See 10 major housing developments that will change the face of downtown Sacramento
Downtown Sacramento has been knocked down by the coronavirus pandemic. But not entirely flat. While the business scene in the Central City has quieted since March, construction hammers and drills and cranes haven’t.
A three-year housing boom that created defining projects such as Ice Blocks and The Press apartments is continuing with seemingly little fall-off during the virus-induced economic downtown.
Housing developers say they see central Sacramento – and the region as a whole – as a good place to invest for the post-coronavirus era. Some are developers who might have focused on San Francisco and the Bay Area previously. And city leaders are happy to encourage new development that will reanimate downtown and reduce its reliance on state workers as its main economic engine.
Sacramento continues to lack affordable housing, however, as COVID has made it harder for developers to score the specialized financing needed for subsidized apartments. Nevertheless, a few low-income projects, some of them listed below, are underway.
Here is a look at a handful of housing projects in the pipeline in 2020 that are expected to play a key role in defining the new downtown:
Capitol Mall apartments
At eight-stories tall and 162 units, The Frederic apartments underway at 601 Capitol Mall, are not the ambitious, high-rise statement that previous developers promised for the site. But the project, aimed for a September 2021 opening date, could be hugely significant nonetheless.
That is because it’s the first housing project on Capitol Mall since redevelopment ripped out the old neighborhood more than a half-century ago, replacing it with an austere state Capitol-focused office corridor.
The owner is Shorenstein Properties of San Francisco and New York. The company declined comment, but its website describes its pioneering aspect on the staid and often sterile mall: “The Frederic will bring a 24-hour urban lifestyle and presence not available anywhere else on Capitol Mall. Bringing residential units to Capitol Mall will help energize the gateway to the Capitol similar to other emerging areas in our city such as the R Street corridor and Broadway.”
The site backs on to L Street, a bounce pass from the VIP entrance to Golden 1 Center.
One thing this project shares in common with most new housing downtown is a tilt toward local-living: It will have only 80 car parking spots, but will have secure parking for 144 bicycles.
The city has reduced the number of parking spots required at new housing projects downtown to help reduce construction costs and to encourage non-car travel in the Central City.
Township 9, finally
This proposal is actually a 65-acre neighborhood on an old cannery site against the American River levee on Richards Boulevard in the River District. But in 10 years, only one block has seen housing built, while ownership groups came and went.
New Chicago-based owners just submitted an application to build the first 936 of an estimated 2,350 total apartments. The development group is cautious and will build slowly, but believes in Sacramento, local spokesman Kevin Smith said. “We are bullish on the central city in particular.”
The housing site could serve as one of several anchors for redevelopment of the industrial River District. Developer representative Smith says Township 9, just outside the downtown, should be able to offer slightly lower rents than downtown proper for workers with modest paychecks. “We are looking for attainable rentals for the urban workforce.”
Smith amplified comments from others about builders envisioning a changed economy two and more years from now.
“If approvals are in place, you probably go (with construction now) even if you are a little uncertain about the future,” Smith said.
Filling the hole at 16th and R
Momentum counts. Architect Ron Vrilakas says that downtown housing begets more housing.
That is the case in the R Street corridor where, two years ago, the iconic Ice Blocks community took shape on the former Crystal Ice plant site, adding apartments, stores, offices, restaurants, a brew pub, gym and Philz Coffee. The site is adjacent to the midtown Safeway, a major light rail station, and easy walking to dozens of state offices.
In that sense, it is the region’s first full modern infill community. But it sits next to a huge swath of empty ground, giving the neighborhood an unfinished feel.
Now, another local group this month announced plans for a block-long apartment building at 16th and R streets on that empty lot. It will be six stories tall, with slightly more than 100 apartments above commercial and retail sites.
As a sign of the times, it will have a number of live-work apartment units. The end result, says city economic development head Tom Pace, is a community that is both aesthetically pleasing, but whose residents can live an active, “car-lite lifestyle.”
Lavender Courtyard
This project is notable in that it is focused on filling a narrow niche of housing for older, lower-income members of the LGBTQ community, including some who are HIV-positive, and who are higher risk for becoming homeless.
Work on the planned 53-unit project is about to get underway this month at the corner of 16th and F streets. Mutual Housing, a company that specializes in affordable living, is the developer.
It took years to get the financing together for the project, a struggle long before COVID-19 hit, but the money is there, and city officials are eager for any bit of low-income housing the city can get.
The project creates inclusivity for the LGBTQ community, said City Councilman Steve Hansen, who spearheaded the project.
“It was such a hard-fought project because funding affordable housing projects is expensive and complicated,” Hansen said. “I’m just very satisfied that after five years of work, we finally get to see it break ground.”
Plus, it makes a statement about the city, community development chief Pace said. “It is reflective of the city’s culture and strong LGBTQ presence in the Central City.”
Governor’s Mansion neighborhood
Lavender Courtyard is just one of a half-dozen apartment projects popping up on the 16th Street corridor in the long-blighted area around the historic Governor’s Mansion.
The Mansion Inn site, more recently known as the Clarion Hotel, was demolished a year ago, and construction is underway on some 200 apartments.
