How duplexes made Littleton a battleground in the state’s housing wars
In December 2019, a proposed community of 85 relatively affordable homes was on the cusp of approval in the south Denver suburbs.
Two months earlier, the Littleton City Council had voted unanimously to adopt Envision Littleton, a long-term plan that called for more apartments and starter homes. Without more housing options, planners concluded, the city was becoming unaffordable for working class families.
So when a developer wanted to build narrow single-family homes on small lots, priced at around $450,000, the city planning staff recommended the project as a good use of an old industrial lot at the corner of West Powers Avenue and Delaware Street. The planning commission agreed, voting in the project’s favor.
But the council refused to rezone the land.
As Gov. Jared Polis and state lawmakers promote density as a solution to Colorado’s affordability crisis, success will depend on places like Littleton, where homebuilders say the deck is stacked against them.
Housing projects have to navigate a web of red tape just to get through the early stages of planning, housing professionals and local officials say. And even if they survive the initial approval process, months or years spent fine-tuning blueprints can be all for naught if enough residents rally the council against new housing.
In recent years, a more housing-friendly City Council has pushed to overhaul Littleton’s land use code. They legalized accessory dwelling units or “granny flats” in accordance with state law, and empowered planning staff to approve some projects on their own, bypassing the usual gauntlet of neighborhood opposition. But in January, a proposal to allow “missing middle housing,” like duplexes and small townhomes, in single-family neighborhoods proved a bridge too far.
Homeowners pushed back in force, packing public meetings and threatening to unseat the mayor and most of the city council. The backlash led the council to table its zoning rewrite and pledge to work more closely with neighborhood groups on future planning efforts. But that wasn’t enough to satisfy opponents.
After months of acrimony that culminated in a brief court dispute, voters in November will get a more direct say in city housing policy through a city charter amendment and a slate of mayor and council races that have become a referendum on growth.
Supporters of ballot measure 3A say they want to preserve Littleton’s small-town charm by enshrining single-family zoning in the city charter.
“I love my single-family house,” Brooke Wilson, a Littleton homeowner, said at an October council meeting. “I don’t want to live in Denver. I don’t want to live in Englewood. I want to live in Littleton. That’s why I bought in Littleton.”
Critics say 3A, which will prohibit future councils from changing single-family zoning rules, will undo years of community planning efforts aimed at making Littleton a place where working-class families can afford to live.
“This is the bigger story of NIMBYism in general — zoning has been captured by people who own property, and they’ve taken control of zoning to keep other people out,” said Patrick Santana, a city planning commission member, who works with the campaign to defeat 3A. “They not only don’t want (density) in their neighborhood, they don’t want it in the whole city. They want to apply their viewpoints across the entire municipal area.”
But some see the fight as something else: a reminder of why so many developers avoid building in Littleton in the first place.
Littleton rejected nearly 1,000 units
The council’s decision to defeat the West Powers project was hardly unusual.
Through public records requests, Elizabeth Kay Marchetti, a former Littleton city planner, reviewed every residential zoning decision that went before the Littleton City Council from 1991 to 2021.
Over the course of 30 years, the City Council was asked to approve just 28 rezonings, according to her analysis, which was reviewed by The Colorado Sun. Of those, 11 were denied outright, preventing 990 homes from being built. Another 950 potential units were lost when developers were approved for less density than the zoning code already allowed — a sign of consumer appetites at the time, as spacious McMansions became the home of a choice in not just the Denver suburbs, but across the U.S.
Time and again, city records show, housing proposals encountered stiff resistance from city officials and residents alike.
“Apartments are not what Littleton is made of,” read one email, from resident Kailey Jonas. “Please reconsider and send out-of-state investors to build elsewhere in Denver.”
Multifamily developments consistently drew the loudest opposition. But no matter the project, opponents voiced similar concerns: new housing, residents insisted, would increase traffic and crime, and decrease their home values in the process.
Neighborhood opposition wasn’t the only hurdle. As one criteria for approval, Littleton used economic modeling to determine whether new housing would be a net positive for the city’s coffers. Often, the model said no to housing in favor of retail or industrial projects.
That was the case for the project on West Powers, even though the lot had sat vacant since at least 1950, according to city planning documents.
“The approval criteria for rezoning is designed to make it very hard to change your zoning to higher density,” said Kay Marchetti, who now works for Maiker Housing Partners, the affordable housing authority for Adams County.
Overwhelmingly, opponents of growth got their way, housing data shows.
