What permits do you need to open a childcare centre in Denver?

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 8 records listed for a childcare centre in Denver, CO, 3 apply to every business of this type and 5 are conditional. Adding every fee on the page together would overstate what most operators pay, because it would include permits they never need.

Of the 3 that always apply, 1 carry a flat fee, coming to $20.00. That is a floor, not a total. 2 of the 8 are charged as a range or a formula set by the issuing agency, and 1 has no fee published at all. The ones that vary:

Commercial Building Permit: Valuation-based: $20 ($1–$500); $35 ($501–$2,000); $35 + $8 per additional $1,000 ($2,000–$25,000); $220 + $8/$1,000 ($25,000–$50,000); $420 + $7/$1,000 ($50,001–$100,000); $770 + $5.60/$1,000 ($100,001–$500,000); $3,010 + $4.75/$1,000 ($500,001–$1,000,000); $5,385 + $3.65/$1,000 above $1,000,000. Plan review is 50% of the permit fee generally (10% for type-approved permits; 20%, minimum $100, for express/over-the-counter review); a 25% or 50% surcharge applies for two-phase or three-plus-phase construction.

Child Care Licence: $200 for a centre of five to fifteen children, $175 plus $3 a child to thirty, $300 plus $3 a child above that, capped at $1,800; a family home pays $65 or $100

Permits for a childcare centre in Denver, CO come from 3 separate offices: City and County of Denver, Community Planning and Development, Colorado Secretary of State, Business Division, Colorado Department of Early Childhood, Division of Early Learning Licensing and Administration. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

• City and County of Denver, Community Planning and DevelopmentIssues 3 permits on this page: Temporary Certificate of Occupancy, Commercial Building Permit, Zone Use Permit / Home Occupation Application for Child Carewww.denvergov.org/DSfees
• Colorado Secretary of State, Business DivisionIssues 4 permits on this page: Articles of Organization (LLC), Articles of Incorporation, Periodic Report, General Business Licence (local, not state)1700 Broadway, Suite 550, Denver, CO 80290 · (303) 894-2200www.coloradosos.gov/pubs/business/businessHome.html
• Colorado Department of Early Childhood, Division of Early Learning Licensing and AdministrationIssues 1 permit on this page: Child Care Licence710 South Ash Street, Denver, CO 80246 · (800) 799-5876cdec.colorado.gov/for-providers/child-care-licensing-and-administration

A standard Certificate of Occupancy carries no separate fee — it is issued as part of the building permit's final inspection. A duplicate/reissued certificate shows two conflicting official figures: $10 on the live DSfees page versus $25 in the dated ADMIN 125/138 PDF; not reconciled.

Confirmed identically across two independent official sources (the live DSfees page and the dated ADMIN 125/138 PDF).

A Denver Fire Department inspection is also required for every child care facility, including homes — a $65 annual fee for this appears in an older Fire Department document, but that document is hosted on a non-production staging subdomain with portions explicitly dated to 2009, so the $65 figure is disclosed here rather than asserted as current. Whether the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection still issues a separate child-care business licence, versus relying solely on Colorado's state licence plus this zoning/fire review, could not be confirmed — sources conflict.

$50, and formation is online only — there is no paper option for an LLC or a corporation at all. Colorado genuinely did charge a dollar for a time: a 2022 fee-relief act funded a credit from a general fund transfer, and the Secretary of State's own announcement said the fee would return to $50 once the money was exhausted, which it has. Anything quoting $1 is describing a programme that has ended. A corporation costs the same $50, and so does a nonprofit. Expedited service costs $150 and applies only to paper filings, which these are not.

The same $50 as an LLC, with no share-based component, so Colorado gives no filing-cost reason to prefer either structure. Amending the articles later costs $25 and dissolving $10. A corporation sole is the one exception that must be filed on paper, at $125.

The fee went from $10 to $25 on 1 July 2024, having sat at $10 since online filing began in 2006, so older guidance understates it by more than half. The window is generous — two months either side of your periodic report month, penalty-free — and the escalation after that is worth knowing: miss the due date and the entity becomes noncompliant, miss the further two-month window and it becomes delinquent, at which point curing costs $100. A delinquent entity's name is released for anyone else to use on the four hundred and first day. Filing must be electronic.

No fee, because Colorado issues no general business licence — and the evidence is unusually clean, because the phrase appears in Colorado statute only to describe something a local taxing jurisdiction issues. A 2022 act forbids such a jurisdiction to charge a general business licence fee to a retailer that holds a state retail licence and has no more than incidental physical presence there, and from 2023 forbids requiring a separate application from that retailer at all. So the state legislated about the local licence without ever creating a state one. The Secretary of State directs you to the regulatory agencies department for industry licences and to your city or county for the rest.

The same fee is charged for an original application and for each annual continuation, and the middle band is counter-intuitive: a centre for sixteen to thirty children has a lower base than one for five to fifteen, at $175 against $200, because the per-child element takes over. The whole thing caps at $1,800. A family child care home pays $65 for up to six children or $100 for a large home of seven to twelve, and an experienced provider licence is also $100. Get the agency right — licensing moved to the new Department of Early Childhood when it was established in 2022, so guidance naming the human services department is stale. Continuation notices go out ninety days before the anniversary date on the licence. Fingerprint background checks cost extra and are not in the licence fee.