River District market development at risk of cancellation due to funding snafu
The development of Alchemist Public Market, which aims to create a multifaceted community space at 341 North 10th Street in the burgeoning River District, is facing imminent cancellation due to an eleventh-hour gap in funding.
“We’re not facing issues of project viability. We’re under construction. We’ve got $9.4 million in state and federal grants to draw down to spend on it, but we are facing an immediate liquidity crisis, because there’s a huge timing mismatch since we have to pay our general contractor and other construction costs on a monthly basis,” said Sam Greenlee, CEO of Alchemist Community Development Corporation (CDC).
Alchemist CDC is a Sacramento-based 501(c)3 non-profit organization dependent upon public support, government funding and additional sources of financial help through, for example, grants and program revenue.
The funding gap issue stems from the fact that the state and federal grants require at least 60 days to process their payments, which would leave construction costs unpaid on a month-to-month cycle.
To cover that timing gap, Alchemist sought a one-year $3 million bridge loan. While they did receive some prospective lending options from local banks, the loans required cash collateral of the full amount in order to guarantee them.
“If we had cash collateral for the full loan amount, we wouldn’t need a loan,” Greenlee said.
Ultimately, Alchemist sought funding from the city. Initially, they felt they had been given assurance that the city would fund the loan. As of yesterday, they learned in no uncertain terms that it would not.
“We did receive messaging from the city that made us believe they were going to be a partner in solving this over the course of the past month. I don’t know what led to the disconnect internally, but we now have clarity, that is not the case,” Greenlee said.
According to David Gull, chief of staff with the office of Phil Pluckebaum, councilmember for District 4, city funding was never on the table.
“Their ask for the bridge loan, this has been told multiple times that the city doesn’t just have money available to loan out like that, and however we tried to communicate that did not seem to land with them,” he said.
According to Greenlee, there was a glimmer of hope when River City Bank was willing to produce a term sheet for the loan, provided the city cosigned as guarantor. He said the city never signed, and no term sheet was procured.
No representative from River City Bank was available for comment.
If the organization cannot find an emergency source of funding by June 2, the project won’t just be halted, it will be canceled altogether.
“We won’t be able to continue with construction at that point, because we’ll start to incur costs that we don’t know if we can repay,” he said.
The organization continues to seek private funding. If the project is canceled, the outstanding state and federal funding will be returned.
The market was conceived as a cultural hub for the developing River District neighborhood, including an outdoor food courts, a farmers market, a grocery that would accept EBT/CalFresh and WIC, coworking spaces and more. The project broke ground in April and construction started May 4, according to the Alchemist Public Market website.
This story was originally published May 21, 2026 at 12:59 PM.
