Downtown Stockton’s current push combines housing, infrastructure work and efforts to bring more activity to the historic waterfront core. City Hall, local developers and a nonprofit business alliance are pursuing what urban planners call an 18-hour community — a district with enough housing, jobs, dining and entertainment to stay active beyond the standard workday.
The term itself comes from the Urban Land Institute, which coined “18-hour community” in 2014 to describe mid-sized cities that offer lower costs of living and doing business than larger gateway cities while still delivering urban amenities, according to The Business Journals. Stockton Mayor Christina Fugazi is working to make downtown a key destination for the region, per the same report, which notes she has been collaborating with San Joaquin County and local transportation partners on the effort. The city also has a new tax-sharing agreement with the county that increases Stockton's share of certain tax revenue from 10% to 40%, the outlet reports.
Historic Buildings Anchor the Revival
Downtown Stockton's selling point is what it already has rather than what needs to be built from scratch. The district contains historic buildings and a waterfront setting, along with nightclubs, restaurants, hotels and living spaces, The Business Journals reports. Entertainment and sports venues in the area support four professional teams, according to the same account — among them Banner Island Ballpark, the waterfront home of the Stockton Ports, a Class-A minor league affiliate of the Oakland Athletics, which seats 4,200 and can hold crowds of more than 5,200 for concerts and community gatherings, per Downtown Stockton.
Several of the district's older structures — including the Stockton Memorial Civic Auditorium, Cort Tower, Belding Building and Sperry Mill Office — now house residential units, coworking spaces, a kitchen incubator and charter schools, according to the Sacramento Business Journal. That architecture dates back more than 120 years, the outlet notes. Downtown now has six charter schools, The Business Journals reports, alongside a new city hall built on the waterfront.
Developers Say the District Is Already Changing
Much of the renovation push is being driven by the Stockton Innovation District, which owns five historic buildings downtown and partners with 23 other properties, according to The Business Journals. The organization, led by general manager Andrew Snow, operates as a developer, owner-operator and local association, undertaking the acquisition, restoration, ownership, operation, programming and marketing of buildings while partnering with local businesses, the outlet reports. Its own site frames the approach plainly: the Stockton Innovation District says it is “building around those existing assets — not starting from a blank slate,” and pitches the city as offering proximity to the Bay Area without Bay Area costs.
Local entrepreneur and developer Tom Romeo, who is working with Snow and the mayor's office, told The Business Journals that crime and homelessness had dropped immensely as downtown activity increased. Romeo attributed those changes to the increased activity, urged business leaders to invest in Stockton and said the city could eventually become a full 24-hour community, according to the outlet. Michael Huber, executive director of the Downtown Stockton Alliance — a nonprofit public-private partnership uniting almost 1,000 property owners and downtown businesses — described downtown as a walkable urban environment with jobs, schools and housing, and said people increasingly want to live in places like it, per The Business Journals.
New Housing Units Are Landing Downtown
The housing side of the push has already produced concrete results. Downtown Stockton gained 64 affordable housing units on Miner Avenue in 2025, according to Downtown Stockton's own project listings. The Medici Artist Lofts at 242 N. Sutter Street hold 34 affordable and market-rate units, with some set aside for artists, the organization notes, while CalWeber 40 adds 40 affordable units at the southeast corner of California Street and Weber Avenue.
A larger project is still on the way. La Passeggiata, a $71 million affordable housing development on East Miner Avenue, broke ground in mid-2025 and is expected to open in early 2027 as a five-story, family-focused community with 94 units, according to The Record. State officials have described the project's design as two connected buildings, five and six stories tall, joined by a breezeway, per California's governor's office.
What’s Delivered, and What’s Still Ahead
The clearest dated housing delivery in the project information cited here is the 64 affordable units added on Miner Avenue in 2025. Medici is described as housing 34 affordable and market-rate units, while CalWeber adds 40 affordable units; the cited information does not give completion dates for those projects. La Passeggiata is at a different stage: it broke ground in 2025 and is expected to open in early 2027. The city says its redevelopment agency began cleaning up and redeveloping waterfront properties in 1996, and received an EPA Phoenix Award in 2008 for the Stockton Events Center project, according to the City of Stockton Brownfields Program. A city redevelopment plan traces an earlier effort to 1961, when the City Council approved the West End Project Area as a commercial development project. Today, the city says it has released a long-range downtown plan to better align transportation, land use and public-realm investments, according to the City of Stockton Economic Development Department and the city’s waterfront redevelopment plan.
Infrastructure Work Is Tied to the Bigger Push
None of the housing or business growth means much without streets that work, and city officials have framed infrastructure upgrades as central to the broader strategy. Stockton is coordinating road, pavement and water infrastructure improvements along Benjamin Holt Drive, The Business Journals reports, while also improving the downtown street network along Fremont, Oak and Park streets to boost pedestrian safety, bicycle connections, accessibility and links between neighborhoods, businesses and transit.
The Benjamin Holt Drive work itself spans three coordinated construction projects across a 1.7-mile stretch between Grigsby Place and Gettysburg Place, according to a joint announcement from San Joaquin County. The effort splits responsibilities between the city, which is handling street resurfacing and bicycle-lane work, and the county, which is managing water-main replacement and pavement rehabilitation. Construction was expected to begin around July 28, 2025 and run through November 2025, with temporary lane and intersection closures anticipated along the corridor, the county said.
A City Trying to Make It Easier to Build
Stockton has also worked to streamline the process for investors looking to build downtown. The city launched a Virtual Development Assistant platform to help estimate project costs and has reduced permit review time by 46% in response to developer and investor concerns, according to the Sacramento Business Journal. The city's Economic Development Department is dedicated to supporting development and investment in Stockton, The Business Journals reports, and the city is being supported in its downtown transformation by both the Stockton Innovation District and the Downtown Stockton Alliance.
For Mayor Fugazi, the shift is as much about perception as pavement. She said people are beginning to see Stockton differently, and that Stockton is beginning to see itself differently too, according to The Business Journals. Whether that reputation shift holds will likely depend on how many of the housing units, road projects and historic-building conversions now underway actually reach completion in the years ahead.
