AKT Project Moving Forward

The development's density-3,450 houses will be built-may be the city's best hope for getting a proposed Downtown-Natomas-Airport light-rail link to catch the attention of federal transportation planners.

By J.T. Long

A new kind of community north of Sacramento is getting major attention. AKT Development is redefining transit-oriented living with a proposed 3,450-home Greenbriar housing development in North Natomas.

In addition to being the first of many projects proposed for the 577-acre area on Interstate 5 between Metro Air Park and North Natomas to get to the EIR stage, it is also the city's best hope for getting a proposed Downtown-Natomas-Airport light-rail link to catch the eye of federal transportation planners, said Brian Vail, president of AKT partner River West Investments.

"This is the missing link that gives Sacramento the ability to move up the priority list for funding," Vail said.

Federal funding is based partially on numbers of potential riders, so the 3,500 homes included in the proposal would advance the region's quest for $200 million-plus in matching funds to eventually build the regional transit line.

Although that line is still years or decades away, the station will be the focus of the community with a 5-acre retail site and high density near the future tracks. There also will be a mix of housing types, including cottages, townhouses without common walls, and low income and mid-range housing -some fronting a new lake.

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"This is an urban community with diversity of housing rather than estate living," Vail said.

Greenbriar developers said they believe they are building the type of housing that consumers will be demanding in the future. "This will be the rule rather than the exception," said Vail, who developed the award-winning Laguna West in Elk Grove with AKT a decade ago when "pedestrian-friendly" was still a novel idea.

He said today's customers want more than square footage and vaulted ceilings. They want "access to mass transit, public green spaces and a sense of community," he added.

Vail said he hopes to have completed the permitting process, including a Local Area Formation Commission annexation, by the spring. Partner Woodside Homes of Florida will be the builder.

Hanz Johnson, a research fellow at the San Francisco-based Public Policy Institute of California, said the trend toward smaller homes is a statewide phenomenon. His surveys show that while the majority of people in California would still prefer to live in a single-family home, one third would trade a large house to be closer to work and amenities.

"This happened a number of years ago in San Francisco and L.A.," Johnson said. "Sacramento is just now hitting that evolutionary stage."