Telluride building permits
VerifiedDepartment contacts, adopted codes, permit types, fees, and gotchas for Telluride, Colorado.
Last verified 2026-07-13 · Source · Embed this page’s badge · Version history
Building department
- Address
- Rebekah Hall, 113 W. Columbia Ave, Telluride, CO 81435 (mailing: PO Box 397, Telluride, CO 81435)
- Phone
- 970-728-5700
- Office hours
- Main Planning & Building Department line 970-728-5700. Building Official Sam Samuelson: 970-728-2143. SmartGov online-portal assistance / Historic Preservation, Planning and Building Coordinator Tammy Brand: 970-728-2175. Building Inspector Bill Spencer: 970-708-2464.
- Website
- Official site
- Permit portal
- Apply online at Telluride's portal
Inspection guide
See how inspections work in Telluride — sequence, scheduling & re-inspection fees.
Codes adopted
Colorado has no statewide-mandated building code edition. Under the Colorado Constitution's home-rule provisions (art. XX, home rule for municipalities since 1902; home rule for counties since 1970), building codes and zoning are an enumerated home-rule charter power, so cities and counties adopt and amend their own construction codes independently — predominantly the I-Codes, with editions and local amendments varying by jurisdiction. The one statewide floor is for energy: HB22-1362 (2022) created the Energy Code Board (jointly appointed by the Colorado Energy Office and the Department of Local Affairs) and requires that, on or after July 1, 2023 and before July 1, 2026, any municipality or county that adopts or updates a building code must adopt and enforce an energy code achieving performance equivalent to or better than the 2021 IECC together with the board's Model Electric Ready and Solar Ready Code (which includes electric-ready, EV-ready, and solar-ready provisions); from July 1, 2026 onward the floor shifts to the board's Model Low Energy and Carbon Code or an equivalent. Electrical and plumbing permitting defaults to the Colorado State Electrical Board and State Plumbing Board (within DORA's Division of Professions and Occupations) — the state issues permits and inspects statewide except in counties/jurisdictions that operate their own certified Electrical or Plumbing Inspection Program, in which case the local program has authority instead. Always confirm the currently adopted code edition, local amendments, and inspection authority (state board vs. local program) with the specific jurisdiction before submitting plans.
- 2024 International Building Code (IBC) — adopted by Ordinance 1620 (Series of 2025), effective September 12, 2025, per the Town Council second-reading staff memorandum (September 9, 2025) and the live Building Codes webpage
- 2024 International Residential Code (IRC)
- 2024 International Existing Building Code (IEBC)
- 2024 International Mechanical Code (IMC)
- 2024 International Fuel Gas Code (IFGC)
- 2024 International Plumbing Code (IPC)
- 2024 International Fire Code (IFC) — enforced jointly with the Telluride Fire Protection District per Resolution No. 2019-03
- 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC)
- 2024 International Property Maintenance Code (IPMC)
- 2024 International Swimming Pool and Spa Code (ISPSC)
- 2024 International Code Council Performance Code for Buildings and Facilities
- 2023 National Electrical Code (NEC)
- 2023 Colorado Model Electric Ready and Solar Ready Code
- Prior code cycle (superseded, listed for reference only): 2018-edition IBC/IRC/IEBC/IMC/IFGC/IPC/IPMC adopted by Ordinance 1502, effective February 18, 2020
- All codes locally amended via Telluride Municipal Code Chapter 15 (Building Regulations), Articles 1-13; amendment structure verified directly against both the archived 2018-cycle amendment ordinance (Ordinance 1502 full text) and the current 2024-cycle Town Council staff memorandum/ordinance text (Ordinance 1620) for this file — the two were cross-checked against each other since the live telluride.municipal.codes site blocked automated fetches during this research session (see tipsAndGotchas for the chase trail).
Permit types & fees
Residential Building Permit (New Construction)
Required for new construction of single-family, duplex, and townhouse structures in the Town of Telluride. Reviewed under the 2024 IRC/IBC as locally amended, including the Town's Climatic and Geographic Design Criteria (100 mph Vult wind speed/Exposure B, Seismic Design Category B, 48-inch frost depth, ground/roof snow load per the ASCE Hazard tool, mandatory ice barrier underlayment). Because the entire town lies within a National Historic Landmark District, HARC Certificate of Appropriateness approval is required before permit issuance for any exterior work.
Residential Addition / Interior Remodel Permit
Required for additions and interior/exterior remodels to existing single-family, duplex, and townhouse structures in Telluride. Reviewed under the 2024 IRC as locally amended. HARC Certificate of Appropriateness is required before permit issuance for any exterior changes, since the entire town is within a National Historic Landmark District.
