On November 5, 2026, the Fairview Developmental Center Specific Plan takes effect in Costa Mesa. It is the city's plan for the state-owned campus off Harbor Boulevard, and it allows up to 2,300 homes plus 35,000 square feet of commercial space. Two weeks after the City Council adopted it, the council took up a second, wider package called Neighborhoods Where We All Belong. That package opens most commercial and industrial land inside the Measure K boundaries to housing.
What Costa Mesa approved this fall is permission. Permission turns into a front door only after a landowner decides to build, a builder finds a project that pays, and the remaining approvals clear. None of those steps runs on a buyer's timeline. For anyone writing an offer in Costa Mesa over the next year, the homes for sale will be the ones that already exist, mostly in neighborhoods the rezoning was written to leave alone.
Fairview has a plan and no builder
The City of Costa Mesa's Fairview page lays out the order of events. Council adopted Ordinance No. 2026-08 on October 6, 2026, at a second reading. It becomes effective 30 days later, on November 5. The same page says the site is state property, and the California Department of General Services is still accepting proposals as part of its disposition process.
So the city has said what can be built, and the state hasn't yet chosen who will build it. The Daily Pilot reported in September that the council's 2,300-home ceiling sits well below the 4,000 units staff had recommended, and that the adopted version sets aside 25 acres of open space instead of the 14 staff proposed. The paper also noted that the state had not selected a developer.
The plan's mix is heavily weighted toward income-restricted housing. According to the city, the Housing Element counts on the site for 920 homes for low- and very-low-income households, including 200 permanent supportive housing units, plus 690 homes for moderate-income households. That covers 1,610 of the 2,300 allowed homes. A buyer shopping for a market-rate home near Fairview Park should treat the site as a long-range change to the area. It won't add inventory to this winter's search.
The overlay is optional by design
Neighborhoods Where We All Belong, or NWWAB, is the bigger idea, and it is also the easier one to misread. City outreach material describes it as a flexible overlay on most commercial and industrial properties within Measure K. Existing businesses and industrial uses can keep operating, and property owners can choose to build housing or mixed-use projects. The same material says the approach expands housing choices "without upzoning existing residential properties."
The city's Measure K page names the targeted land as commercial and industrial property along Newport Boulevard, along Harbor Boulevard and north of the 405. The NWWAB documents get more specific. They name properties on the east side of Newport Boulevard between Mesa Drive and 19th Street, the roughly 423-acre North Costa Mesa Specific Plan area, and One Metro West at Sunflower and Cadillac avenues.
The overlay gives the decision to whoever owns the parcel. A shop owner with a long-term tenant has no deadline. A warehouse owner whose numbers work fine as industrial space has no reason to tear it down. Housing appears when redeveloping beats the current use, and that calculation changes from one parcel to the next.
That calculation came up in public comment. According to Costa Mesa First's September City Hall recap, at a Planning Commission hearing that month a speaker representing People for Housing Orange County argued that high land costs make many lower-density projects financially infeasible and that four-story buildings often don't pencil out. That was the reason she gave for supporting more flexibility. Under an optional overlay, land cost decides whether anything gets built.
The votes still have steps left
The NWWAB package comes in several parts, and they aren't all final yet. The council's agenda item, File 26-445, asked the council to certify a program EIR, introduce the zoning ordinance, amend the Newport Boulevard, North Costa Mesa and One Metro West specific plans, readopt the Housing Element, and repeal the SoBECA, 19 West, Mesa West Bluffs and Mesa West Bluffs Residential Ownership urban plans. Citizen Portal reported that the council approved the package on October 20, 2026. It also reported that the council overruled objections from the Airport Land Use Commission to keep the Housing Element readoption on track.
The Fairview ordinance shows the sequence the city followed this fall. It had a second reading for final adoption on October 6 and takes effect 30 days later. The NWWAB ordinance was introduced on October 20, and its second reading is still ahead. The state is involved too:
- August 22, 2025. The California Department of Housing and Community Development, or HCD, told the city its Housing Element was out of substantial compliance because required rezonings were incomplete. HCD warned that the city could be subject to the Builder's Remedy while it remained out of compliance.
