If you are touring a single-family home on Gregory Lane this fall and you pull the parcel's zoning, will it say R-7? Under the map the city proposed in April 2025, several properties on both sides of Gregory Lane were set to move from R-7 to MX-NB, the Neighborhood Business Mixed-Use district. That relabeling was part of Ordinance No. 978. The City Council adopted it in November 2025, rewriting the city's entire planning and land use code and changing the zoning on 1,072 parcels.
Now the council is reopening part of that decision. On Monday, October 19, 2026, at 7:00 p.m. in the City Council Chambers at 100 Gregory Lane, it will hold a study session on possible changes in three areas. For anyone buying or selling on those blocks, two questions matter more than the meeting. What did the new label actually do to the house? And how likely is it to go away?
The three areas on the October 19 agenda
The city's September 19 notice says the session is "limited to" these places:
- East Vivian Drive and West Sherman Acres, including Shirley Drive. The city's FAQ calls the East Vivian residential area east of Contra Costa Boulevard one of the single-family areas redesignated for future mixed use. Its stated reasons were the area's connectivity and how close it sits to commercial uses. The April 2025 staff map proposed Mixed-Use, or MX, for nearby properties on Contra Costa Boulevard between Vivian and Harriet Drives.
- Gregory Lane near Maureen Lane and Julian Way. This is the R-7 to MX-NB change described above.
- The east end of the Beatrice Road neighborhood. The vacant lot at the end of Beatrice Road is being labeled medium-density multifamily.
The adopted code sets the density ranges behind those labels. MX-NB allows 1.3 to 20 units per acre, from compact single-family homes and townhouses to apartments and neighborhood-serving commercial uses. MX allows 12 to 40 units per acre and adds office, hotel, and entertainment uses. The medium-density multifamily district, MFM, runs from 20.1 to 30 units per acre. The April 2025 report was a preliminary map. For any specific address, the city's zoning ordinance amendment page is the place to confirm what was adopted.
What the new label leaves alone
Those density numbers are what caused alarm. For a house that already exists, though, the city's published rezoning FAQ describes something much smaller. Here is what the city says still holds for a single-family home rezoned to a mixed-use district:
- Single-family homes are a permitted use in every mixed-use zone, and existing homes do not become nonconforming.
- Owners who improve their homes are not required to add the commercial component the mixed-use zones otherwise call for.
- The County Assessor told city staff that a rezoning does not trigger a property tax reassessment. Reassessment follows a change in ownership or improvements that add value. Questions about your own tax situation belong with the Assessor or a tax professional.
- None of the rezoning is tied to a development project, and the city had no mixed-use development applications under review when the FAQ was updated on October 10, 2025.
- The city does not own any of the rezoned properties and does not plan to use eminent domain.
In practice, a house on one of these streets can be sold, remodeled, and lived in as a single-family home under the new label. What the label adds is a permission that an owner, or a future buyer, could use later.
The lot-assembly fear, checked against the city's own files
The worry that filled two overflow rooms at the October 20, 2025 council meeting was about who might use that permission. A resident who has lived in Pleasant Hill for 42 years and whose street was on the rezoning list described the chain of events they expected:
"If somebody wants to sell, they'll sell to a developer and then the next person will sell to a developer and the next person will do the same thing and then after they get enough land, they'll build a 500-unit apartment building on it."
The city's planning records give a way to check how far that has gone. Its August 2026 project status sheet, the most recent one available, lists two SB 9 lot splits for the whole city. One is a two-lot split at 168 Jean Place that has been resubmitted and is under review. The other is an urban lot split at 1986 Geary Road that is marked incomplete. Neither address is in the areas on the October 19 agenda. The list also includes a business use permit at 1630 Contra Costa Boulevard, not a housing proposal. A July 7, 2026 Zoning Administrator agenda identifies that site as zoned MX.