Electrical Permit
Required for installation, alteration, or repair of electrical systems in Telluride. Governed by the 2023 NEC as adopted (Ordinance 1620) plus the 2023 Colorado Model Electric Ready and Solar Ready Code. Administered through the same SmartGov portal as building permits; fee calculated under the same Table 1-A valuation schedule used for building/mechanical/plumbing permits.
Plumbing Permit
Required for installation, alteration, or repair of plumbing systems in Telluride. Governed by the 2024 International Plumbing Code (IPC) as adopted. Administered through the same SmartGov portal used for building/electrical/mechanical permits; fee calculated per the same Table 1-A valuation schedule.
Mechanical / HVAC Permit
Required for heating, cooling, ventilation, and gas appliance installation or replacement in Telluride. Governed by the 2024 International Mechanical Code (IMC) and 2024 International Fuel Gas Code (IFGC) as adopted. Administered through the same SmartGov portal and Table 1-A fee schedule used for building/electrical/plumbing permits.
Residential/Commercial Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Permit
Required for installation of a rooftop or ground-mounted solar photovoltaic system in the Town of Telluride. No solar-specific fee line, checklist, or turnaround SLA is published on the Town's Building Department, Building Codes, or Fee Schedule pages as of 2026-07-20 — a PV system is billed under the same Table 1-A valuation-based fee schedule already documented in this file's Electrical Permit entry. Colorado's statewide C.R.S. § 24-48.5-113 independently caps whatever fee is actually assessed for a solar energy device installation at $500 for a residential permit or $1,000 for a nonresidential permit (systems under 2 megawatts), overriding Telluride's Table 1-A calculation for solar specifically. Because Telluride's entire town core sits within a National Historic Landmark District, a visible roof-mounted array is expected to require HARC Certificate of Appropriateness approval before the building permit is issued, the same as any other exterior work documented elsewhere in this file.
Roofing Permit (Re-Roof)
Required for re-roofing work in the Town of Telluride, reviewed as a Building Permit under the same Table 1-A valuation-based fee schedule (no separate flat re-roof fee is published). Governed by the 2024 IBC/IRC as adopted, with mandatory snow-shed mitigation design (IBC 903.5/IRC R318.2.1) and the Town's Climatic and Geographic Design Criteria (ice barrier underlayment required, ground/roof snow load per the ASCE Hazard tool). HARC review is required for any visible roofing change since the town is a National Historic Landmark District.
Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Station Permit
Telluride does not publish a distinct fee line item, application form, or process for electric vehicle (EV) charging station / EVSE installations. The Town's Building Permit Fee Schedule and the Building Division's published permit list do not list 'EV charger,' 'EVSE,' or 'electric vehicle charging station' as a separate permit category. An EV charger installation (new circuit/branch circuit for a Level 2 charger, panel work, etc.) is billed as an Electrical Permit under the same Table 1-A valuation-based fee schedule used for all electrical work, per the same mechanism documented in this dataset's electrical-permit entry — this is a real, currently-published fee-schedule mechanism and is the governing charge for an EV charger circuit. Telluride's 2020 Census population (2,607) is well under the 10,000-resident municipal threshold in Colorado HB24-1173 (effective 8/7/2024), so the Town is not a 'covered municipal permitting agency' required to adopt the state's model EV-charger permit code, custom standards, or the statute's 3-business-day decision-notification timeline. Telluride is not a participating SolarAPP+ jurisdiction (gosolarapp.org lists no Colorado mountain towns of Telluride's size as of this review), and SolarAPP+ in any case does not cover EV charger installations.
New residential construction activity
New privately-owned residential construction onlyHousing units authorized by building permits for new privately-owned residential construction — this is not total permit volume (no commercial permits or remodels).
- Latest month (2026-05)
- No data reported
- Trailing 12 months
- No data reported
- Year to date
- No data reported
- Latest full year
- No data reported
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Building Permits Survey (BPS), 2026-05 vintage. Census survey data — separate from the permit-requirements verification above. All Colorado building activity
Tips & gotchas
- Telluride is a home-rule town with its OWN Planning & Building Department, Building Division (Rebekah Hall, 113 W. Columbia Ave) — San Miguel County's own Building Department has land use and building authority only over unincorporated county land, per the County's own jurisdictional statements, and does not issue permits within Telluride town limits despite sharing a physical address complex (333 W Colorado Ave is the County's separate office).
- Telluride's entire town core is a National Historic Landmark District: HARC (Historic and Architectural Review Commission) Certificate of Appropriateness approval is required BEFORE building permit issuance for essentially any exterior work — erection, demolition, moving, renovation, restoration, addition to, or alteration of any structure or sign, and even for a straightforward re-roof. This is a genuinely distinct process from Building Division plan review, triaged into four review-intensity tiers (Large Scale, Small Scale, Minor, Insubstantial).
