New Britain, CT Building Setbacks & Zoning: Lot Coverage Limits (2026)

New Britain's Zoning Ordinance sets lot-coverage and impervious-cover limits inside each district's dimensional-regulations schedule at Section 60-40 for the S-1 District and Section 70-40 for the S-2 District, and every district's schedule applies except as modified by the provisions of Section 230, Supplemental Use and Dimensional Regulations. Lot coverage measures the percentage of total lot area occupied by main and accessory buildings combined, not by pavement.

In the S-1 Residential District, built around 13,500-square-foot single-family lots, Section 60-40-40 caps that combined building footprint at 20 percent of the lot. The S-2 Residential District, built around smaller 8,000-square-foot lots, allows a larger 25 percent footprint under Section 70-40-40, reflecting its denser, smaller-lot layout. Both districts separately cap Maximum Impervious Cover, which reaches beyond the building footprint to driveways, patios, walkways and other paved surfaces, at 50 percent of the lot area under Sections 60-40-65 and 70-40-65.

These two limits work together: a homeowner can meet the building-coverage cap and still be blocked from paving over the rest of the yard if the added driveway or patio pushes total impervious area past the 50 percent ceiling. The dimensional schedule sits inside each district's own zoning-district section, so a property's actual coverage limit depends entirely on which residential, business or industrial district it sits in. Section 230-20 layers on additional lot-area and lot-width rules for undersized, separately owned lots that predate the ordinance, but does not change the coverage percentages themselves. The Zoning Enforcement Officer checks compliance with these limits as part of the site-plan and permit review required before construction begins.