Change of Use Permit (Site Plan Review) in Severance, Colorado

Severance requires a change of use permit (site plan review) for: Site plan review is required for: (1) all development, including additions, in all zone districts except single-family or duplex residential dwelling uses; (2) establishment of a use by special review; or (3) any change of use from one primary use classification to another (e.g., residential to commercial), per Sec. 16.2.240(b); Submittal requirements: a complete land use application form and checklist with fees paid; a written letter of intent; property documentation/proof of ownership current within 30 calendar days of submittal; a site plan drawing (cover page, existing conditions, proposed site improvements/details, grading, utilities, landscaping, architectural elevations, lighting plan, site/building signage); engineering reports/studies as applicable (drainage, utility, soils/geotechnical, and a PE-prepared traffic study); and any other supporting materials the Town requires; Reviewed against 9 criteria including consistency with the Comprehensive Plan and any prior subdivision/land-use approvals, easement protection, drainage/utility adequacy, and access/circulation consistency (Sec. 16.2.240(d)); Following staff/referral-agency review and any resubmittals, the application is scheduled for Planning Commission review (which forwards a recommendation) and then Town Council, which makes the final decision; Building permits will not be issued for development that doesn't conform to the approved site plan; a certificate of occupancy will not be issued for a building/structure built in violation of an approved site plan; Site plan approval is effective for 2 years from the approval date (or as otherwise stated); building permits cannot be issued off a site plan approval more than 2 years old. A one-time extension of up to 1 year is available from the decision-maker upon written request and justification prior to expiration; Separately, a nonconforming use may NOT be changed or replaced with a different nonconforming use, per Sec. 16.1.120(b) — this restriction is distinct from and narrower than the general change-of-use trigger above. If your project isn't listed, confirm with Town of Severance Building & Permits Department (Planning Services, Attn: Building Department) at 970-692-7315 before starting work.

It's billed at the Town's $2,000.00 Site Plan Review fee (2026 Fee Schedule, § 16.19.110) — the same fee that also applies to Annexation, Minor Subdivision, Preliminary Plat, and Final Plat applications. No separate, lower change-of-use-specific fee is published.

Severance does not publish a plan-review timeline for this permit. Contact Town of Severance Building & Permits Department (Planning Services, Attn: Building Department) at 970-692-7315 for current turnaround.

You'll need: Land Use Application Form and Checklist (Site Plan); Written Letter of Intent; Proof of Ownership; Site Plan Drawing. Depending on your project, Severance may also ask for: Engineering Reports and Studies. See the required-documents checklist on this page for details on each.

Severance requires 2 inspection(s) for a change of use permit (site plan review), in order: Planning Commission Review & Recommendation, Town Council Final Decision. Schedule each through Town of Severance Building & Permits Department (Planning Services, Attn: Building Department) (970-692-7315).

Apply through Town of Severance Building & Permits Department (Planning Services, Attn: Building Department) at 3 S. Timber Ridge Parkway, P.O. Box 339, Severance, CO 80546. Phone: 970-692-7315, email: building@townofseverance.org. Office hours: Monday-Friday, 8:00 am - 5:00 pm. General Permit Clerk / Town Hall line also published as 970-686-1218 (fax 970-686-6250) on Building Department PDF forms; primary Building Department contact line is 970-692-7315. Plan review and inspections are contracted out to SAFEbuilt Colorado, which uses its own contact channel (see inspections note).. Official information: https://www.townofseverance.org/173/Building-Permits.