Across the street, the H16 apartments just opened with 95 units, built by the same team, Sotiris Kolokotronis’ SKK Developments and the Grupe Co., that earlier this year opened the 277-unit Press apartments at 21st and Q streets.
A studio apartment there was listed last week at $1,770 a month, and a two-bedroom, two-bath at $3,385. Developers are, however, offering move-in discounts.
SKK also is constructing a 95-unit project at 16th and E streets called the Eleanor Apartments. Two other housing projects are planned a few blocks away on 17th Street at J and K streets.
The end result, the city’s Pace says, is that the “seam” along 16th is evolving from commuter thoroughfare to a neighborhood that draws midtown and downtown closer together.
Downtown Railyards
Promised as Sacramento’s new downtown for decades, the railyard has instead been an exercise in planning and replanning under one owner then another.
It will take decades more for the massive 200-plus acre site to form into a new section of downtown, but it finally is getting its start this year, with a long-promised 345-unit apartment complex that will include 69 affordable units, set at the southeast corner of Sixth Street and Railyards Boulevard, built by LDK Ventures and USA Properties Fund.
The A.J. apartments, named for an 1800s railyard executive, is located between a future Major League Soccer stadium and the planned Kaiser Permanente medical campus. It’ll have a rooftop lounge.
“There has been a voiced need for multi-family housing that has modern amenities, is affordable, and is proximate to Downtown Sacramento,” Denton Kelley of Downtown Railyard Venture wrote on the website.
Mayor Darrell Steinberg added: “Not only does this project add to our supply of badly needed affordable housing, it is hugely symbolic as the first housing ever built in the downtown Railyard, which has sat idle for far too long. Despite the pandemic, our momentum as a city continues.”
Cathedral Square
The Bee’s Marcos Breton dubbed this block a few years ago as downtown Sacramento’s most blighted, sitting blank-faced and vacant on a main entry corridor into downtown near both City Hall and the state Capitol.
Now, a group from Vancouver, Canada, Anthem Properties, has bought the site, demolished a row of old buildings, and says it hopes this year or early next to build a seven-story, 153-unit building.
A good sign: After previous owners proposed grandiose super-buildings on site, Anthem has brought the concept down to earth with a modest proposal, one that city officials say is more realistic.
That area of J Street is one of the places where civil justice protesters often gathered this summer in the wake of police shootings nationally. De Beer said his company is looking forward, though. “We are looking at a macro-economic pattern that plays itself out in a longer period.”
Anthem also is laying plans for a 137-unit apartment building at 15th and S streets, on the 1500 block of S Street.
1717 S Street
This project on S Street with 159 apartments, some set aside for low-income workers, is one of the last of a series of affordable housing projects pushed by the late Ali Youssefi, who died in 2018 at age 35 from cancer.
It will sit on what is now an empty lot behind the midtown Safeway and the Ice Blocks housing project. It will include 43 units for workers who earn less than 50 percent of the area’s median income ($28,000 for a single wage earner), as well as 21 units for people who earn 80 percent ($44,000) or less of the median income.
It’s a white-knuckle moment, though. After years of planning, the development team is aiming to break ground next month, when the final financing is nailed down.
COVID threw a late-breaking curve ball at the project financing, said Wendy Saunders, head of the Capital Area Development Authority, which is working with developer CFY Development.
“We have a substantial amount of retail which gave one potential lender pause, but by the time our project is done, more than two years from now, our lenders and investors share confidence that retail will be recovered,” Saunders said.
City development director Pace says the project is meaningful because it adds a dose of affordability to the new neighborhood. “It helps retain the diversity of the central city. We want to see a prosperous housing market, but we want to make sure existing residents aren’t displaced in the process.”
Experimental Mirasol Village
The ambitious government-sponsored Mirasol Village near 12th Street and Richards Boulevard, now under construction, is a blend of low-income affordable housing and market-rate apartments. It will include a community garden and a new light rail station on its flank.
The project sits on the site of a former post-World War II vintage subsidized housing project for people on government income assistance. Previous residents of that community, called Twin Rivers, and before that Dos Rios, have been given temporary housing elsewhere, and the right to return to the new community.
Mirasol will be an experimental site that will include a mix of deeply subsidized housing along with market-rate apartments, aimed at offering workers lower rents than in the heart of downtown.
Officials with the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, which has teamed with private, for-profit developers on the project, said the goal is to improve residents’ chances at pulling out of poverty if they live among people with more means, rather than in an isolated housing tract.
Highrise, homeless conflict on Bercut Drive
There is frequent debate over how much of a hindrance Sacramento’s large homeless problem is to development and desirability downtown – an often separate discussion from the more important one on how to improve the lives of people who are homeless.
Sometimes the two collide.
It’s happening on Bercut Drive next to the American River in the River District, where homeless encampments abound. The city last week moved forward with plans to turn an old motel complex into a permanent homeless housing project across the street from the old Rusty Duck restaurant site where a development group wants to build a stylish luxury apartment building of up to 250 units with river views.
The development team and other area property owners argue that the River District has for too long been over-burdened with homeless social services. The group has sued the city to stop the homeless housing.
“Until this is resolved, we are basically stalled,” apartment developer spokesman Anthony Scotch said.
This story was originally published October 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
