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Though the Sacramento real estate market as a whole has taken a serious hit to home prices since the peak prices of August 2005, the urban core has largely held its values and remains out of reach for many in the region looking for an urban lifestyle. Advocates of more affordable market rate housing in Downtown and Midtown have found an ally in Jeremy Drucker.

Stitch Space concept drawing from stitch-space.com

Drucker, a bay area developer who is bringing San Francisco’s housing sensibility (I say this with not even a hint of sarcasm) to the capital, began opening people’s minds to the possibilities of alley-oriented living with 9 on F, an infill project on two adjacent alley-depth lots at 14th & F in Downtown Sacramento. Made up of nine urban dwellings, 9 on F features two traditionally styled tri-level homes facing the street, four courtyard “soft loft” rowhouses, and three decidedly urban alley units tucked neatly in the rear (definitely a happier backyard discovery than the home across the street—occupied at one point by the infamous Dorothea Puente—is known for). All nine homes were crafted with sustainability in mind and several of the units include solar (the street-facing homes don’t include solar, largely because they’re directly under Downtown’s famous tree canopy—itself an energy-saving feature because of the reduced cooling costs in the summer).

Now, with one local project solidly under his belt, Drucker is pushing for infill on a smaller scale: one backyard at a time.

Background: Lots of Potential throughout Downtown & Midtown

A common lot layout for a full city block in Downtown & Midtown Sacramento

Downtown and Midtown Sacramento are laid out on a grid of number and letter streets with predictable building numbering. For instance, a house on the 1800 block of Q Street would be on Q between 18th and 19th Streets. Similarly, a number street house’s location can be determined by associating the house number (in hundreds) to the corresponding letter’s numeric position in the alphabet. A house on the 400 block of 23rd Street would be between D and E Streets. This pattern goes beyond the central city but is less consistent south of Broadway and east of 30th Street.

This predictability extends to lots and lot sizes with the most common configuration on any given block being four alley-depth 40-foot by 160-foot lots in the middle of each letter-facing side of the block with four half-size 40-foot by 80-foot lots serving as the bookends, usually with four of these smaller lots facing each direction. This pattern is clearly illustrated here. (note: you’ll need to view the map in regular Map view, not Satellite view).

Falling out of love with suburbia

Homes in Sacramento’s central city aren’t cheap. Decades after a mass exodus from Downtown neighborhoods in the ’50s and ’60s (one that was mirrored in other cities throughout the country as the car became king) a small segment of the population, perhaps disaffected with suburban living and seeing weathered old Victorian era homes (quite affordable at the time because of their condition and the fact that downtowns had fallen out of favor with home buyers) as diamonds in the rough, began returning to what were still considered rough neighborhoods well into the ’90s.

A funny thing happens when enough people decide to change a neighborhood—it begins to change.

By the mid-’90s Midtown had become a Place Where People Want to Be. Restaurants began opening in buildings that had sat empty for decades. Within two decades Midtown was flourishing again as aging hippies, state government employees, young professionals, and bay area city-dwellers converged on an area approximately two square miles in size. While rents remained affordable, ownership opportunities rapidly slipped through the fingers of even moderate income-earners. Midtown had become hip and unaffordable.

YIMBYism

With vacant land in core neighborhoods at a premium and continued demand for new housing without compromising the character and feel of Sacramento’s old city, the urban core became ripe for infill even as the real estate market peaked and then softened. Rather than make the best neighborhoods in Downtown and Midtown more affordable, the declining real estate market widened the gap between these neighborhoods and the near suburbs.

A possible solution is being explored on a backyard scale.

Drucker and others see potential infill housing occupying the underutilized rear alley-facing portions of “full size” lots throughout the central city. These housing units could serve as a middle ground between aging but affordable studio and one-bedroom condos and the much more desirable (and expensive) street-facing Craftsman bungalows, Delta Highwaters, and Victorian-era homes.

The “Stitch” concept

Drucker is partnering with individual property owners with 160-foot lots, many of which already have flexible zoning that allows for additional housing units to be built within density guidelines. The idea is to add multiple attached housing units ranging in style from classic to contemporary to the rear half of these deep lots. By partnering with existing property owners, the cost of acquiring land is minimized and a profit-sharing model is used that splits proceeds from (or ownership interest in) the units built in this manner between the developer and the property owner.

One such site has cleared planning hurdles. Scheduled to open in May, a pilot project behind a property on the 1700 block of Capitol Avenue will serve as models to assist in pre-selling other units to be built on similar lots in other parts of the central city.

Drucker has partnered on this project with noted local architect Ron Vrilakas who is known for his design work in Midtown and surrounding neighborhoods on projects like 1801 L, the East End Lofts, 18th & Capitol, and the 4th Avenue Lofts.

For more information…

Jeremy Drucker & Stitch Development LLC
Tel (415) 335-3674
www.stitch-space.com

Ron Vrilakas & Vrilakas Architects
1221 18th Street
Tel (916) 441-4685
www.vrilakasarchitects.com

Rob McQuade & McMartin Realty
2031 K Street
Tel (916) 444-7577
www.forsaleinmidtown.com

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