So by August, nine months after adoption, the city's major-application list showed no new mixed-use housing proposal for these neighborhoods. That sheet tracks major entitlements and may not catch every filing, and anything filed since August would not be on it. Even so, the assembly scenario has not shown up in the record so far. Any future project would also go through its own review, and the city says larger projects may need a traffic study at that stage.
Beatrice Road is a different kind of case
The east end of Beatrice Road sits next to Poet's Corner, whose narrow streets are named for poets such as Emerson, Byron, and Hawthorne. It drew its own campaign. A "Save Poet's Corner" alert on social media showed a bulldozer tearing into a house.
City Planner Troy Fujimoto told CBS that the vacant lot's General Plan designation has been "Multi-family, Medium" for more than 20 years and was never matched in the zoning for technical reasons. "So, it's not technically changing the type of development that can be done there, but it is renaming it," he said. The April 2025 staff report says the same thing about PUD 410 along Cleaveland Road north of Astrid Drive. It calls PUD 410 a "shell" with no development standards of its own, so any future development there was already subject to MFM rules. Three-story townhouses of the type the label allows already stand across the street.
The lot is also on the city's housing element list as a potential multifamily site, though no project has been proposed there. Being on that list matters for the next question.
Why the council can't simply change it back
Councilors said at the October 2025 vote that they would review the General Plan with an eye toward amending it and then rezoning some parcels. At the March 16, 2026 study session, residents were split. Some wanted single-family blocks preserved, and others suggested shifting growth onto vacant commercial parcels. The council asked staff to study whether small, targeted changes could be made without putting the city's certified housing element at risk. Staff were also told to ask the California Department of Housing and Community Development, or HCD, about possible amendments to Ordinance 978.
The constraint comes from where the rezoning originated. Pleasant Hill's state housing target, its Regional Housing Needs Allocation or RHNA, is 1,803 units. The city's FAQ says much of the residential rezoning goes "above and beyond" that number. Program F in the housing element required rezoning almost 105 acres of low-density land to higher-density mixed-use or multifamily designations by November 22, 2025. That list includes 43.3 acres from R-7 to Mixed Use and 11.7 acres from R-7 to Mixed Use Neighborhood. The FAQ also says every program in the housing element has to be carried out on schedule for the city to stay in compliance.
There are two separate locks here. For parcels in the housing element's site inventory, such as the Beatrice lot, California's No Net Loss law applies. HCD's guidance says reducing density on an inventory site requires specific findings that the city still has enough capacity, or the identification of replacement sites at the same time. For the Program F blocks on Gregory Lane and around East Vivian, the obligation is the program itself, which HCD certified as part of the housing element. In either case, removing density in one place most likely means adding it somewhere else, which may be why the March discussion turned to vacant commercial parcels. The city's September notice does not say what HCD told staff. It describes the October 19 session as a staff update and council direction on the scope of potential rezoning, not a final rezoning vote.
Questions buyers and sellers are asking
If I buy a single-family home zoned MX-NB, can I add on to it? The city says owners making improvements to single-family homes in mixed-use zones won't be required to meet the commercial component. Ask the Planning Division about setbacks and other standards for the specific addition you have in mind.
Does the new zoning change my property taxes? According to the city's FAQ, the County Assessor confirmed that rezoning does not trigger a reassessment.
Is this fall a good time to sell on one of these blocks? Bay East's September 2026 report on August data says Central Contra Costa had fewer homes for sale almost everywhere and that prices in Concord and Pleasant Hill were down from August 2025. The zoning on a given parcel is one more fact to have ready for buyers. It answers a question they are likely to ask and should not catch anyone off guard during escrow.
Who do I contact about the study session? City Planner Troy Fujimoto is the staff contact at 925-671-5224 or [email protected]. Details are in the city's study session notice.
If you own a home on Gregory Lane, near East Vivian Drive, or around Beatrice Road, or you are considering one, Kelly McDougall can go through the parcel's current zoning with you, what it means for pricing and how you'd present it, and what changes once the council gives direction on October 19. Request a free local market consultation and home valuation, and we'll start with the zoning on your address.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
