City Council Approves Biggest Overhaul of Municipal Code in Nearly 50 Years

Sweeping changes made with an eye toward attracting modern new “high value” industrial development to the city; DiMaggio's 'Joltin' Joe' boat may be headed for new home on Pacheco Boulevard

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By Sam Richards

The Martinez City Council on May 1 unanimously approved an ordinance providing for widely ranging changes to the city’s zoning map, updating the names and descriptions of various types of zoning, in an effort both to simplify and modernize a set of city zoning rules that hadn’t seen a significant overhaul since 1975.

This comprehensive update of the permitted and conditionally permitted uses in the Martinez Municipal Code (“MMC”) was done, in part, to better comply with state law and to better conform to the city’s own policy direction.

City Council members and city staff said the broadly sweeping changes (https://tinyurl.com/4eeyx6d4) should bring many benefits, including accommodating a wider variety of potential new businesses, both retail and industrial, with an eye toward attracting modern new “high value” industrial development.

“We have a situation now where (commercial) uses that were commonplace 50 years ago are now restricting the businesses we can and can’t have in the city,” said Daniel Gordon, an assistant planner with the city, who called the soon-to-be-replaced regs “downright archaic.”  Among the businesses included in the existing municipal code are “millinery shops” that sell women’s hats, “addressograph” stores selling a type of address labeler and labeling system; “umbrella repair shops” and “ice storage sheds.”

In addition to dispensing with such anachronisms, the approved new code also simplifies more modern permitted business types. An example of simplification: separate “dry cleaning” and “pet grooming” classifications, among others, will now fall under a more inclusive and flexible “personal services” category, Gordon said.

The city’s Commercial, Industrial, Research and Development, and Professional and Administrative zoning districts are all getting a much-needed modernization. Some zoning district designations are being phased out under the new changes, with other existing types of zoning districts set to take up the slack.

Council members praised the comprehensive update effort, with Councilman Satinder Malhi calling the revise a “Herculean task.”

“I think all of us are kind of eager to move this city forward, and help it grow and flourish in the way we all want,” Malhi said. “We need a code that works in the 21st century.”

One segment of the code update that generated significant discussion was new food truck regulations.  

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