Breckenridge officials started preliminary conversations about potentially revamping neighborhood preservation guidelines, or essentially the town’s ability to control some factors related to residential development so they fit with the “character” of the town. 

As of late, Breckenridge finds it’s back in a position it last was in during 2007: officials have concerns about increasing larger developments being built and the accompanying impacts. More specifically, officials were and are wary of “scraping,” or demolishing a smaller home and replacing it with a new much larger one.

The concerns prompted officials in 2007 to create a neighborhood preservation policy, which ended up entailing a two-year process that established above-ground density limitations for single-family lots in the town’s older and more established neighborhoods. 

<figure class="wp-block-table">

Communities with preservation policies	Example lot size	Maximum home size (according to Breckenridge staff members)
Breckenridge	33,541 square feet	8,000 square feet
Vail	33,541 square feet	4,960 square feet
Aspen	33,541 square feet	6,600 square feet
Routt County	33,541 square feet	12,250 square feet (proposed)
Pitkin County	33,541 square feet	9,250 square feet

<figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Communities with similar guidelines. </figcaption></figure>

A staff memo for a Nov. 26 meeting stated the council at the time settled on less imposing restrictions “in the spirit of compromise.” Now, over 15 years later, officials have brought staff members back to the drawing board.

Homes in the Weisshorn area outside of downtown Breckenridge were at the forefront of the conversation.

“When you drive down roads in the Weisshorn, there’s certainly homes that have a really nice presence relative to the main thoroughfare, and then there’s other homes that maybe have a little bit more of an imposing presence,” council member Todd Rankin said. 

The staff memo highlighted how the median total home size in the Weisshorn Subdivision grew 29% since 2009, when the neighborhood preservation guidelines first went into effect.  

Many council members cited sustainability concerns as the driving force behind their directive to town staff members to take a second look at the neighborhood preservation policy. Their worries stem from energy usage and material waste which accompanies demolitions. 

Council member Steve Gerard said he’s been discussing energy usage with town staff members and  was “stunned by the statistics of the increase in electrical usage, energy usage with the growth of the homes.”

Staff members presented council with the findings of a 2023 report out of Pitkin County which their officials conducted following the adoption of maximum home size regulations. Research detailed in the report demonstrated “a strong correlation between home size and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per area.” It found that as home size increased from 1,000 square feet to 14,000 square feet, which was the size of the largest homes considered in the study, greenhouse gas emissions more than doubled. Additionally, it demonstrated the maintenance of large homes in unincorporated Pitkin County generated nearly 9% of the county’s total 2019 annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Staff members also noted “a more imminent concern related to Xcel (Energy) reaching its limit to supply natural gas and the need to shift more properties to use electricity exclusively for energy.” 

Mayor Kelly Owens said she was interested in using the policy to encourage people to not even hook into gas and consider cleaner energy options. She wondered if they could find a way to still allow the construction of new larger houses if the owners committed to having them be net-zero. Council member Carol Saade said she was also interested in looking into some sort of energy offset for larger homes. 

Council member Jay Beckerman said he was in favor of exploring different tools to mitigate energy usage from larger homes but felt regulating maximum square footage for a home “stinks of heavy handedness and overstepping.”

Rankin said he wanted there to be more clarity on what exactly the council wants the goal of refining a neighborhood preservation policy to be before moving forward with any changes. Council agreed with his sentiment. 

“I think we need to have multiple goals, this is a complex problem … I think we need to define it and I think sustainability is too broad,” council member Dick Carleton said. 

Staff members were directed to look into figuring out what the goals should be and what outcomes would be most beneficial.