City: Decades Of Buildup
City Councilmember Phil Pluckebaum, who chairs the Railyards Public Financing Authority, said the project’s scale — and the brownfield cleanup required before any construction could begin — sets it apart from development on open land elsewhere in the region.
“When you’re doing infill, you have to remove all this old stuff. You’ve got to shore up all the old brick buildings and repurpose and reuse them,” Pluckebaum said. “That’s how we have to just get to the starting point.”
Pluckebaum credited former Mayor Darrell Steinberg with bringing together the Kaiser hospital, a new music venue and the soccer stadium under a financing tool known as an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District, or EIFD, in the first place.
“There’s a public-private partnership here; the financing is the key component,” Pluckebaum said. “It’s really hard when one person just goes. The genius of what they were able to do was get a group of people to agree, ‘All right, we’re all going to do this.’”
Developer LDK already has completed housing at the AJ’s and Wong Center sites, with more phases planned, Pluckebaum said. He estimated the full buildout could take a decade or longer, limited less by demand than by lending conditions affecting developers across the West Coast.
Pluckebaum also addressed the separate I Street Bridge project, which he called essential for connecting West Sacramento and Yolo County residents to the new hospital. He said the city secured its original budget for the bridge, but construction bids came in well above that amount, leaving officials to close the gap with the city of West Sacramento. He said the goal remains completing the bridge within three years, in time for the hospital’s opening.,
John Jacobs, Sacramento Republic FC’s vice president of communications, said infrastructure work is underway at the stadium site, with crews installing utility vaults and sewer lines, and roads and traffic signals expected to be visible by the end of the year.
The club is targeting 2028 for its first games at the venue, a $450 million project financed privately and led by Wilton Rancheria, the tribal government that operates Sky River Casino. The stadium will seat 20,000 for soccer and expand to as many as 27,000 for concerts and other events, making it the city’s largest sports and entertainment venue, surpassing Golden 1 Center, Jacobs said.
Jacobs said a second parcel near the stadium is slated for future development into a new neighborhood once the stadium opens.
“So much more, and that’s just the beginning,” Jacobs said.