Downtown Watsonville Specific Plan

7Project Underway

In July 2019, the City of Watsonville initiated a Specific Plan for downtown Watsonville.  This planning effort will build on the historic origins of the area while establishing a clear vision for the future of downtown Watsonville. 

What is a Specific Plan?

A Specific Plan is a comprehensive planning document and regulatory tool for implementing the City’s General Plan and will guide development in downtown through customized land use and design regulations and provide recommendations for improvements to the public realm. For more information on the purpose of a Specific Plan and for an overview of its timeline, click here.

Objectives 

Objectives for the Specific Plan include the development of multi-story mixed use buildings through both new construction and adaptive reuse of historic buildings with market rate residential housing and commercial retail on the first floor. The Plan will encourage compact development near transit to decrease automobile dependency, reduce both local and regional traffic congestion and related greenhouse gas emissions, and provide additional guidance and plans to increasing multimodal access to and from the historic Downtown area.

Recent News

  • Existing conditions analysis and reports have been completed by the consultant team. View the documents here. 
  • The second Advisory Committee meeting was held on August 5, 2020 from 5:30 to 8:00 PM. Due to COVID-19 this and other future meetings will take place virtually online. The City of Watsonville invites the public to attend and participate by watching the live stream of the meeting on the City’s Facebook page. This meeting involved the Advisory Committee review of existing conditions reports and input on developing guiding principles and a shared vision for the DWSP process. You can find the full agenda of the meeting here.

Public Engagement Events

  • Past events:
    • Stakeholder interviews held September 25 and 26, 2019
    • Advisory Committee Meeting (open to the public) held September 25, 2019 (summary notes)
    • Advisory Committee Meeting (open to the public) held August 5, 2020 (video, presentation slides, summary notes)
  • Upcoming events:
    • Community Workshop - September 30, 2020, 5:30-7:30 PM, virtual meeting. The public is invited to attend via Zoom and participate via Facebook Live Stream. Attendees will be entered into a raffle to have a pizza from Slicedelivered during the meeting!
    • Advisory Committee Meeting - TBD, 5:30-8:00 PM, virtual meeting. The public is invited to attend and participate via Facebook Live Stream.  
      • Agenda (TBD)

Contact Information