Two businesses on the same block of West Colorado Avenue can face different sign requirements. Not because the city is inconsistent, but because zoning and register listing are different things.
Old Colorado City is one of the best storefront environments in the region: walkable, dense, and full of buildings people actually look at. It is also where we get the most anxious phone calls, because owners have heard that historic districts are difficult and assume the worst before checking anything.
Sometimes the process really is longer. Often it is not. This guide separates the layers so you can find out which ones are yours before spending money on a design.
Three Rulebooks, One Storefront
Sign Ordinance No. 26-01, adopted February 2026. Applies everywhere in the city. Sets permits, area allowances, sign types, and prohibitions.
Zoning that adds design review through the Historic Preservation Board. Applies only where a property is actually overlay zoned, which is narrower than most people assume.
Landlord tenant criteria and merchant or district association guidance. Not law, but binding on you contractually and often the strictest layer in practice.
Some parts of the city sit in form-based zones with their own board review. Another reason the answer depends on the address rather than the neighborhood name.
The mistake we see most often is skipping layer three. A business gets the city permit, installs a sign that complies with the code perfectly, and then hears from a landlord whose tenant criteria specified something else entirely.
What the District Actually Is
The Old Colorado City Historic Commercial District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in November 1982. It is a compact district of roughly eight acres, centered on the north side of Colorado Avenue from 24th Street west, with a couple of additional properties on South 26th Street and West Pikes Peak Avenue. The prevailing building character is Western Victorian.
Two things follow from that description, and both matter commercially:
- The district is small and specific. Plenty of businesses that describe themselves as being in Old Colorado City sit outside the listed district boundary. The neighborhood is larger than the historic district.
- The building stock is the draw. Storefronts here have transoms, recessed entries, and detailed facades that reward signage designed for them and punish signage that ignores them.
Colorado Springs has several other recognized historic areas, including the Old North End, North Weber and North Wahsatch, Boulder Crescent, and areas in and around downtown. Each has its own documents and, where overlay zoning exists, its own review path.
Register Listing vs Overlay Zoning
This is the section worth reading twice, because it decides whether your project involves a board.
Properties listed on the State or National Registers of Historic Places must meet specific criteria to be listed, but they are not subject to review by the Historic Preservation Board unless they are also overlay zoned. National Register listing is recognition. Historic preservation overlay zoning is regulation.
Listing is an honor. Overlay zoning is a process.
So the first phone call is not about historic design guidelines. It is a zoning question: does this specific parcel carry a historic preservation overlay? The answer comes from the city's planning department, and it is a quick lookup rather than a submittal.
Businesses that assume board review is required sometimes design conservatively for a process they were never subject to, or delay a project by weeks waiting for guidance nobody was going to ask them for. Five minutes of zoning verification prevents both.
If the Overlay Does Apply
Where a property is historic preservation overlay zoned, exterior changes go through the Historic Preservation Board, a seven member board appointed by City Council that administers review for properties zoned historic preservation and issues determinations on proposed work.
What that means for a sign project:
- Design review comes before or alongside the sign permit, not after. Building a design first and seeking approval second is the expensive order.
- Adopted design standards and guidelines govern. The city has published guidance documents for its historic areas, including the Westside, the North End, and Weber and Wahsatch. Ask which document applies to your address.
- Rehabilitation work on historic properties is expected to comply with the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation, which favor reversible changes that do not damage or obscure historic fabric.
- Board meetings run on a schedule. That schedule, rather than the design itself, is often what adds the weeks.
The reversibility principle is the practical one for signage. Mounting methods that anchor into mortar joints rather than through historic masonry, and hardware that can be removed without leaving damage, tend to review far better than anything that permanently alters a facade.
The Base Sign Code Still Applies
Historic review is additional, never a replacement. Everything in Ordinance 26-01 governs a storefront on Colorado Avenue exactly as it governs one on Academy.
- Wall sign allowance of 1.5 square feet per linear foot of building elevation for commercial uses, or 2 square feet where the building sits more than 200 feet back from the right of way.
- Minimum 25 square feet where the elevation is under 16.5 feet, which protects the narrow storefronts common in this district.
- Window signs at 25 percent coverage or less need no permit, at ground level only.
- Projecting signs for anything extending more than 12 inches from the wall, needing 8 feet of clearance over a pedestrian area and 14 feet over a vehicular area, with a maximum 6 foot projection.
- Roof limits, including no signage attached on top of a flat roof and no extension past a pitched roof peak.
The narrow-storefront minimum is worth highlighting. A 14 foot wide storefront would otherwise be entitled to 21 square feet, and the code guarantees 25 instead. Full detail on the allowance math and the three-shape measurement method is in do you need a permit for a wall sign.
Signage That Suits a Walking District
Old Colorado City is read at walking speed, which changes what works. A sign built for a driver at 45 miles per hour is the wrong instrument here.
| Type | Permit | Why it works here |
|---|---|---|
| Projecting or blade sign | Yes | Readable down the sidewalk, the classic main street format |
| Window graphics | No, at 25% or less | Close range, cheap, ground level only |
| Door lettering | No | Hours and address where people are already standing |
| A-frame | No | 4 ft by 2 ft, one per entrance, business hours only, within 15 ft of the door |
| Wall or awning sign | Yes | Identification from across the street |
| Building plaque | No | 6 sq ft, one per building |
The A-frame rule has one catch specific to a district like this: it cannot sit in the public right of way without a revocable permit from the city. On a narrow sidewalk, where the property line falls decides whether your sandwich board is fine or is a problem.