From 2010 to 2023, Littleton added fewer homes than almost any other Denver suburb its size, according to State Demography Office data. In the period, Littleton’s housing stock grew by fewer than 150 units a year, for a 0.7% compound annual growth rate, a Sun analysis found. Among suburbs with at least 30,000 residents, only Wheat Ridge, Northglenn and Centennial added homes at a slower rate. (In raw numbers, Centennial built more in total than Littleton, while Englewood added fewer.)
Littleton city leaders say you can see the effects in local and regional studies, detailing growing housing shortages across income levels. And you can see it in the median home price, which is now north of $600,000. That’s double what it was in 2015, when the median home sold for $299,000.
“We see this in the numbers broadly,” said Councilman Steve Barr, who is not running for reelection. “And then you start seeing the knock-on effects — you see the school districts that are just plummeting in attendance.”
Colorado as a whole is growing older, as the cost of housing drives younger families to less expensive states. In Littleton, the trend is even more stark. Its median age of 40 is about 10% higher than the metro area as a whole, according to U.S. Census data. Littleton’s K-12 population shrank 15% from 20 years ago, leading to school closures, according to Colorado Public Radio.
Barr, his wife and their kid nearly became part of the statistic, until they bought one of the city’s rare condominiums in 2022.
“I almost had to give up my council seat because I couldn’t afford, basically, to rent in Littleton, and there was nothing I could buy,” Barr said.
“The bones of developers”
Perhaps no site in the city has inflamed more tension between developers and residents than the 4.5-acre plot that became Vita Littleton.
The land sits atop a hill across from the city courthouse, overlooking an RTD light rail stop and Littleton’s historic downtown. From its lofty vantage point, it promises mountain views to those lucky enough to live on its west-facing side. A multistory development there would also block those same views from its neighbors in the single-family neighborhood to the east.
In 2013, a developer wanted to build 325 luxury apartments on the land.
Community members revolted. City planning records and meeting minutes show that dozens spoke out at public hearings and more than 100 residents sent letters and emails, overwhelmingly in opposition.
Often, the project was framed in cataclysmic terms.
“The Broadstone development is a direct threat to the lifestyle of everyone who calls Littleton home,” resident Ocean Sehlmeyer wrote in one email. “You do not have to live along Littleton Boulevard to be impacted by the tremendous increase of traffic and the lack of parking throughout town. You do not have to live on Bemis Street to dread the scale of such a monolith that will erase the mountain view and dwarf our charming courthouse.
“Once our town is ruined it will just be another stop on Santa Fe, not worthy of putting down roots,” Sehlmeyer concluded.
The project got pared down to win an endorsement from city planning staff, shrinking from five stories to four, and from 325 units to 270, then 250, and finally 225. The developer agreed to a dozen conditions to gain support.
But the planning board still voted unanimously against it, and the council followed suit with a 6-1 vote against it, sending the developer packing after more than a year of negotiations with neighbors and planning staff.
It wasn’t the first time a housing project failed there. But it would be the last. In 2018, Zocalo Community Development finished construction on Vita Littleton, a mixed-use development with a restaurant, a sports lounge and 159 apartments, most of which are reserved for seniors.
“The hill was littered with the bones of developers who were unsuccessful,” said David Zucker, Zocalo’s CEO. “I had a clue about how to deal with this, which was don’t rezone it.”
The land’s business and residential zoning already allowed for apartments. So as long as Zucker followed the code exactly, he believed he could sidestep the City Council. He also found a loophole: A parking garage that served business patrons as well as residents counted toward a city requirement that half the land’s square footage had to be set aside for business use.
After Zucker secured the city’s approval, a neighbor sued, arguing that the city approved the site plan illegally when it did so without providing opportunities for public input. The courts ruled in the city’s favor.
Zucker insists it’s not in his nature to ignore the public when he builds a project. But, he says, the homeowners who speak up at council meetings are usually older, whiter and wealthier than the community as a whole.
When he holds listening sessions with community members to ask about their biggest concerns, “it is always that my kids and grandkids won’t be able to afford a place to live here in this community,” he said.
He suspects many who oppose new housing simply haven’t considered the effects on future generations.
“Do we want to be humane, or do we want to just lock the door and not care about anybody who might want to live in this community?” Zucker said. “The goalposts of who can afford a home in Littleton are moving so much faster than our incomes are able to overcome. And I think that’s sad.”
“My plea is to slow down”
In recent years, city leaders and housing advocates have tried to turn the tide.
