterfront. Plans were in motion to improve a huge suburban park that was already one of the community's greatest assets.

Of course there were naysayers in Memphis. In any community, there are people who believe their hometown is a terrible mess and nothing can be done to make it better. I disagree, particularly with regard to Pueblo.

My primary goal as the editorial page editor of this newspaper is to encourage a community conversation about how we can make Pueblo a better place.

We'll still have letters to the editor, editorials and columns from local and nationally syndicated writers. We will organize town hall meetings and online forums. And we'll continue to look for new ways for people to express their views.

I'm here because I see Pueblo rising. And I'm excited to be a part of it.

Blake Fontenay is The Pueblo Chieftain's new editorial page editor.