Public market project looks to address food need in Sacramento’s River District
Residents of Sacramento’s River District tend to ask the same three questions of the area’s business improvement group: When will the neighborhood get a coffee shop? When will a grocery store move in? And when will new restaurants open in the district?
A new project, which broke ground Thursday at the corner of North 10th and D streets, may lend some answers.
Alchemist Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit that operates six local farmers markets and offers resources to entrepreneurs who want to start food-related businesses, is poised to begin construction on a new public market in the River District. It will have a corner store, a cafe and leasable spaces for emerging restaurateurs to get established.
The historically industrial neighborhood, north of downtown and the Railyards, has seen an influx of new housing in recent years. Still, there are no traditional grocery stores in the district, officials said. There is one coffee shop, and it is temporarily closed, said Devin Strecker, who serves as executive director of the area’s property-based improvement district.
Supporters of the public market project believe it will serve as a gathering place for an “emerging community,” said Alchemist CEO Sam Greenlee.
“Right now it’s a business district,” Greenlee said. “I think it’s on track to become a neighborhood.”
A $4.5 million gap
The project has been years in the making. Greenlee described a patchwork of funding pulled together over the course of years to bring the market to the construction phase. Originally it was to be built at a site on Del Paso Boulevard.
The nonprofit still needs to raise about $4.5 million to meet the expected $16 million to $16.5 million budget to build, permit and furnish the property, said Shannin Stein, Alchemist’s director of advancement.
“We have a little bit of a gap,” Greenlee told a crowd gathered at the site Thursday to celebrate the project’s groundbreaking. He implored local officials and businesspeople to connect the nonprofit with donors, or consider whether their organizations could contribute.
Costs, Greenlee said, have risen in the three-and-a-half years since the original estimates were made.
“Alchemist Public Market will exist for the good of the community,” he said. “It needs the community to help carry it forward through this final challenge.”
Greenlee said the nonprofit will begin construction despite those rising costs. It is slated for completion by May 2027.
The site will have two larger buildings. One will have a shared commercial kitchen where as many as 50 entrepreneurs can work at once, plus a cafe that will serve coffee, beer and wine, as well as a corner grocery store.
It won’t be a full-service grocery store, Greenlee said, but it will sell produce, milk, baby formula and packaged food made by the entrepreneurs in Alchemist’s programs.
The other building will house the nonprofit’s programs, and coworking space for the entrepreneurs in Alchemist’s business incubator program. It will have community space, where Alchemist aims to host a bookmobile, vaccination clinics and a voting facility.
There will be four “pods” that food entrepreneurs can rent for subsidized rates — at first for 50% of fair market value, with the lease increasing to 80% to 90% of fair market value over four to five years, Stein said. Trailers will also be set up for entrepreneurs to learn the basics of running a food truck.
The location is two blocks north of the planned, 20,000-seat Sacramento Republic FC stadium in the Railyards, and one block west of the Mirasol Village housing development.
“It needed to be a place where our entrepreneurs would have a chance to thrive — that could attract business. We knew the district was changing, and the stadium was planned,” Greenlee said. “We also wanted it to be a place that met a real need.”
A neighborhood in the making
Over the long term, some developers and civic leaders say, the River District is likely to see new housing and private-sector investment. Their expectations are informed in part by the developments in Sacramento’s nearby former railyard, which have recently gained momentum.
Kaiser Permanente is building a new, 310-bed hospital in the Railyards that’s slated to be completed in 2029. The soccer stadium broke ground last year, after years of delays. And the team recently overhauled its plans, almost doubling the stadium’s capacity and add a partial canopy.
In 2014, there were about 250 people living in the River District, said Jeff Harris, a former Sacramento councilmember who represented the area until 2022. Now there are more than 1,300 multifamily housing units in the district, with 3,400 more proposed.
“Opportunities are abundant here,” Harris said. “Things are still relatively affordable for developers. And there’s that moment when it’s going to take off.”
The final portions of Mirasol Village opened last year. Another development to the north, Township 9, opened a 372-unit luxury complex in 2025 called “The Hayley.” To the west, a former hotel was converted into an apartment complex called Track 281. It began leasing in 2023.
“It seems like every project in Sacramento takes 10 to 20 years. We have great vision. We move slowly,” Harris said.
“But things are happening. The ball is still rolling. And I still see a great future for the River District.”
This story was originally published April 9, 2026 at 3:19 PM.
