Matsui secures $3.15M toward building 4-acre park over Interstate 5
Rep. Doris Matsui has secured $3.15 million in federal funding toward building a 4-acre park over a downtown stretch of Interstate 5, her office announced Tuesday.
The effort, known as the Sacramento Stitch Park Riverfront Project, is “a major planning effort to reconnect downtown Sacramento with the city’s riverfront,” according to a release provided by a spokesperson for Matsui.
Matsui and other local leaders including Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty and City Councilmember Phil Pluckebaum will hold a press conference on Wednesday at 10 a.m. at Crocker Park.
‘Not a new idea, but it’s a smart idea’
The statement from Matsui’s office described the vision for the park proposal.
“The project would build a new deck park over a stretch of Interstate 5, helping repair a divide that has long separated downtown from the waterfront,” the statement said. “Once complete, the proposed 4-acre park would create a safer and more inviting connection for pedestrians, expand access to the Sacramento River, add new green space, and support future infill development in the heart of the city.”
The Downtown Sacramento Partnership’s website says the park would “would make the river more accessible for pedestrians, increase green space in the area and provide opportunities for infill development.” Its rendering of the project depicts the park covering I-5 between O Street and Capitol Mall, over a segment of the freeway that is below street level.
Mike Testa, president and CEO of Visit Sacramento, which represents local hoteliers, said there was a disconnect separating Old Sacramento from the remainder of the downtown business district.
“To have a connection between that historic district and our modern downtown, I think, is a really valuable thing for visitors and also for residents,” Testa said.
This part of Sacramento was once part of the city’s West End. The area saw extensive redevelopment in the 1960s and ’70s and included the building of I-5 that cut off much of the waterfront access to the Sacramento River.
Local and regional leaders have long sought to repair this access.
When Matsui’s then-husband Rep. Robert Matsui died in early 2005, The Bee wrote that he had secured $3.5 million in federal funding that would “pay for a study of a long-dreamed-of effort to place a concrete deck over Interstate 5 to connect downtown with the riverfront and produce new park and office space over the highway.”
Scott Ford, deputy director of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, said the Sacramento Riverfront Master Plan dates to the 1990s and was updated in the 2000s. He said the cities of Sacramento and West Sacramento had a shared vision and identified potentially building a stitch park over I-5.
“It’s not a new idea, but it’s a smart idea,” Ford said.
He also pointed to the success of projects like Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, which covers a freeway, and Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway, which occupies the former space of an elevated freeway.
“Those have really transformed the way that locals view their shared public spaces in their downtowns, on their waterfronts,” Ford said. “And this is a generational moment for Sacramento to build upon.”
When the park could get built
Local leaders were quick to point out when contacted Tuesday that while building a park over I-5 could have value, it might also be a long time before it occurs.
“I would love there to be a happy path where we can say that we’re going to be able to be able to do this in 3, 5, 7, years, maybe,” Pluckebaum said. “That’d be aggressive, probably. But odds are, it’s going to take a while.”
He noted that other projects like the I Street Bridge and Truxel Bridge have also been a long time coming and that “it’s going to be possibly an entire additional federal presidential administration before these are even shovel-ready.”
Downtown Sacramento Partnership Executive Director Michael Ault also acknowledged that there could be a long road ahead to actually building a park over Interstate 5. “We know there’s still a long ways to go, but this funding that Doris and her leadership was able to get us continues to push that ball forward,” Ault said.
How far the $3.15 million could go to covering the project’s total cost remains to be seen. Pluckebaum said that he hoped that the total cost of the project wouldn’t be $300 million to $400 million, but that it would “be closer to that than not.” He said that there was “no way is the funding for this secure.”
Still, he said it was important to try to build this park.
“I don’t know if we can really overstate how significant it is,” Pluckebaum said.
This story was originally published May 5, 2026 at 1:14 PM.
