ON THE AGENDA: Twentynine Palms Planning Commission, May 19, 2026
The City kicks off a long-overdue conversation about updating its General Plan
The Planning Commission meets Tuesday, May 19 at 5 pm at City Hall, 6136 Adobe Road. There is just one substantive item on the agenda, and it is an important one that has the potential to shape Twentynine Palms moving into the future: it’s the first in what will be a series of study sessions on updating the City’s General Plan. The agenda packet includes—for illustration purposes—possible rezoning for southwestern Twentynine Palms, including Indian Cove and points west. Residents of this area will want to pay attention to these proposed changes.
The agenda is available here.
PUBLIC COMMENTS
After Commission announcements, the public may comment on topics not on the agenda. Comments on agenda items will be taken when that item comes up. Fill out a comment card and hand it to staff, or email your comments to Planning Commission members and Community Development Director Keith Gardner in advance and request that they be read into the record. Each speaker has three minutes.
CONSENT CALENDAR
The only Consent Calendar item is approval of the minutes from the May 5, 2026 meeting. That meeting featured a public hearing on a Conditional Use Permit for the Friends of the Historic Plaza that allows regular Sunday events at the Plaza parking lot, which the Commission approved unanimously.
STUDY SESSION: Introduction to the General Plan Update
This is the main event. The City’s General Plan, essentially the master document that guides how land in Twentynine Palms is used and developed, was last overhauled in 2012. An Equity/Environmental Justice element was added after considerable community input in 2023.1 The Housing element is due for another update in 2029.
State law requires cities to have a General Plan, and California prescribes that it cover specific topics, called “elements”: Land Use, Circulation, Housing, Conservation, Open Space, Noise, Safety, and Environmental Justice. The City’s current plan also includes Recreation.
City residents often invoked the General Plan in recent, sometimes contentious conversations about land use around the E-Group PS solar facility and the Ofland Resort and a lack of a coherent City plan guiding these developments. These projects both included Conditional Use Permits that changed zoning from residential to commercial and other usage types without considering—as some speakers claimed in comment at public meetings—land use regulations in the 2012 General Plan. In particular, commenters claimed, “preserving the desert environment” and “preserving the City’s desert small-town feel” were concepts that were ignored. Changes to the General Plan have also come up in discussions of commercial campsites, when the scant amount of commercial tourist zoning has been noted by City staff and Planning Commissioners.
No consultant has been hired to assist in developing a new general plan, and there’s no budget for it in the upcoming fiscal year. Instead, City staff have been doing their own research to determine what needs to change before a consultant is brought on. In this meeting, City staff will check in with the Commission and getting feedback on the direction.
Staff are recommending that the Land Use element be tackled first, since so many other elements depend on it. The road network, for instance, needs to match where people actually live and where future residential and commercial development is likely, which means the Land Use Plan has to come first. Staff have proposed five goals for updating the Land Use element:
Goal 1: The Land Use Element should be reflective as much as possible of actual real-world conditions; that is, land use designations should accurately reflect the established lot sizes and actual developments.
Goal 2: Where feasible, suggestions for changes to the Land Use designations would reflect achievable long-term development.
Goal 3: Where appropriate, new land use districts may be developed – or existing land-use districts may be consolidated and simplified.
Goal 4: Historical and environmental considerations also play an important role in developing a Land Use Element;
Goal 5: Each Specific Plan will be studied for modern relevancy
The staff report is clear that this session is just an introduction. Staff want to know whether the Commission agrees these are the right goals and not to take positions on any particular property or policy yet. An Environmental Impact Report will likely be required before the General Plan Update is finalized.
Two attachments come with the staff report: a land use map of the southwestern portion of the City west of Shoshone Valley Road to the City boundary, and south of Sunnyslope to the boundary of Joshua Tree National Park. The report notes that the map is included for “illustrative purposes,” and there is no suggestion that any zoning changes will be discussed.
The area labeled “STUDY TO RL-1” west of Kern to the City’s western border stands out on the map as a large block currently under review for a potential rezoning to higher-density residential, although much of this land is already zoned RL-1.2
A detailed eight-page chart of all the allowed uses and development standards in each of the City’s zoning districts.
Why this matters
A General Plan Update is one of the most consequential things a city can do. It shapes what gets built where for years to come. Residents who care about the future of Twentynine Palms have an interest in staying engaged as this process unfolds. This first study session is an important entry point: no votes, no specific proposals, just a conversation about goals. That makes it a good time to show up and be heard as the planning process begins.
The meeting can be live-streamed through the City’s website at www.29palms.org. Recordings are available on YouTube after the meeting. Planning Commission study sessions have not been live-streamed in the past, but as the Desert Trumpet recently reported, California SB 707 updates the Ralph M. Brown Act, requiring local legislative bodies to provide the public with the ability to attend all open meetings via two-way audio/video by July 1, 2026.
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In Fall 2021, the City passed a resolution denouncing racism and xenophobia and formed a General Plan Advisory Committee to guide development of the new Equity and Social Justice Element. Two public workshops were held overseen by consultants John Criste and Nicole Sauviat Criste, principals at Terra Nova Planning & Research in Palm Desert. Community members on the committee were Jonas Childs, Korina Cole, Jamie A. Garcia, Gary Horn, Lashara Maea and Mariana Wright-Mills. There’s more information on how the element was developed here.
As work on a new General Plan moves forward, it’s useful to get reacquainted with some zoning designations: RL stands for Rural Living, and the number suffix indicates the minimum lot size in acres. So RL-1 means Rural Living with a 1-acre minimum lot size.
The RL (Rural Living) land use zoning district provides sites for rural residential uses, incidental agricultural uses, and similar and compatible uses.
The various designations within the RL Land Use Zoning District are limited to RL, RL-5, RL-10, RL-20, and RL-40 — meaning the suffix denotes the minimum parcel size (1, 5, 10, 20, or 40 acres). RL-1 is the smallest/most dense of the RL tiers, requiring a minimum of 1 acre per lot.
This zoning allows:
Single-family homes
Incidental farming, animal keeping, and agricultural accessory structures
Short-term rentals (with a permit)
Accessory dwelling units (ADUs)
Home occupations
It does not allow commercial operations, multi-family housing, or intensive agricultural uses, which require a conditional use permit or different zoning designation.
And the water for my lawn?