Severance, Colorado has adopted: 2024 International Residential Code (IRC) — Town of Severance 'Design Criteria Town of Severance' document (SAFEbuilt/Town primary source, DocumentCenter/View/1106), Residential Construction section; 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) — same source, Residential Construction section; 2023 National Electrical Code (NEC) — same source, listed under both Residential and Commercial Construction sections; 2024 International Building Code (IBC) — same source, Commercial Construction section; 2024 International Plumbing Code (IPC) — per the 2024 Client Design Criteria document (SAFEbuilt/Town, Commercial Construction section); HOWEVER, the Town's own codified Municipal Code (library.municode.com/co/severance, Chapter 18, Article 4, Sec. 18-4-10, successfully retrieved live via browser rendering on 2026-07-23) states: 'The International Plumbing Code, 2018 Edition ... is hereby adopted by reference as the Town of Severance Plumbing Code' (Ord. 2019-07 § 4; Ord. No. 2025-27, § 6, enacted Dec. 9, 2025) — i.e. the codified ordinance readopted/carried forward the 2018 IPC edition even in the same Dec. 9, 2025 recodification that moved most other codes to 2024. The codified Municipal Code (the Town's actual adopted law) is treated as authoritative over the SAFEbuilt client-facing summary sheet for this fact; IPC is 2018, not 2024, in Severance.; 2024 International Mechanical Code (IMC) — per the 2024 Client Design Criteria document (SAFEbuilt/Town, Commercial Construction section); HOWEVER, the Town's own codified Municipal Code (Chapter 18, Article 3, Sec. 18-3-10, retrieved live 2026-07-23) states: 'The International Mechanical Code, 2018 Edition ... is hereby adopted by reference as the Town of Severance Mechanical Code' (Ord. No. 2025-27, § 4, enacted Dec. 9, 2025) — the same Dec. 9, 2025 recodification ordinance that adopted 2024 IBC/IRC/IECC/IFGC/IPMC/IEBC left IMC at the 2018 edition. The codified Municipal Code is treated as authoritative over the SAFEbuilt summary sheet; IMC is 2018, not 2024, in Severance.; 2024 International Fuel Gas Code (IFGC) — same source, Commercial Construction section; 2024 International Energy Code — same source, Commercial Construction section (listed as a separate line from the 2024 IECC entry under Residential; the Town's document does not clarify whether these are intended as the same document cited twice or two distinct adoptions, so both are recorded as they appear on the primary source); 2024 Pool and Spa Code — per the 2024 Client Design Criteria document (SAFEbuilt/Town, Commercial Construction section); HOWEVER, the Town's own codified Municipal Code (Chapter 18, Article 12, Sec. 18-12-10, retrieved live 2026-07-23) states: 'The International Swimming Pool and Spa Code, 2018 Edition ... is hereby adopted by reference as the Town of Severance Swimming Pool and Spa Code' (Ord. No. 2025-27, § 9, enacted Dec. 9, 2025). The codified Municipal Code is treated as authoritative; ISPSC is 2018, not 2024, in Severance. (No standalone swimming-pool permit-type entry exists in this file's permitTypes array, so this correction is recorded here only; the 2024 Swimming Pools Guide, DocumentCenter/View/203, is a generic SAFEbuilt trade guide and does not itself state a code edition or fee/timeline figure.); 2024 International Property Maintenance Code — same source, 'Other Adopted Codes' section; 2024 International Existing Building Code — same source, 'Other Adopted Codes' section; State Codes (as listed on the Town's own Design Criteria document): Electric Ready, Solar Ready, EV Ready — consistent with Colorado HB22-1362's statewide energy/electrification floor (2021 IECC-derived electric-ready, solar-ready, EV-ready provisions, effective window July 2023-July 2026); confirmed independently by the '2026 SAFEbuilt Residential Application Checklist' (DocumentCenter/View/1149), which requires EV-ready (min. 40A circuit within 3ft of a car space), Solar-ready (roof-plan solar zones, prewire routing, truss dead-load verification), and Electric-ready (pre-wire location/note and full electric-appliance load calculation for new single-family, two-family, and townhome dwellings) documentation for permit submittal, and by the New Commercial Plan Submittal Procedure (DocumentCenter/View/182), which states 'EV ready, Solar ready and Electric ready are now required to be shown on plans.'; Note on a separate SAFEbuilt-published document: the '2023 NEC