Projecting signs are the format most suited to the district and the one most worth investing in. They read down the block in both directions, they suit the building character, and they do the job a wall sign cannot do on a street where everyone is walking parallel to the facade.
Design That Fits the Character
Whether or not a board is reviewing your project, signage that respects the building performs better commercially in a district people visit specifically for its character.
- Work with the storefront's own frame. Historic commercial buildings usually have a sign band above the display windows, sized and placed by the original design. Using it looks intentional. Ignoring it looks like a tenant who did not notice.
- Mount into mortar joints, not through masonry. Reversible, repairable, and far better received in any review.
- Avoid covering transoms and detailing. Obscuring the features that make the building worth looking at is both a preservation problem and a marketing one.
- Consider dimensional letters and painted or gold leaf style window work, which suit the period without becoming a costume.
- Light externally where possible. A shielded gooseneck fixture over a sign reads correctly on a Victorian storefront in a way that a large internally lit box does not.
Material choice matters here too, and the climate does not soften for historic districts. At 6,035 feet, UV exposure is stronger than at sea level, so anything painted or printed needs a finish rated for it. Our guide to sign materials covers what survives.
Prohibited Everywhere in the City
These apply on Colorado Avenue exactly as they do anywhere else, and several of them are things visitors to a tourist district get pitched constantly:
- Feather, wave, blade, and sword banners. Prohibited outright citywide.
- Signs attached to light poles, fences, trees, rocks, or retaining walls, unless otherwise permitted.
- Flashing, rotating, or varying intensity lighting, searchlights, and projected imagery.
- Animated signs, with limited exceptions.
- Pavement markings used as branding.
- Parking a vehicle or trailer so that it functions as a freestanding or off-premises sign.
- Signs in the public right of way without a revocable permit.
Temporary banners are permitted but limited to 48 square feet per facade on a single story building, with a cumulative 120 display days per calendar year across the property. In a district with a heavy event calendar, those days are worth scheduling deliberately rather than spending on the first sidewalk sale of the year.
Why Historic Adds Weeks
In our experience a typical storefront sign permit runs two to six weeks from submittal. Where design review applies, plan on longer, and the reason is usually scheduling rather than difficulty.
- Board meetings are periodic. Missing a submittal deadline by a day can mean waiting for the next cycle.
- Documentation is heavier. Elevations, mounting details, materials, and sometimes photographs of existing conditions.
- Revisions cost a cycle. A change requested at a meeting may not be resolved until the following one.
- The sign permit still follows. Design review is in addition to the sign permit, not instead of it.
This is true everywhere and doubly true here. If you are opening in a historic district, the sign conversation belongs in the same week as the lease, not the same month as the opening. Also worth checking early: sign plans are not approved until the building permit for the principal use has been issued.
Finding Out What Applies to You
Four steps, in order, and the first two are free:
- Verify the zoning on your specific parcel with the city's planning department, including whether a historic preservation overlay or a form-based zone applies. Address-specific, not neighborhood-general.
- Ask which design guidance document applies, if any. The city publishes guidance for its historic areas, and knowing which one governs prevents designing against the wrong standard.
- Get the landlord's tenant criteria in writing, plus any merchant or district association guidance. This layer is contractual and frequently the strictest.
- Then design, with all three constraints known.
Send us the address, photos of the full storefront including the sign band and any existing signage, your elevation width, and whatever you learned in steps one through three. Our team will confirm what the code allows, work within any historic guidance that applies, and handle the permit as part of the project.
Once the estimate is approved and the deposit is received, our team will begin the design and proofing process. For the full permit process, see Colorado Springs sign permits after Ordinance 26-01, and for budgeting a first storefront package, see storefront signage cost for a new business.
The Short Version
- Up to three rulebooks apply at once: the citywide sign code, historic preservation overlay zoning where it exists, and private landlord or association standards.
- National or State Register listing does not by itself trigger Historic Preservation Board review. Overlay zoning does, so verify the zoning on your specific parcel first.
- The Old Colorado City Historic Commercial District has been on the National Register since 1982 and covers roughly eight acres, which is smaller than the area people call Old Colorado City.
- Where the overlay applies, design review runs before or alongside the sign permit, and board meeting schedules are usually what add the weeks.
- The base code still governs: 1.5 square feet per linear foot of elevation, a 25 square foot minimum on narrow storefronts, and 25 percent window coverage without a permit.
- Projecting signs suit a walking district better than anything else, needing 8 feet of clearance over a sidewalk and a maximum 6 foot projection.
- Feather flags, signs on light poles or trees, and signs in the right of way without a revocable permit are prohibited here as everywhere in the city.
Where this information comes from
- City of Colorado Springs Unified Development Code, Chapter 7, Article 4, Part 13 (Signs), as adopted by Sign Ordinance No. 26-01, February 2026, including permits, wall sign allowances, minor and temporary sign types, projection limits, and prohibited signs.
- City of Colorado Springs Historic Preservation program materials, including the role of the Historic Preservation Board, historic preservation overlay zoning, and published design guidance documents for the city's historic areas.
- National Register of Historic Places listing for the Old Colorado City Historic Commercial District, reference number 82001018, listed November 1982.
- Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation, referenced by the city for work on historic properties.
- APG permit and installation records, Colorado Springs office. Observed review timelines reflect our own filings and are not city published figures.
This guide is general information rather than legal advice. Zoning, overlay status, and applicable design guidance are address specific, and the city is the final authority.