In 2021, the City Council overhauled its land use code for the first time since the 1970s at the urging of a city housing task force. A year later, Littleton became the first city in the south metro area to adopt an inclusionary housing ordinance, joining a handful of others across the state in requiring multifamily developers to either set aside affordable units for low-income residents or pay into a city housing fund.
Meanwhile, even as local officials began to see new housing as a priority, low interest rates spurred a development boom across the metro area in the wake of the pandemic. By 2024, Littleton had as many 3,000 new units in the pipeline — that’s more homes than the city added in the entire 2010s.
So by the time the council was preparing to allow duplexes and multiplexes in single-family neighborhoods, residents were already reeling from the pace of change.
“When we moved in, it was country — it was the end of the world. We loved it,” Susan Schmidt, a Littleton resident for over 50 years, said at a January meeting. “I guess my plea is to slow down. Let us mourn, let us grieve, give us a few years to accept all these other changes that you’ve made for our little home that we call Littleton that we love.”
The council tabled the idea in the face of public outcry, with Barr alone voting to push ahead. But the move did little to mollify the loudest critics.
In the wake of the vote, opponents formed a political nonprofit, Rooted in Littleton, and launched a campaign to amend the city charter through ballot measure 3A. If voters approve, it will lock in place the single-family zoning districts that were in effect at the start of 2025, which cover most of the city’s residential land.
To housing advocates, the move represented a dramatic escalation in the city’s zoning wars. It wouldn’t just prevent today’s council from enacting the disputed zoning changes, it would prevent all future elected officials from changing the single-family zoning code — a highly technical document — without a citywide vote.
It would also put the city out of compliance with state law. As required by House Bill 1152, the city legalized accessory dwelling units in May. But if the charter amendment takes effect, it would reset the city’s single-family zoning rules to what they were before ADUs were allowed.
A spokesperson for Rooted in Littleton declined an interview request, telling The Sun in an email “our team is focused on voter education through our own campaign materials and voter guide, so we’ll have to pass on interview requests for now.”
Notably, the group argues, individual property owners can still build whatever they want on their land — they just need council approval. The charter amendment still allows rezonings of individual properties, but the council can’t enact broader zoning changes without voter approval.
“The proposed charter amendment provides time to construct positive housing solutions where they are needed in Littleton, not just anywhere developers want them,” the group wrote on its website.
Santana, the planning commissioner, argues that’s too high a barrier, ensuring that most attempts to add what he calls “gentle density” won’t happen at all. Today, under the unified land use code, duplexes are only allowed by right in multifamily zones — places where duplexes are unlikely to be built in lieu of apartments.
Duplexes are allowed conditionally in one single-family zoning classification: small-lot residential neighborhoods. But there’s a catch.
“To put one in, you have to have two neighborhood meetings. You have to have a pre-application meeting with Community Development. You have to have a site plan. You have to have a site development plan,” Santana said. “They have to go through the same public process that a 50-unit apartment has to go through.”
With the concerns of planning officials top of mind, the Littleton City Council this month voted 5-1 to denounce the ballot measure, and urged residents to defeat it.
Proponents were incensed.
“We wrote that to preserve single-family residential neighborhoods from you folks,” Mark Harris, a retired lawyer and a leader of Rooted in Littleton, said at the meeting.
“Stop putting your thumb on the scale of this election.”
More housing proposed for West Powers
Back in 2019, council members offered contradictory reasons for defeating the West Powers project.
Some said they wanted to protect “community character,” a phrase commonly deployed by opponents across decades of housing fights in Littleton.
To Councilwoman Pam Grove, it meant rejecting new housing because a nearby single-family neighborhood, Progress Park, was opposed to “new high density development.”
To then-Councilwoman Carol Fey, that meant rejecting single-family housing on land surrounded by apartments and industrial buildings.
Planning documents made the opposite argument, labeling the Progress Park area a “high priority” for new residential development.
“The proposed residential uses will provide an appropriate transition between the existing industrial to the north and the multifamily residential uses to the west, south and east,” planners wrote. “The Comprehensive Plan encourages housing that responds to changing demands in the local housing market and increasing housing diversity and densities.”
Today, the property has a new owner. But just like the last one, the developer has no interest in using it for industrial purposes.
Under the new land use code the city adopted in 2021, the area is now considered a mixed-use corridor, meaning multifamily housing is allowed without going to the council for a rezoning.
Instead of the 85 single-family homes the council rejected over density concerns, the developer now plans to build 319 apartments.