Union City adopts 180-day pause on rezoning and conditional-use applications

Union City Mayor and Council voted unanimously, 5-0, on March 24, 2026, to adopt a 180-day moratorium on certain zoning and conditional-use applications. The pause will remain in effect while the city rewrites its zoning ordinance.

The city described the action as a Community Development Update. It affects the acceptance, processing and approval of zoning map amendment and rezoning applications, zoning-text amendment applications, and conditional-use applications.

The decision can delay proposed projects that require one of those approvals. Developers and property owners seeking to change a parcel’s zoning, revise the written zoning rules or obtain permission for a conditional use will be affected by the temporary pause.

What the moratorium covers

Zoning map amendments and rezonings generally concern the designation assigned to a property. Zoning-text amendments concern the language of the city’s development regulations. Conditional-use applications seek approval for uses that may be allowed under specific conditions.

Because the moratorium applies to acceptance, processing and approval, the measure reaches multiple stages of those application processes. The city’s announcement does not describe the action as a halt on all construction or development activity, and it does not state that applications already filed were automatically canceled.

The 180-day period began with the council’s March 24 action. The city has not published an exact calendar expiration date on the cited meeting page. The next known step is the continuation of the zoning ordinance rewrite; the city has not stated a separate completion deadline for that work.

Development context

The moratorium comes as Union City works on a broader update to its zoning rules. The city’s R3 Master Plan page says Union City has invested $24.2 million across 24 completed projects since 2022.

That page also lists 11 active initiatives and 32 additional projects in planning. The figures show the scale of development activity the city is tracking as it reviews its regulations, but the city has not identified a specific project as the reason for the moratorium.

For applicants, the immediate effect is a temporary pause in the city’s handling of rezoning, zoning-text amendment and conditional-use requests. The council’s action gives the city time to work on the ordinance rewrite before those categories of applications resume under the moratorium’s 180-day term.