ON THE AGENDA: Twentynine Palms Planning Commission, January 20, 2026
The new year opens with two study sessions on Land Use policy updates and zoning modifications.
The Twentynine Palms Planning Commission will hold their first meeting of 2026 at City Hall this upcoming Tuesday, January 20 at 5 pm. With no action items, two study sessions will be held that focus on the City’s zoning distribution and land use policy updates. Study sessions are typically not recorded or live streamed by the City, so if these topics are of interest, in-person attendance is encouraged.
The 9-page agenda packet is available here, and coverage of the December Planning Commission meeting is linked here.
PUBLIC COMMENTS
After Planning Commission announcements, attendees can comment on items not on the agenda. Public comments on agenda items will be requested when the item is discussed. Fill out a green comment sheet for public or agenda item comments and hand it to the staff, usually sitting at the desk at the front of the room on the right side. Residents have three minutes to make comments.
You may also email comments to Planning Commission members and Community Development Director Keith Gardner and request that comments be read at the meeting.
CONSENT CALENDAR
The only item on the Consent Calendar is approval of the December 16, 2025 meeting minutes.
PUBLIC HEARINGS—NONE
STUDY SESSIONS
2. Land Use Expiration Dates
The Development Code contains policy guidelines for implementation of the City’s Land Use Element of the General Plan:
To provide guidance in implementing its goals, the Land Use Element also defines the relationship between General Plan land use policy and the Twentynine Palms Development Code, which provides the primary means for implementing this Element’s land use goals.1
This study session topic is part of continuing talks City Staff has posed to Commissioners in efforts to ease red-tape and make permitting processes more streamlined for small businesses.
As currently written, a land use approval expires after a business has been closed for over one year. New businesses are required to apply for a site plan review at a cost of $1,250 if their date of occupancy exceeds the expiration date of the previous tenant’s business license.
Given construction timelines, ADA-compliance updates, fire safety inspections, and other roadblocks that can arise when operating a business, a business license’s window of validity may not always align exactly with the actual opening or closing date of a restaurant or other business.
At their December 16 meeting, Planning Commissioners were in concurrence that new businesses should not be required to pay for a full site-plan review as long as they are occupying a space that was previously occupied by a similar business.
Commissioner Garcia was in favor of this cost-cutting measure because it would ease financial startup costs on restaurants and the general hospitality industry. However, a question that was brought up by Community Development Director Keith Gardner was whether or not the business license expiration date of the previous occupant was the most appropriate timeline for this policy suggestion.
The question posed in the one paragraph staff report is:
Since the City does not always know the date that a business closes, the expiration of the Business License is the date that is currently used to define the one-year time frame. Does the Commission agree that the business license expiration is the date that should be considered?
In layman’s terms, City staff is posing the question as to whether or not a land use approval should expire based on the expiration date of the previous occupant’s business license or perhaps some other form of criteria.
This item is informational only; staff will take direction from the discussion to propose concrete Development Code changes likely at a future meeting.
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3. Consolidation of Zoning Districts
The consolidation of the City’s Zoning Districts is part of larger ongoing discussions as the City prepares to reopen the General Plan, which is updated every fifteen to twenty years in what is typically a costly and arduous process. At previous Council meetings, Mayor Daniel Mintz has stated that the 2012 General Plan update cost the City upwards of one million dollars.
To cut costs, City Staff is hashing out what they can now before Council formally hires a consultant. Traditionally, a citizen review committee has also been involved in this process but has not been mentioned in the current reassessment.
The General Plan contains the Land Use Element, Circulation Element, Housing Element, Safety Element, Conservation and Open Space Element, Recreation Element and Equity and Social Justice Element. Article 2 of the Development Code contains the City’s zoning ordinance, which is broken up into numerous categories:
Rural Living District (RL)
Single Family Residential District (RS)
Multifamily Residential District (RM)
High-Density Residential District (H-RD)
Commercial Districts (CO, CG, CN, CT)
Service Commercial (CS) and Community Industrial (IC) Districts
Open Space Residential District (OSR)
Public Land Use Districts (P, F)
Overlay Districts
Open Space Conservation (OSC) was added as a part of the Ofland Resort approval has yet to be included in the online ordinance2.
Desert Trumpet has pertinent Land Use and Zoning maps from the City of Twentynine Palms General Plan available here.
Staff notes that several existing districts have overlapping sizes and standards. One example highlighted is the similarity between the Rural Living 2.5-acre (RL-2.5) district and the Residential Single-Family Estate (RS-E) district, which also has 2.5 acre minimums.
Commissioners will review a full list of zoning districts with a side-by-side comparison of size and development standards to determine whether the current zoning ordinance could be simplified while still maintaining appropriate development standards in line with the General Plan.
City staff poses the following question in the staff report:
Does the Planning Commission agree with Staff that there is a potential for consolidation of land uses? Or should the existing land use designations remain?
The meeting takes place at 6136 Adobe Road at 5 pm — see you there!
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City of Twentynine Palms Land Use Element, page LU-4
The Ofland Resort is currently the subject of a lawsuite brought by the Center for Biological Diversity and Indian Cove Neighbors.