- July 16, 2026. The California Attorney General and HCD filed an enforcement action against Costa Mesa. The state's petition asks for an order requiring the city to comply and finish the required rezoning within 120 days.
- September 1, 2026. The city adopted a Housing Element amendment that added sites and sent it to HCD for certification. Costa Mesa's stated 2021–2029 housing target is 11,760 homes.
- October 6 and November 5, 2026. The Fairview plan was adopted on October 6 and takes effect November 5.
- October 20, 2026. The NWWAB package went to council and the zoning ordinance was introduced. Its second reading is still to come.
The city's Housing Element page says the amendment is with HCD for certification. Each of these steps changes what the city is allowed to approve. None of them is a construction permit for a specific building.
What is actually moving, parcel by parcel
The homes that will open in Costa Mesa over the next few years come from individual projects with addresses, and the list is short:
| Project | Location | Homes | Status in the record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Detached homes on a former mobile-home-park site | 396 East 21st Street | 21, one very-low-income | Planning Commission approved entitlements September 28, 2026 |
| Avon River Apartments, American Family Housing conversion | 1400 Bristol Street | 76 | Had broken ground by March 2026, with completion then expected in summer 2026 |
| Westside Costa Mesa Senior Housing, Jamboree | 695 West 19th Street | Not stated | Approved in 2025; construction start was expected in summer 2026 |
| One Metro West, Rose Equities | 1683 Sunflower Avenue | 1,057 | Previously approved; its specific plan was amended in the 2026 package |
The 396 East 21st Street approval comes from Costa Mesa First's September recap. Of everything on that list, only 21 homes at 396 East 21st Street would be detached homes sold one at a time. The other projects with confirmed counts are rental or income-restricted. The Daily Pilot's March report covered the city's added funding for the Avon River and Jamboree projects. One Metro West is the largest name on the list. The construction timeline the Daily Pilot published for it dates to 2024, so it says nothing about when residents might move in.
Costa Mesa has done this before, and the earlier results show how housing usually arrives here. The city's Housing Element lists past conversions under the urban plans being repealed now and under earlier rezonings. Examples include 177 live/work units at 671 West 17th Street and 89 at 1620 and 1644 Whittier Avenue, both in the Mesa West Bluffs Urban Plan. They also include 200 apartments on a former motel site at 2277 Harbor Boulevard, 215 senior apartments at 1500 Mesa Verde East Drive and 29 townhomes at Brickyard East and West on Placentia Avenue. Each one came from a single owner and a single site, one project at a time. The new overlay keeps that pattern and applies it to more land.
What this means when you compare Costa Mesa
Since the new capacity sits on commercial corridors, the established blocks of Mesa Verde, the Eastside and the Westside residential streets keep their current zoning under this package. The homes you tour there over the coming year will mostly be the same resale stock buyers have been competing for.
County-level data puts that stock in context. The California Association of Realtors' September 2026 report shows an Orange County median sold price of $1,480,000 for existing single-family homes that month. It also shows an unsold inventory index of 3.0 months and a median of 30 days on market. These figures cover the whole county, not Costa Mesa alone. They describe a market of existing homes, and a single zoning vote doesn't shift that within a year.
The change that may reach a buyer sooner is the street around a home. If you are looking at a house or townhome that backs onto Newport Boulevard between Mesa Drive and 19th Street, or near the North Costa Mesa Specific Plan area or the One Metro West site, the commercial lot next door may soon allow housing, and the specific plan for the area may have been amended. Nobody can say whether that lot will ever be redeveloped. The adopted documents do show what would be allowed there, and they are public. The links in this post are a good place to start.
Here are the milestones to watch, roughly in order. First is the NWWAB second reading and effective date. Next is HCD's response to the September 1 Housing Element amendment and any resolution of the state's July lawsuit. Last is the state's choice of a Fairview developer. This post is general information about public planning actions, not legal or financial advice, so check how any zoning change affects a property you are considering with the city or the right professional.
If you're weighing a Costa Mesa home near Newport Boulevard, North Costa Mesa or the Fairview site and want help reading the adopted plans around a particular address, Alondra Guevara can go through them with you before you write an offer. Let's Connect.
