Individual residents, business owners, property owners, and others who contributed their energy, insights, and ideas to Envision Littleton.

Littleton Museum and Arapahoe Community College for hosting events in the Envision Littleton Speaker Series, and all who attended to hear from:

Chris Akers – State Demography Office, Colorado Department of Local Affairs (February 27, 2019)

Transitions – Population and Economic Trends

Darin A. Atteberry – City Manager of Fort Collins, Colorado (April 19, 2019)

Bigger Community Vision

Bret C. Keast, AICP – CEO of Kendig Keast Collaborative (May 22, 2019)

Zoning for Community Character

Peter Kageyama – Author and Consultant (September 12, 2019)

For the Love of Cities

The Envision Littleton Comprehensive Plan (the Plan) will guide future development, redevelopment, and community enhancement efforts over the next 20 years through 2040. It serves as a framework for thoughtful community discussion on the real and perceived challenges currently facing Littleton, and opportunities that will shape its future. Through long-range planning efforts, the community can accommodate its projected growth and revitalization in a manner that preserves its history, culture, and overall quality of life for current and future residents.

The Plan resulted from an 18-month planning and community engagement process. The process began with the Envision Littleton Vision Report, adopted unanimously by City Council on December 18, 2018. The Vision Report established a unifying vision and identified Littleton’s core values, guiding principles, shared priorities, and concerns. The Plan’s findings and recommendations focus on the physical and economic aspects of the community’s projected growth and development in the coming years. It provides goals, policies, and actions that will help City officials, appointees, and staff in determining the location, financing, and sequencing of public improvements; administering development regulations; and guiding reinvestment efforts. The Plan also provides a b

A comprehensive plan is the most important policy document a municipal government prepares and maintains. This is
because the Plan:

• Lays out a long-range vision regarding the growth and enhancement of the community;
• Considers at once the city’s regional context, and the entire geographic area of the community, including areas where new development and redevelopment may occur;
• Assesses near- and longer-term needs and desires across a variety of inter-related topics that represent the key “building blocks” of a community (e.g., land use, transportation, urban design, economic development, housing, neighborhoods, parks and recreation, heritage and tourism, arts and culture, utility infrastructure, public facilities and services, cultural facilities, etc.); and
• Serves as a guideline for measuring success, and is amended from time to time to remain a “living document” that is able to address changing circumstances.

Through a comprehensive plan, a community determines how best to accommodate and manage its projected growth, and the revitalization of older neighborhoods and commercial areas. The Plan aims to ensure that ongoing development will proceed in an orderly, well-planned manner so that public facilities and services can keep pace with development, and so that residents’ quality of life will be enhanced.

Significantly, by clarifying and stating the City’s intentions regarding the area’s physical development and infrastructure investment, the Plan also creates a greater level of predictability for residents, land owners, developers, potential investors, and partner agencies and organizations.

This Plan will take our community to a new level in terms of livability and tangible accomplishments. The Plan is ultimately a guidance document for City officials and staff, who must make decisions on a daily basis that will determine the future direction, financial health, and “look and feel” of the community. These decisions are carried out through:

Targeted programs and expenditures prioritized through the City’s annual budget process, including routine essential functions such as code compliance.

Major public improvements and land acquisitions financed through the City’s budgeting efforts.

New and amended City ordinances and regulations that implement Plan objectives.

Departmental work plans and resources in key areas.

Support for ongoing planning and studies that will further clarify needs, costs, benefits, and strategies.

Pursuit of external grant funding to supplement local budgets and/or expedite certain planning and infrastructure projects.

Initiatives pursued in conjunction with other public and private partners to leverage resources and achieve successes neither could accomplish on their own.

Despite these many avenues for action, the Plan should not be considered the solution for every tough problem Littleton faces. The Plan focuses primarily on the responsibilities of City government in the physical planning arena, where municipalities have a more direct and extensive role than in other areas that residents value such as education and social services. Of necessity, long-range plans, as vision and policy documents, also must remain relatively general.

The resulting Plan may not touch on every challenge before the community, but it is meant to set a tone and motivate concerted efforts to move the community forward in coming years.

COMMUNITY LOCATION AND FEATURES

The City of Littleton is located in central Colorado, within the Front Range of the Southern Rocky Mountains. The South Platte River flows from south to north through Littleton, with additional tributaries also running through the city. Littleton is the county seat of Arapahoe County, with the majority of the city located within Arapahoe County and small portions located in Douglas and Jefferson counties. Littleton is part of the greater Denver metropolitan region and is approximately nine miles south of Downtown Denver.

Littleton is accessible via two Regional Transportation District (RTD) light rail stations, Downtown and at Mineral Avenue, and is home to the main campus of Arapahoe Community College. The city limits encompass a total area of approximately 13.8 square miles. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Littleton had a 2010 population of 41,737 and an estimated 2017 population of 47,734.

