An ordinance that would make it easier for child and adult day care centers to open in neighborhoods and as part of businesses received preliminary approval Tuesday from the Colorado Springs City Council. 

The proposal, which the council must pass a second time before it takes effect, would allow both home-based centers and commercial child care as a permitted use in residential zones.

Dave Donelson, the only councilmember who opposed the measure, proposed three changes to try to restrict large facilities in residential areas, but his changes received no support from the rest of the council.

The Joint Initiatives for Youth and Families estimated that El Paso County has around 47,000 children under the age of 5 but only 18,000 licensed slots with child care providers. CEO SherryLynn Boyles said the proposed zoning changes would be an initial step to help fill the gap in Colorado Springs.

Liz Denson, president of the Early Connections Learning Center, told the council that even with her experience in the industry, she struggled to find care for her newborn daughter and ended up driving an hour from her home to find a slot.

“How are families without connections, flexibility or resources able to make this work? And the answer is that often, they just can’t. These zoning changes won’t solve the child care crisis overnight, but they are meaningful and practical steps in the right direction,” Denson said.

The Planning Commission unanimously approved the proposal in April, and city staff added additional restrictions to appease concerns about protecting neighborhoods from new businesses.

City Planner Allison Stocker said dozens of providers operate in legal but non-conforming zones in the city, preventing them from expanding without extensive applications. Stocker pointed to Revolution Church on Montebello Drive and the Ruth Washburn Cooperative Nursery School on 19th Street as examples of places that took months of rezoning applications and fees to add or expand their child care.

Stocker said large centers would still be limited in practice. Commercial child care centers would need to meet minimum requirements of floorspace per child, parking, design and potentially traffic impact to be approved and licensed.

“If Traffic finds that this site’s not going to work, that would get nixed right at the development plan level. There’s a lot of analysis and a lot of oversight that goes into those development plans, with still the option of public comment and appeals,” Stocker said.

One restriction that city staff added in recent weeks is that the centers could not have a main entrance on a residential street. A map presented by Stocker showed that about half of the Old North End neighborhood would be covered by that rule. In most neighborhoods in the city, even larger swaths of roads would be off limits.

Donelson used the example of Flintridge Drive near his neighborhood as an example of a road that should still have limits on the expanded child care.

“There’s not that big of a difference between the residential street and the collector street. Once you’re inside of a neighborhood, you don’t really realize if it’s one or the other,” Donelson said.

The ordinance would also create a new definition to expand centers that operate as an accessory use, meaning they are not the primary use of the building. Accessory child care centers can be allowed with a wide range of other uses, from schools and churches to multifamily housing developments and some light industrial businesses.

In a survey of more than 200 people in Colorado Springs, the Historic Neighborhoods Partnership found that 47% of residents would support having a day care next door to them, while 40% would not. The support was much higher for the smaller day cares.

“Residential zones are intended for uses compatible with residential scale. Small, neighborly day care centers, those are compatible,” Dianne Bridges, who leads the partnership. “A neighborhood is not a commercial corridor. That’s the bottom line.”

Bridges said she worried about the edge cases where very large child care centers could open in neighborhoods without being on residential streets. Bridges and other concerned residents argued that making a permitted use by default would limit neighbors’ ability to push back on projects that did not seem like a good fit for the area.

Boyles argued that the child care centers should be treated like schools, which are frequently placed in neighborhoods without creating issues.

The proposal’s final reading will likely occur June 9.