A bill is being reviewed in the Colorado State Legislature that would allow for the construction of apartments buildings with only a single stairway.
As proposed by Democrat Representative Alex Valdez, the legislation will require local county commission boards to “allow up to 5 stories of a multifamily residential building to be served by a single exit.”
House Bill 24-1239 would, in effect, allow for the creation of denser development, and in so doing, encourage more housing construction, contends its supporters.
Apartment building construction in Colorado, as in many other states, has largely been a tale of one- and two-story projects that in their horizontal footprint take up more land. Valdez’s legislation is designed to create more vertical structures taking up less land.
A point of view published late last year by the American Institute of Architects argued that single stairway buildings “promote fine grained infill housing on currently underutilized lots.”
The essay noted that just in Denver alone there are some 10,000 small and narrow lots that could be “conducive for taller single stair buildings, unlocking these sites for future homes for residents of the city.”
The Colorado bill, which has received a good deal of media attention, has sparked the opposition of the Fire Marshall’s Association of Colorado, which contends that the legislation is too broadly drawn and could apply to a variety of other building types.
Various locations around the country have increasingly looked at single stair structures as an answer to the need for new housing construction, repealing previous codes mandating that structures with more than two floors must have at least two stairways.
Valdez’s bill is now being reviewed in the House Transportation, Housing & Local Government Committee.
By Garry Boulard
