San Diego is considering a large package of city zoning changes that would make it easier to create wireless antenna farms, loosen rules for sidewalk cafes in Old Town and eliminate an incentive to build small apartments.
The package of 137 changes, which is scheduled for a City Council vote in April, would also ban new storage facilities on parts of El Cajon Boulevard and University Avenue and require some hotels and apartment complexes to upgrade pool heaters.
The changes are part of the city’s annual land development code update, a months-long process that has taken longer than usual this time around. The list of changes, first unveiled last summer, has since been tweaked and adjusted. Some proposals have been revised, some discarded and others added.
Among the revised list of proposed changes are proposals to strengthen a ban on cannabis outlets using leaf images in their signage, allow more child care businesses in Miramar and clarify wildfire prevention rules for property lines.
Thirty-one of the 137 proposals apply only to downtown, including looser rules for farmers markets and new developer incentives for projects that have rooftop gardens or are along decaying C Street.
Also in downtown only, the package includes allowing developers to build large projects if they preserve mature trees instead of eliminating them. A 2025 city analysis found downtown’s tree canopy had shrunk more than any other neighborhood in recent years.
The package would also sharply raise many zoning-related city fines and penalties for the first time in many years, even decades. Those include fines for violations of the city’s municipal code and abandoned property penalties.
San Diego is the only city in the region that updates its zoning code annually with a large batch of policy changes. Other cities make such changes one at a time.
Critics have pointed out that adjusting significant regulations in such a large batch can shield the changes from the level of scrutiny they might receive if they were debated individually.
City officials say comprehensively updating the zoning code each year allows them to quickly make small modifications that streamline regulations and adjust policies that may have had unintended consequences.
They say it would be a bureaucratic nightmare to have each proposal go to the Planning Commission, the City Council’s Land Use and Housing Committee and then the full City Council for final approval.
One of the package’s most controversial items — a rule that would have required softer transitions from high-rise housing to low-rise housing and open space — was eliminated last week by Planning Director Heidi Vonblum.
That proposal had been praised by some neighborhood leaders who often oppose high-rise housing in or near single-family areas, but it was harshly criticized by leaders of the development and business community.
Vonblum cut the proposal from the package during a meeting of the Planning Commission where some commissioners also expressed concerns.
The commission eventually approved the package 5-0, sending it to the Land Use and Housing Committee next Thursday and possibly to the full council in April.
Now that the proposal for softer transitions has been eliminated, the most controversial item in the package is a proposal to wipe out a developer-fees waiver that’s part of the city’s Complete Communities incentive program.
Since the program was created in 2020, developers must pay fees to cover new infrastructure and services like libraries only for housing units 500 square feet or larger. Fees have been waived for homes smaller than that.
Vonblum said the city is aiming to strike a better balance between providing developer incentives and collecting enough from developers to cover the community needs created by new housing.
“It is to provide the necessary revenue to provide public infrastructure needed to accommodate the new development,” she told the Planning Commission.
Geoff Hueter, leader of Neighbors for a Better San Diego, expressed support for eliminating the fee waiver, contending the city already has too many incentives for small homes.
“We don’t think small units in San Diego need any more incentive,” he said. “We overproduce these, and we under-produce family housing.”
But developers said ending the fee waiver would prompt them to abandon many possible housing projects.
“Eliminating this now will stifle feasibility and therefore production,” said John Allen, chair of the urban council of the local chapter of the Building Industry Association.
Allen warned that changing the economics of possible projects won’t cost the city a small amount, but rather will cost them all the fees and property tax revenue they would have collected from the entire project.
“The city doesn’t just receive slightly less revenue, it receives none,” he said.
Kelly Moden, chair of the Planning Commission, proposed a compromise that will be included in the commission’s recommendations to the Land Use and Housing Committee.
Under the compromise, the waiver would be eliminated unless 10% of the units in a project have at least three bedrooms.
Vonblum said only 61 of the 6,500 units approved during 2025 as part of Complete Communities used this fee waiver. She also said it’s not certain eliminating the waiver would have killed those projects.
“It is difficult to say that every project that received a DIF waiver would not have happened,” she told the commission.
The package includes another change to Complete Communities: Homes could be sold instead of just rented.
Another key part of the package is softening approvals for wireless antenna farms. Instead of requiring Planning Commission approval, such projects would only go to the commission if their initial approval gets appealed.
“It just makes sense,” Commissioner Matthew Boomhower said of that change, noting that it’s been in the works for two years.
The package also includes a proposal to soften rules in Old Town for sidewalk cafes and “streeteries” — outdoor dining in parts of the street that used to be used as parking spaces.
Only three venues in the tourist-heavy neighborhood — Cafe Coyote, Don Pietro and Tahona — offer sidewalk seating, and they do so under temporary rules created during the COVID-19 pandemic that require annual renewals.
Another change would prohibit new storage facilities on El Cajon Boulevard and University Avenue east of Interstate 15. The goal is filling in the business districts on those streets with more active uses like restaurants.
The package would also require hotels, gyms, apartment and condo complexes to upgrade heated pools if they add additional units or additional square footage.
They would either have to switch from gas heating to electric heating or shift to solar.
On the fines, violations of the municipal code or the state building code would now cost $10,000 — up from previous amounts that ranged from $250 and $1,000. These fines haven’t been updated since 2006.
Fines would also rise for abandoned property penalties. The maximum cap per calendar year would rise from $5,000 per property to $100,000 per property.
City officials say the goal is to discourage prolonged property neglect and promote compliance with property maintenance standards.