Fort Collins, CO Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

4(B) of the Transitional Land Use Code addresses child care centers that were approved to run out of a residential dwelling rather than a standalone commercial building. If the operator does not keep the child care use active and continuous for twelve consecutive months, the Code treats the approval as abandoned outright: the home loses its zoning authorization to run the daycare, and the operator cannot simply resume care after a long break. Reopening requires submitting an entirely new development application and clearing every current provision of the Land Use Code again, rather than reviving the old approval.

This is a meaningfully different bar than ordinary nonconforming-use rules for other accessory uses, because it applies specifically to home-sited child care and ties survival of the zoning approval to continuous operation rather than continued ownership or licensing. 11. This abandonment standard governed home-based child care approvals reviewed under the Transitional Land Use Code, the version Fort Collins used before its current Land Use Code, adopted by Ordinance No. 055, 2024, took effect for applications submitted on or after May 17, 2024; a home daycare already approved and operating under the earlier code remains subject to this twelve-month abandonment clock.