A Sacramento State campus in Placer County? Long-awaited project now a big step closer
Placer County’s long and often painstaking quest for a major college campus has taken a big leap forward — a land developer completed a land transfer to Sacramento State.
California State University, Sacramento announced Monday that it had formally accepted the donation of 300 acres from the developer of Placer Ranch, a major development proposed north of Roseville and west of Rocklin. Sacramento State said the land is worth $27 million, making the donation the largest ever to the university.
Although the project is still years in the future, the donated land is expected to become home to a satellite campus that could eventually serve thousands of students of Sacramento State and its partner in the project, Rocklin’s Sierra College. County supervisors have approved $17 million worth of infrastructure improvements.
“The generous gift of land by Placer Ranch Inc., and the investments made by Placer County have made the future Sacramento State Placer Center possible,” Tracy Latino-Newman, a Sacramento State associate vice president, said in a prepared statement.
The county has been trying to land a university campus for years. The Sacramento State plan dates to 2003, when real estate tycoon Eli Broad proposed building a campus on the undeveloped 2,200-acre Placer Ranch property. Broad’s company sold the land to a company called Westpark Communities in 2013 but reacquired the property in 2015, a move that county officials feared would actually derail the campus project. Instead, Broad’s company moved forward with the university land donation. Broad, a major Los Angeles developer and philanthropist, died in April.
“We are pleased to move forward with the land transfer and donation to Sacramento State,” Holly Tiche, president of the Placer Ranch company, said in a prepared statement. “This has been a long held vision and we are delighted to see it come to fruition.”
Placer Ranch has been controversial, with environmentalists denouncing the big development. But the project cleared a big hurdle in April, when the Center for Biological Diversity dropped a lawsuit after the developer agreed to spend $4 million on habitat protection and install electric-vehicle charging stations on all single-family homes.
On a separate track, Placer County has been working with Sacramento land baron Angelo K. Tsakopoulos’ family and other landowners to develop a college campus on farmland west of Roseville.
This story was originally published July 12, 2021 at 12:27 PM.