The North Watt Avenue Corridor Plan (Corridor Plan), adopted by the Board of Supervisors in August 2012, provides a framework to guide future revitalization activities along the corridor from an auto-oriented commercial district serving a former military base to a series of urban villages integrated within the community. However, this vision for the corridor has not materialized and the corridor remains characterized by low-density retail fronted by underutilized surface parking lots, aging and blighted buildings, large multiacre vacant lots, and an environment difficult for pedestrians and cyclists.
To encourage revitalization and development interest, the North Watt Specific Plan (Project) proposes to address two key barriers to development: 1) the regulatory hurdles of the development process embedded in the Corridor Plan itself, and 2) the critical gaps in utility capacity/infrastructure to support development that have not been defined. The Project will generally maintain the vision and development potential of the Corridor Plan and, in this sense, is a technical update to address the inherent barriers to development contained within and to establish the implementation tools required to carry out the vision for the corridor.
