Littleton, CO Zoning Overlays & Bonuses: Downtown Design Guide (2026)

The purpose of the DT Standards of Design section is to provide design and dimensional standards for building types permitted in the DMS, DTA, DMU and DNR districts, covering general standards, common design features, and detailed standards for each building type, with waiver requests available at the Director's sole discretion where the provisions are impractical. The standards apply to new principal buildings, to the expanded or altered portion of an existing building, and to an entire existing building when an expansion or alteration exceeds 50 percent of its pre-existing square footage.

Building types may only be constructed in districts where that type is expressly permitted, per the Permitted Building Types by District table, and maximum height standards, expressed as overall feet including full and half stories, cannot be exceeded by any structure. Build-to-zones set minimum and maximum setbacks for the sides of a structure roughly parallel to a street, meaning the first number is the closest a building may sit to the street and the second is the farthest. Primary entrance rules require at least two residential entrances in multi-unit residential buildings to be directly accessible to the street and near the forwardmost part of the front facade, or reachable by courtyard or passageway.

District-specific rules add further texture: in the Main Street (DMS) district, any front setback area between a building and the street right-of-way must be designed to extend pedestrian amenities such as increased walkway width for outdoor cafe seating, window shopping, and temporary retail display, and a similar rule applies to the DTA district along a defined stretch of Alamo Avenue east of South Nevada Street.