Historic Preservation Plan
Historic Preservation Plan Overview
In 2023, the City of Steamboat Springs commissioned the first standalone Historic Preservation Plan to serve as a long-range planning tool that considers the importance of historic places and integrates them into the city's broader current and long-range planning initiatives. The plan is designed to facilitate preservation and enhance the distinct community character of Steamboat Springs as the community changes and grows. With an overarching theme of 'Building with History, Growing with Vision', the plan reflects on outcomes of the city's past preservation efforts, state and national preservation policy and planning goals, and outlines overall community values to help align responsible growth through retention of heritage and culture.
The Historic Preservation Plan documents the historic preservation program and identifies goals, recommendations, and strategies to improve current processes and policies. It provides recommendations with specific strategies that offer solutions to identified constraints that have hindered current program progress. The plan integrates state and national historic preservation strategies such that they support other city goals, recommendations, and strategies to enhance economic vitality, identity, sustainability, and quality of live in Steamboat Springs.
Throughout the course of drafting the plan, a wide variety of public engagement opportunities were implemented between January 2025 - October 2025.
Your Voice Matters: Provide Feedback on the Historic Preservation Plan
Final drafts of the Historic Preservation Plan and Historic Preservation Design Guidelines are now available for review. Community members are encouraged to share their thoughts using the online feedback form by Sunday, October 12, 2025. Input will be used to finalize the plan and provide public feedback during the Historic Preservation Commission meeting on October 13 and City Council meeting on October 21.
Historic Preservation Plan - Project Overview
Building On History, Growing With Vision
The City of Steamboat Springs is embarking on the development of its first, city-wide Historic Preservation Plan (Plan), and making updates to the existing Historic Design Guidelines (Guidelines).
The plan is financed in part by a grant from the State Historical Fund, and will advance local preservation by articulating community supported preservation goals, initiatives, short to long-range milestones, and measurements for success. The final plan will dovetail and support historic preservation goals within our updated Area Community Plan (Community Canvas), in addition to formalizing action items for a variety of broad historic preservation goals found in various city and county plans.
The guidelines update will integrate survey and context results from the Mountain Area Historic Survey and Context, account for commercial property guidelines, and develop guidelines for properties built after 1950.
This effort is being developed alongside a separate Education, Engagement, and Outreach Strategy (Strategy), funded by a Certified Local Government pass-through grant. The intent is to advance local preservation planning, increase ability for the Historic Preservation Commission and staff to educate the community, and enhance the community's perception of, and participation in, the preservation program. The project will identify outreach strategies with stakeholder groups within Steamboat Springs to ultimately create a preservation network across the community to benefit preservation of the community's shared history. Results of the strategy will dovetail and support the plan.
Goals
- Define historic character and determine what aspects of the city are most important to preserve into the future.
- Facilitate the creation of community-defined preservation goals.
- Co-create and redefine a historic preservation program that serves the needs of the community and works to enhance community character and quality of life.
- Examine tools that manage historic properties in Steamboat Springs and evaluate their efficacy.
- Assess additional/alternative historic resource management tools to fulfill community-defined preservation goals.
- Provide short, mid, and long-term recommendations and action items to guide the historic preservation program into the future.
- Celebrate the historic resources of Steamboat Springs in new ways.
Key Audiences
- Industry Professionals (Architects, Developers, Design Professionals)
- Preservation Advocates
- Community Members (Renters, Homeowners, Visitors, Unheard Community)
- There are no stories to display. Why don't you share one?
