The Leopold Retirement Residence in downtown Bellingham has received a high walkability rating—a score of 95 on a scale of 0-100—from Walk Score, a company that rates walkable neighborhoods through its website and smartphone apps.

Walk Score’s technology calculates the walkability of an address based on a variety of factors, including the location of nearby stores, restaurants, school, parks and more. The score is designed to measure how easy it is to live there without a vehicle while accessing local amenities.

The Leopold, located at 1224 Cornwall Ave., is within a quarter-mile mile of the Bellingham Public Library, Whatcom Museum, YMCA, Pickford Film Center and more than 200 other businesses, including banks, restaurants, grocery stores, clothing stores and a pharmacy. Also, many community events are conducted in the Leopold Crystal Ballroom.

The Leopold has also been praised by the magazine Where to Retire, which describes the residence as  a “walker’s paradise” in it’s May/June 2013 issue, and lists it among the country’s top 10 retirement communities for active seniors.

The Leopold, which offers independent retirement and assisted-living apartments, originally was built in 1889 as a hotel and is listed on the National Registrar of Historic Places.