The 2018 Development Moratorium
How Boulder County imposed a targeted development freeze on Niwot's downtown without warning — and what it cost the community.
The Decision
September 20, 2018
With no advance notice, the Boulder County Commissioners voted at a routine business meeting to impose a six-month moratorium on all new development and redevelopment applications in the Niwot Rural Community District — the three-block stretch of Second Avenue that comprises downtown Niwot.
The county's Land Use Department had determined that existing code provisions were "not adequate to provide the necessary direction in reviewing development projects" in the NRCD. The regulations dated to 1993 and had not been substantially updated in nearly a decade. The county said it needed time to revise rules around building density, use, and the interface between the commercial corridor on 2nd Avenue and the residential area on 3rd Avenue.
The moratorium was not countywide. It was targeted specifically at Niwot's downtown commercial district.
The Reaction
Business owners and property owners were caught off guard. Tony Santelli, then president of the Niwot Business Association, said county officials "over-reacted" to concerns about development by placing a "blanket moratorium without prior consultation with the businesses."
Tim Coonce, owner of Porchfront Homes in the historic district, reported that his bank would not extend a loan for development of his property because of the moratorium. The LID advisory committee formally convened with county land use officials to address the impact.
The community was told to wait.
Colterra
The moratorium hit hardest at 210 Franklin Street — the home of Colterra Food & Wine, a signature dining anchor that drew visitors from across the Front Range.
On October 18, 2017 — eleven months before the moratorium — a grease fire had caused significant damage to Colterra's kitchen. Chef and owner Bradford Heap initially planned to demolish and rebuild. But the moratorium blocked the permits he needed, and his insurer required renovations to be paid upfront before reimbursement, making the process financially prohibitive.
Heap made public pleas to the County Commissioners: "I am afraid that with the moratorium, my neighbors and good friends are going to have their property rights taken away."
October 2018
Commissioners voted 3-0 to extend the moratorium for another six months, but with a modification: the historic portion of the district — including the Colterra site — was exempted. However, complications remained. Colterra relied on leasing parking from neighboring properties that were still subject to the moratorium, creating uncertainty about whether those spaces would remain available.
August 2019
Heap scrapped plans to reopen and put the building up for sale. The property sold to a Boulder developer for $625,000 in September 2019. It was eventually redeveloped as two small commercial spaces on the ground floor with five residential condos above — exactly the kind of low-traffic professional use that the downtown's commercial zoning was meant to prevent.
The Reversal
The moratorium produced an outcome that captured the absurdity of Niwot's position. As the county cycled through proposed replacement regulations, business owners who had initially opposed the moratorium began asking the county to extend it — because the proposed new rules were so restrictive that a rushed adoption would have been worse than continued delay.
Niwot's business community found itself caught between a freeze and a bad set of rules, with no authority to shape either outcome.
This was not county-wide policy touching Niwot. This was the county imposing a targeted freeze on Niwot's specific downtown, without warning, and Niwot having no ability to respond except to petition the same body that imposed the freeze.
The Legacy
The closure of Colterra — a restaurant that generated LID revenue, anchored the downtown dining scene, and gave Niwot a culinary identity recognized across the region — left a vacancy at the heart of the historic district that persisted for years.
More broadly, the moratorium demonstrated the fundamental vulnerability of an unincorporated community. The county had the authority to freeze Niwot's downtown development unilaterally, and Niwot had no mechanism to seek an exception, no authority to set its own timeline, and no standing to negotiate as a peer.
The moratorium is one of the events that led directly to the current incorporation effort. Several of the people who lived through it — who watched the county impose a freeze without consultation, watched Colterra close, and watched the replacement regulations drag on for years — are now working to give Niwot the authority to make its own land use decisions.