- Ground/roof snow load design criteria changed with the 2024 code cycle (Ordinance 1620, effective 9/12/2025): it is now determined 'per the ASCE Hazard tool' rather than the flat 75 psf figure used under the prior 2018-cycle ordinance — always confirm which cycle's design value a structural submission is using.
- Table R301.2 design criteria (Telluride Municipal Code 15-2-30, current 2024-cycle text): 100 mph Vult wind speed/Exposure B, Seismic Design Category B, Severe weathering, 48-inch frost line depth, None-to-slight termite, -16 F winter design temp, ice barrier underlayment REQUIRED, 2000 air freezing index, 40 F mean annual temp.
- The Town publishes NO numeric plan-review turnaround (days or weeks) for any standard building-permit category anywhere on its site — not on the Building Department page, the Building Codes page, the Applications/Forms/Permits/Resources page, the Building Permit Fee Schedule, or the Construction Mitigation Plan Manual. Colorado is home-rule with no statewide clock, and every permitType in this file is honestly null/unverified with a documented chase trail rather than an invented figure.
- A single Table 1-A valuation-based fee schedule (effective 1/1/2023) applies to Building, Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing permits alike — each trade's own project valuation is run through the same fee table, unlike some peer Colorado towns that anchor electrical fees to a separate state-mandated schedule.
- The Green Building Fee (20% of the Building Permit Fee) funds the Telluride Energy Mitigation Program (TEMP, Ordinance 1372) and can alternately be mitigated on-site or off-site with an eligible renewable energy system rather than paid as a straight fee.
- The Building License Fee (construction cost x 0.007) does NOT apply to single-family, duplex, or triplex units built in the residential zone, or to deed-restricted long-term housing units built in any zone (Municipal Code Ch. 6, Sec. 6-1-20(5)) — most standard single-family residential permits in this file will not incur this fee, but confirm against your specific project's zoning and deed-restriction status.
- All contractors and subcontractors need a current Town of Telluride BUSINESS LICENSE (Municipal Code Chapter 6, administered by the Town Clerk's Office) to perform work within town limits, separate from any Colorado state trade licensure that may also apply.
- A Construction Mitigation Plan (CMP) is required, and must be approved by the Building Department before permit issuance or construction start, for any project disturbing 500+ sq ft of property or involving 500+ sq ft of demolition/renovation (interior and/or exterior) within any 12-month period — thresholds are cumulative across all projects on the same property. Contractor construction hours are separately limited to Monday-Friday 8:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. under Municipal Code Section 7-2-20(b).
- Short-Term Rental (STR) licensing in Telluride is administered by the Town Clerk's Department (STR Program Administrator), not the Building Division — a separate regulatory/licensing process, not modeled as a permitType in this file.
- Accessory Dwelling Units, standalone Fence/Retaining Wall permits, and standalone Demolition permits are NOT modeled as separate permitTypes in this file: this session could not genuinely verify Telluride's own Land Use Code text for ADU size limits (only a conflicting, unsourced third-party '1,000 sq ft' figure vs. the LUC's own 950 sq ft general accessory-structure cap could be found), and fence/demolition rules found were zoning/historic-preservation review criteria (Land Use Code, Design Guidelines) rather than Building Division permit-type data with its own fees/documents/timelines. All three still require a standard Building Division permit (via Residential Building or Addition/Remodel) plus, for ADUs/demolitions, the separate HARC and zoning review described above.
- The Town of Telluride's telluride-co.gov / www.telluride-co.gov hostname has NO DNS records of any kind (A, AAAA, CNAME, NS, or SOA all came back empty from both Google 8.8.8.8 and Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 public resolvers on 2026-07-13 — this is not a resolver-specific or transient failure, the zone itself has no delegation) while telluride.gov (no hyphen) resolves normally to 208.90.191.17 and telluride-co.civicweb.net also resolves normally. This was first observed 2026-07-06 and reconfirmed 2026-07-13 via a weekly URL-liveness sweep that flagged 5 www.telluride-co.gov citation URLs as unreachable ('fetch failed'); all 5 paths were re-verified live and content-matching at the equivalent telluride.gov (no hyphen) URL (HTTP 200, matching Ordinance 1620 / HARC content confirmed), so every www.telluride-co.gov citation in this file was repointed to telluride.gov rather than left broken or downgraded. If re-verifying in the future, telluride-co.gov should be treated as permanently dead unless independently reconfirmed live — do not cite it directly. The telluride.municipal.codes host (hosting the actual Municipal Code and Land Use Code text) returned a hard 403 to automated fetches even with full browser headers in the 2026-07-06 session; ordinance PDFs pulled from the DocumentCenter (via WebFetch, then reprocessed with pdftotext -layout per this corpus's scanned-PDF chase protocol) were used as the authoritative substitute and cross-checked against current live-page search snippets where possible.