Arvada, Colorado - City Development Fees

Fee Summary

Park and School Land Dedication (Impact Fees)

Source: City of Arvada, Park and School Fees 2024 (Revised 1/24). Arvada's impact-fee-family charges on new residential development are two land-dedication exactions, each satisfiable by conveyance or a cash fee-in-lieu, plus a per-unit Park Development Fee. Authority: Arvada Land Development Code Division 8-4 (Park and School Land Dedication).

Park Land Dedication or Fee-In-Lieu

• Dedication standard: convey not less than 10 acres per 1,000 projected population, or pay the cash equivalent of the fair market value of the land that would otherwise be required.
• Formula: (Total Dwelling Units x Density Factor) / 100 = Required Acreage Dedication. Required Acreage x Per-Acre Land Value = Cash Fee-In-Lieu.
• Density factors: Single-family detached 2.84; Multifamily or single-family attached 1.87; Multifamily within 1/2 mile of a G Line station 1.70; Housing for older persons 1.50.

Park Development Fee

• $2,150.91 per single-family dwelling unit.
• $1,806.76 per multifamily or single-family attached dwelling unit.
• Updated annually by CPI, Construction Cost Index, and Building Cost Index for the Denver metro region.
• Exempt: existing residential units, nursing homes, and residential development within 1/2 mile of a G Line station (per Land Development Code Div. 8-4-3).

School Land Dedication or Fee-In-Lieu

• Dedication standard: convey not less than 4 acres per 1,000 projected population, or pay the cash equivalent of fair market value.
• Formula: (Total Dwelling Units x Density Factor) / 250 = Required Acreage Dedication. Required Acreage x Per-Acre Land Value = Cash Fee-In-Lieu.
• Exempt: housing for older persons, nursing homes, existing residential units, and residential development within 1/2 mile of a G Line station.

Underwriting note: the cash fee-in-lieu on both dedications is a function of per-acre fair market land value at the time of computation, so it is a project-specific number rather than a fixed schedule amount. The Park Development Fee is the only fixed per-unit dollar figure in this family.

Land Use Development Application Fees

Source: City of Arvada 2026 Land Use Development Fees. Most application fees are tiered by development size across four brackets: under 1 acre, 1 to under 5 acres, 5 to under 30 acres, and 30 acres or more. Building permit fees are a separate 2026 Building Fee Schedule (valuation-based) and are outside the scope of this page.

Authority: City of Arvada (land use development application fees).

System Development Charges (Utility Tap Fees)

Source: City of Arvada, System Development Charges and Meter Fees, effective January 1, 2026, codified at Arvada City Code Section 102-34. Arvada operates its own municipal water and wastewater utility. SDCs are collected from new homes and businesses to fund new system capacity and are charged in addition to separate tapping fees and meter fees. The Metro Water Recovery component is the regional wastewater district's recovery charge, collected through the City SDC. Out-of-city charges are a separate schedule.

In-City Residential SDC (per dwelling unit)

In-City Non-Residential SDC (by water tap size)

Tapping and Meter Fees

Separate tapping fees and meter fees are required per individual address and are published in the City's full schedule. The hydrant meter deposit is $1,250.

Authority: City of Arvada Utilities (System Development Charges, tapping fees, and meter fees).

Special District Fees

Source: City of Arvada 2026 Land Use Development Fees (Special District line). Unlike most Colorado peer jurisdictions, which do not administer a city-level special district development fee, Arvada charges a Special District application and review fee of $4,525.00, flat regardless of acreage. This is the City's own processing charge for a special or metropolitan district service-plan application submitted to Arvada.

Colorado Title 32 metropolitan districts remain separate governmental entities that levy their own landowner mill-levy assessments and district-specific charges. Those district assessments are not city-administered and are not included in the figure above. The fee captured here is the developer-side charge payable to the City of Arvada to process the service plan.

Coverage Notes - What This Page Does Not Cover

Per ZoneFee's Partial-Verified Publication Standard, the items below were not closed on this page with a fixed fee amount traceable to a dated or byte-stable official source document. They are disclosed here rather than estimated, paraphrased from a non-official source, or omitted silently. These items remain under limited-coverage review until these gaps are closed.

Park Development Fee annual escalation

The Park Development Fee is updated annually by CPI, Construction Cost Index, and Building Cost Index for the Denver metro region. The figures on this page ($2,150.91 per single-family unit and $1,806.76 per multifamily or single-family attached unit) are drawn from the currently published official schedule, the Park and School Fees 2024 sheet as revised January 2024. Confirm the current-year escalated figure with the City of Arvada before using it in a pro forma.

Park and school fee-in-lieu cash amounts

The cash fee-in-lieu on both the park and school land dedications is computed from per-acre fair market land value applied to a required acreage derived from unit count and density factor. It is a project-specific formula output, not a fixed dollar figure printed in any schedule. This page presents the dedication standards, density factors, and formulas rather than a dollar amount.

Land use fee schedule effective date

The Land Use Development Fees schedule is labeled as the 2026 schedule and is linked as current by the City, but it carries no printed day-level effective or revised date stamp. The effective date is left unstated rather than inferred. The Special District application fee is drawn from the same schedule and carries the same date condition.

Utility source format

The System Development Charges schedule is published as a rendered HTML fee page on the City website rather than as a byte-stable PDF asset, so no document hash was captured for that family. The codified citation (Arvada City Code Section 102-34) and the explicit January 1, 2026 effective date anchor the record. The non-residential schedule continues above the 3 inch tap size; larger tap sizes should be read directly from the City schedule.

Building permit fees

Arvada's building permit fees are valuation-based and are published in a separate 2026 Building Fee Schedule. They are not enumerated on this page, which covers land use application, impact, special district, and utility connection charges only.

Proffers

Colorado jurisdictions do not use cash proffers (a Virginia conditional-zoning mechanism under Virginia Code Section 15.2-2303 with no Colorado counterpart). Arvada recovers growth-related capital needs through park and school land dedication and the Park Development Fee (the impact-fee family above) and through development agreements, not proffers. Closed-search outcome: this fee family does not apply to this jurisdiction.

Fee Authorities

Sources