Aspen, Colorado:
Single-family homes in residential neighborhoods could become bigger because of an ordinance Aspen’s city council passed on Monday intended to foster a stronger market for municipal transferable development rights (TDRs).
TDRs are created when a property owner agrees to a historic designation that limits development on their site. In exchange, the city gives that owner the right to create and sell TDR certificates, which allow other developers to add 250 square feet onto a property above and beyond underlying size limits. This process, in effect, moves square footage to other locations where it may be more appropriate, in hopes of creating an incentive for small-scale historic preservation.
Currently, city rules allow one TDR certificate to be “landed” at a single-family home development, increasing its size by 250 square feet. Council’s action on Monday will allow a total of two TDRs to land on a single-family home site, so it could be 500 square feet bigger than what zoning would otherwise allow.
That ability is contingent on the lot being big enough that it would support a duplex, which are allowed larger sizes than single-family homes.
There are other uses for TDRs, although council took away one of their primarily landing options when it banned new residential units in the downtown core.
Overall, 24 of the 64 TDRs that have been created in the history of the 8-year-old program have been landed. According to Sara Adams with the city’s planning office, the market is flooded with TDRs, which sell for between $175,000 and $240,000, according to the city.
Improving that market is important to the success of the city’s historic preservation program, Adams said. The city had initially proposed increasing to three the number of TDRs that could be landed on single-family home sites.
The council lowered that number to two, based on a concern that three TDRs, which would allow an additional 750 square feet, could negatively impact neighborhoods. The ordinance passed on a 4-1 vote, with the dissenting vote cast by Mayor Steve Skadron, who worried that the loosening of TDR restrictions would open the door to greater development pressures.
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