Rancho Cordova Downtown Dova arena plans to break ground this summer, mayor says
Rancho Cordova’s arena is likely to break ground this summer, the city’s mayor said.
The project, nicknamed “Downtown Dova,” could later expand to include housing, hotels, retail, restaurants, a card room and the city’s first movie theater and bowling alley.
“This is our first chance to have actual full entertainment for my citizens,” Mayor Garrett Gatewood told The Sacramento Bee in an interview on Thursday. “It’s so important as you grow.”
Gatewood said the arena at the corner of Kilgore Road and Trade Center Drive is likely to have 200 to 300 events per year.
“We’re going to have a professional soccer team. We’re going to have MMA fighting, we’re going to have boxing,” he said. He said he hoped for artists like Bruno Mars to play at the arena, too.
Developers expect the arena and surrounding plaza to cost approximately $175 million and plan to complete the project in time to host games in late 2027. Gatewood said the project was working through permits and that groundbreaking was expected in the summer.
The project became public in September, when the Major Arena Soccer League awarded the Sacramento region two soccer teams — one men’s and one women’s — and Rancho Cordova officials inked an initial deal laying the groundwork for public contributions of land and tax revenues.
Developers Joshua Wood, a 13-year Rancho Cordova resident, and his business partner, Charanjeet Kaur Tiwana-Purewal, founded the development firm leading the project last year. The soccer arena would be its first major development.
The developers may receive some of the site’s tax revenues. That could include hotel tax, card room tax, admission tax, and local sales and use tax minus the city’s expenses for the project. The agreement with the city also allows for the formation of a Tourism Business Improvement District, and for the exploration of other incentives that would require council approval, like community facilities districts or enhanced infrastructure financing districts.
Gatewood said Wood is a “community partner” with the city and said working with him to bring a stadium to Rancho Cordova has been “a blessing.”
“We’ll have that, I think, cherry on the top that means that we’ve arrived. We’re now on the map,” Gatewood said. “This is going to change our city forever.”
The Bee’s Annika Merrilees and Chris Biderman contributed to this story.
This story was originally published February 13, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
