The Community Planning and Housing Committee met on the afternoon of November 4, 2025, to consider a package of building and fire code amendments—including single-stair provisions, wildland‑urban interface code adoption, and miscellaneous updates—and two rezoning applications for Regis University properties. All items were approved for referral to the full City Council.
Afternoon. We are here for community planning and housing. Oops, did I get that right? I think I did. Thank you very much. And today is November 4th in the afternoon. I'm Diana Romero Campbell and I represent District 4. We have a few action items today and a presentation. But in the meantime, can we go online and have the council members introduce themselves? Okay, I'm not yet. Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver District 2. Amy Torres, West Denver District 3. Good afternoon, Amanda Sawyer District 5. We can start to our right for introduction. Great. Sarah Fardy, you're one minute late committee chair. Thank you, Madam Pro Tem. Darrell Watson, fine district nine. And again, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4. And Paul Cash from South Denver District 6. Perfect. Thanks for the tolerance, everyone. We had a very late night last night, and so we're all running around like chickens with our heads cut off a little bit. But I'm very excited for this presentation today. We are going to care about an ordinance that Council President Sandoval, Councilor Cashman, Councilmember Watson, myself, and our agency partners who are here today have been working on for how long now? A year and a half. Yeah, a year and a half, quite some time, to try to get a really solid set of regulations into the Denver Building Code so that we can allow single stairway buildings when it is safe to do so, and thereby make it possible to build more flexibly on small lots. These buildings are conducive to multi-unit housing, and they just create a lot of flexibility and cost savings. So I will do if any of my co-sponsors want to say a word before the agency presentation, feel free. Otherwise, I will turn to you guys again after we hear from Mr. Browning and Chief DeBair. You guys can introduce yourselves and take it away. Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you for having us this afternoon. My name is Eric Browning. I'm the chief building official in community planning and development, and I'm joined by Chief DeBar with Denver Fire Department. We'll be presenting this afternoon on a small suite of building and fire code updates in addition to the single stair topic that Councilwoman Parody spoke of. There are a couple other items that were including in this package and that were provided in the red line documents of the building and fire codes for your consideration. And that's true. There we go. Okay. So again, yes, single stair is a primary and important topic for this code update. There is also language with respect to adoption of the wild and urban interface code, which is something that comes to us uh through the state and is necessary for municipalities to adopt. And then there are a handful of other miscellaneous and minor updates that are certainly important and timely, that I'll talk through towards the end of the presentation, wrapping up with timeline and next steps for this legislative process. So the background for single stair, as Councilwoman Parody properly um noted, has been in research and development for well over a year. Um Chief DeBar and I have uh been working to um craft language most recently following the passage of Colorado House Bill 251273, uh which came through in the regular legislative session of the state uh earlier this year. We've also been evaluating the 2027 draft edition of the International Building Code and the International Fire Code, and of course, coordinating uh with the four uh council sponsors related to this topic. And what we have uh be presenting this afternoon is a culmination of all of the research and all of that information and trying to find the sweet spot um to allow single stair small apartment buildings um to be designed and built within Denver. As I mentioned, in addition, I'll be presenting some information on the wildland urban fire interface.