Governor Jerry Brown submitted a request to the United States Treasury to designate 879 census tracts throughout the State as Opportunity Zones; five of those tracts are located in the City of Salinas. The selected zones represent some of the City's best opportunities, including Downtown Salinas, Chinatown, Carr Lake, Division Street, the Alisal Marketplace, and the City's industrial center.

Opportunity Zones are being created on this one-time designation round, and designations will have a term of ten years. The City of Salinas worked with Assemblymember Anna Caballero and her staff to aggressively pursue the designation of the selected tracts, with a focus on portions of the City that could potentially support the development of multifamily housing projects. Due to the novelty of the program, it is still unknown how much of an impact the program will have on the potential for development within the City, or which projects it would benefit the most. However, City staff intends to begin highlighting this designation in conversations with developers. Opportunity Zones do not require any local management and any costs to the City would be negligible.

Opportunity Zones are a new economic development tool, created by the federal tax bill signed into law on December 22, 2017, and will stimulate private investment in economically distressed communities by reducing taxes on capital gains for investments made in those communities and held for a minimum period of five years.