Littleton lies 5,351 feet above sea level and has an average temperature range of 35-64 degrees, an average rainfall of 16.3 inches per year, and an average of 65.7 inches of snowfall per year. Given its location along the South Platte River and extensive open space, parks, and trails, Littleton is home to a range of recreation activities. Littleton also retains its original and historic downtown. The recreational and historical aspects of the community continue to attract tourists to Littleton.

POPULATION GROWTH PROJECTIONS

ASDF  – Population ASDF. projections are an important component of a long-range planning process. They help determine and quantify the demands that will be placed on public facilities and services based on the potential pace and scale of the community’s physical growth. Projections reflect local, regional, national, and international trends and offer a basis to prepare for the future. However, forecasting population changes can be challenging, particularly for the long term, because it is often difficult to account for all circumstances that may arise. Therefore, it will be important for the City to monitor population and economic growth continually to account for both short- and longer-term shifts that can influence development activity and trends in the community and larger region.

ALTERNATIVE GROWTH SCENARIOS

Demographers caution that population projections become trickier as the geographic area gets smaller, making city-level population the most difficult to forecast. This is because local population change is strongly influenced by less predictable factors such as housing prices, availability of vacant land to develop, and annexation of additional territory, which may already have existing residents and results in an instant increase in the citywide total

Given this context, this section provides a comparison of several potential scenarios for future population change in Littleton. The projections build on the latest U.S. Census estimate of 47,734 for 2017 and identify potential population levels in five-year increments out to 2040. The four projection alternatives displayed in Figure 1, below, reflect:

– If Littleton continued to experience an increase in population at a Steady Growth Rate of 1.9 percent per year as has occurred most recently in the years from 2010 through 2017. Similar to how interest compounds in a savings account, this is an “exponential growth” scenario because the numerical change gets larger each year as the same rate of increase – 1.9 percent in this case – is applied to an expanding total population.

– If Littleton maintained its respective 2010 shares of the total populations in Arapahoe and Jefferson counties (Douglas County was not included as Littleton is such a tiny share of the Douglas total). The portion of Littleton within Arapahoe County accounted for 7.3 percent of the countywide population in 2010, and the Jefferson County portion of Littleton was 7.8 percent of the Jefferson total population. This is known as the Fixed County Step Down scenario.

– If Littleton’s respective 2010 shares of the total populations in Arapahoe and Jefferson counties decreased over time rather than remain constant as above. This is known as the Trending County Step Down scenario and assumes that, by 2040, Littleton’s share of the Arapahoe County population would decrease from 7.3 to 6.3 percent. Likewise, Littleton’s share of the Jefferson County population would drop from 7.8 to 6.5 percent.

– If Littleton continued to experience an increase in population involving Steady Numeric Growth of 8,567 persons per decade through the current decade and then also in the 2020s and 2030s. In contrast to the exponential growth scenario above, this is a “linear growth” scenario as the numeric growth remains fixed rather than the growth rate. The assumption of fixed numeric growth means that the 1.9 percent annual growth rate experienced recently from 2010 through 2017 would drop to 1.6 percent during the 2020s, then to 1.4 percent during the 2030s.

Bottom Line

Littleton should consider a range of potential growth rather than an absolute number given the uncertainty of any small-area forecast that extends beyond a few years. It is assumed for this Plan that Littleton’s 2040 population will fall within a forecast range of 51,289 to 74,200 persons, which yields a midpoint of 62,745 residents.

The midpoint of a potential growth range to assume for this Plan would mean nearly 15,000 additional residents over 20 years. This suggests that Littleton could add the equivalent of 31 percent of its 2017 base-year population by 2040. For perspective, Census 2010 reported an average household size in Littleton of 2.29 persons, meaning that 6,550 additional housing units would be needed to accommodate 15,000 added residents.

An essential caveat is that the scenarios above are projections of what could occur in Littleton over the next several decades based on recent trends and/or specified assumptions. Because Littleton is largely built out, to what extent the potential growth can be absorbed – or absorbed at some lesser level or not at all – will depend on the City’s zoning framework and other municipal policy decisions going forward (e.g., regarding housing strategies, open space preservation, economic development, etc.). Throughout Envision Littleton, City officials stated their intent to proceed directly into a comprehensive evaluation and update of Littleton’s zoning and development codes. The outcomes of that next phase will determine the type and nature of new development that can occur on remaining vacant land, along with parameters for redevelopment and infill activity in existing developed areas.

This designation is for areas that should have limited development activity other than large-lot residential. Such areas provide a transition between a city’s rural fringe and more urbanized in-city development patterns and intensities. Lots in this category ideally should be one acre or larger, which provides substantial openness and separation between individual dwellings, and can incorporate agricultural uses.