Photovoltaic System Submittal Requirements' guide (DocumentCenter/View/210, last revised 08.11.2023) states 'Applicable current codes are the 2023 NEC, 2018 International Codes' — this conflicts with the Town-specific 2024 Client Design Criteria document and appears to be a generic/stale SAFEbuilt template not yet updated to Severance's current 2024 code cycle; the Town's own jurisdiction-specific Design Criteria document (2024, explicitly labeled 'Severance') is treated as authoritative for this file rather than the generic PV guide.; Note on a secondary (non-.gov, AI-generated meeting-summary) source found during research: a Citizen Portal article describing a Severance Town Council work session states building official Russ Weber (SAFEbuilt) briefed Council on the 2024 ICC model codes and state-mandated changes, and that no formal adoption ordinance/vote occurred at that specific work session — Council directed staff to return with a formal adoption package excluding wildfire-resiliency provisions pending clarification. This source was NOT used as a citation for any fact in this file (it is a third-party AI-summarized meeting recap, not an official Town/.gov document, and is explicitly excluded per this project's official-sources-only policy). It is noted here only as context for why a formal Chapter 18 Municode ordinance number could not be independently confirmed in the original research session — Municode's Severance library (library.municode.com/co/severance) returned only its client-side Angular application shell (no server-rendered ordinance text) to both a standard WebFetch and a full-browser-header curl request in that session. The Town's own primary-source Design Criteria and permit-guide PDFs (all dated 2026 or explicitly labeled '2024 IRC'/'2024 International Codes') were used instead as the governing record of currently-adopted codes at that time.; UPDATE 2026-07-23: Municode's Severance library WAS successfully retrieved this session using the Claude Browser pane (direct navigation with specific nodeId query parameters, e.g. ?nodeId=CH18BURE_ART1BUCO, renders the JS-driven Angular SPA's actual section text — a plain WebFetch/curl request only ever returns the pre-render shell). The codified Municipal Code confirms: 'SEVERANCE MUNICIPAL CODE Codified through Ordinance No. 2025-27, enacted December 9, 2025' (Supp. No. 15, online content updated June 29, 2026), which repealed and re-enacted Chapter 18 Articles 1-10 and 12 in full. This resolved the previously-unconfirmed ordinance number (Ord. No. 2025-27 is exactly the Dec-2025-era code-adoption ordinance this file's original research could not pin down) and, on cross-check against every article, surfaced three code-edition corrections against the SAFEbuilt Design Criteria PDF: IMC and IPC are codified at the 2018 edition (not 2024) per Ord. No. 2025-27 §§ 4 and 6, and the Swimming Pool and Spa Code is codified at the 2018 edition (not 2024) per Ord. No. 2025-27 § 9 — see the corrected codesAdopted entries above. IBC, IRC, IECC, IFGC, IPMC, and IEBC are independently confirmed at the 2024 edition per the same ordinance (Sec. 18-1-10, 18-2-10, 18-8-10, 18-6-10, 18-9-10, 18-10-10), and NEC is confirmed at 2023 (Sec. 18-4-40, Ord. No. 2023-09). Chapter 18, Article 11 (Building Permits, Sec. 18-11-10 'Issuance' and Sec. 18-11-20 'Surcharge') was also checked in full: it contains only permit-issuance criteria and the administration surcharge (30% of inspection fees or $30.00, matching this file's existing Administration Fee line) — no permit-type-specific review-timeline SLA and no demolition-specific fee or process are codified anywhere in Chapter 18, confirming (from the Town's own adopted law, the strongest available primary source) that the review-timeline and demolition-fee gaps noted throughout this file's permitTypes are genuine publication gaps rather than a research miss. Separately, Ordinance No. 2025-08 adopted the 2024 International Fire Code (not previously tracked in this file's codesAdopted list; out of scope to add here since no fire-permit type exists in this file's permitTypes array).. Local amendments apply — see the Severance overview page for the full list.

Not by that name. Land Use Code Sec. 16.2.240(b)(3) requires full Site Plan Review — with a Planning Commission recommendation and a Town Council final decision — whenever a use changes from one primary use classification to another (the Code's own example is residential to commercial).