Industrial Zones
Unlocking Antioch’s Waterfront Lands for Employment-Generating Uses
Antioch has some of the last heavy industrial zoning in the Bay Area, concentrated along its waterfront and underused in many places. For years, the opportunity was framed primarily as a marketing challenge: if the sites could simply be better known, perhaps more employers would consider them. As we engaged with stakeholders, however, it became clear that perception was only part of the issue. Many site selectors believed the area was contaminated because of its industrial history, and that concern had to be addressed directly before the land could become truly competitive for reuse.
At the same time, Antioch sits within the Northern Waterfront region, where refineries have long played a central role in the local economy. As the energy transition accelerates, refinery operations across the region are changing through closures, production reductions, fuel transitions, and relocations. That shift creates both risk and opportunity: workers may be displaced, but industrial land can also be re-positioned for new employment-generating uses, especially in the green economy.
This initiative focuses on a simple charge: unlock vacant, industrially zoned land for employment-generating uses.
Building a Path to Reuse
We worked to position Antioch’s waterfront industrial lands for productive reuse by reducing barriers to investment, improving market visibility, and aligning the area with regional planning efforts. Through land inventory and marketing, brownfields assessments, priority production area planning, and direct outreach to site selectors and partners, we built a clearer path for these sites to support future employment-generating uses.
Inventory & Marketing
Our first step was to understand the opportunity more clearly and make it easier for the right employers, brokers, and public partners to engage. We created an inventory of vacant industrial land, developed marketing materials, assembled a brokers-and-developers contact list, and used those tools alongside ongoing relationships with business owners to begin matchmaking. We also supported regional marketing efforts that positioned Antioch’s industrial areas for advanced manufacturing, clean technology, and other sustainable production uses.
A major turning point came when Antioch joined with Contra Costa County, the City of Pinole, the City of Martinez, and Sustainable Contra Costa to form a Brownfields Assessment Coalition. Together, the coalition was awarded $1.2 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to assess suspected brownfield sites across the county, with a focused set of target census tracts in Antioch.
The two Antioch tracts include:
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Antioch’s legacy industrial area, including Wilbur Avenue and the waterfront.
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Downtown Antioch and significant industrial land to the west.
The coalition is using the funding to build a site inventory, conduct Phase I and Phase II environmental assessments, develop reuse and cleanup plans, and refine priorities based on factors such as suitability for green industry, redevelopment potential, proximity to disadvantaged communities, transit access, and known contamination.
Reuse strategies for all priority sites will support sustainable economic development by opening land for green industry, generating family-wage jobs and providing pathways to economic opportunity for disadvantaged communities.
Implementation is expected to continue through fall 2029, with Contra Costa County serving as lead grant manager.
Priority Production Areas
In parallel, Antioch contributed to the County’s Priority Production Areas technical assistance work, funded by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). Priority Production Areas, or PPAs, are industrial areas that the Metropolitan Transportation Commission identifies as especially important to the Bay Area’s economy. They are intended to help preserve and strengthen places where industrial jobs, supply chain activity, and other employment-generating uses can stay and grow close to housing, transit, and existing infrastructure. Antioch is located within one of these regional PPA areas, making its waterfront industrial lands part of a broader Bay Area strategy for economic development.
Contra Costa County received $500,000 in technical assistance funding from MTC to help plan for infrastructure and job growth in the Northern Waterfront’s Priority Production Areas. The County then partnered with the consulting firm Placeworks to conduct infrastructure and market gap analyses and to create tools that municipalities and businesses could use to identify sites with job-creation potential. Through the fellowship, we supported this work by providing zoning and land use data to the consultants and by sharing their findings with internal and external stakeholders so the information could be put to use.
This work produced several practical outputs:
Online Northern Waterfront Industrial Lands Inventory
Industrial Lands Economic and Market Insights Memo
Industrial Lands Land Use Context Memo
These materials help explain what land is available, what constraints or opportunities exist, and how local jurisdictions can plan for future industrial reuse in a coordinated way. This research helped Antioch and its regional partners move from “what land do we have?” to “what land can realistically support jobs, and what needs to happen to make that possible?”
Showcasing the Region
To strengthen market awareness, we also helped plan and host Meet the Consultants, a site selectors’ conference organized by Team California and hosted in Contra Costa County. The event created an opportunity to showcase the region’s industrial lands, public-private partnerships, and long-term development potential. A bus tour included a stop at the AMPORTS site in Antioch, helping site selectors see the area firsthand and better understand its strategic location.
For Antioch, this mattered because the waterfront is a story about how the region presents itself to employers, investors, and partners. By hosting decision-makers on the ground, we were able to move from abstract marketing to direct, place-based relationship building.
Q&A between site selectors and municipal leaders
Why This Work Matters
Industrial land is a finite resource, and in Antioch it represents one of the clearest opportunities to create family-wage jobs close to home. Reusing vacant sites for employment-generating uses can support sustainable economic development, reduce pressure to develop elsewhere, and create pathways for communities that have borne the impacts of industrial change over time.
This initiative is also closely connected to the region’s broader clean technology strategy. As Antioch positions itself for green industry growth, the waterfront’s industrial lands can serve as a critical foundation for new investment, workforce opportunity, and regional resilience.