Sacramento Business Journal
From the article:
If a building moratorium in place since late 2008 in Natomas gets lifted within the next year, development activity is likely to focus more on finishing what was started than building brand-new projects, according to the city of Sacramento.
David Kwong, the city’s planning director, said someone driving through Natomas can see several neighborhoods where a subdivision wasn't fully built, and retail centers with existing vacancies.
“It’s really going to be a matter of the market,” he said. When the moratorium came down, many commercial and residential builders already had curtailed activity in Natomas because the homebuilding and overall economic market were in steep decline, Kwong said. More recently, many homebuilders that have approached the city about Natomas in anticipation of the moratorium’s lifting have been considering larger lot sizes to match the market now, he added.
Still, there’s the potential for plenty of new work. Kwong said the city’s first priority will be to help homeowners who’ve had a devastating fire in recent years and couldn’t rebuild because of the moratorium, but Natomas also has entitlements for more than 3,000 homes that didn’t get built.
As well, there are entitled retail projects that could also move forward, Kwong said. Among them are the Natomas Century Plaza, 500,000 square feet at Del Paso and El Centro roads, and a 500,000-square-foot retail project by Allegheny Properties south of where Del Paso Road meets Interstate 5, east of the freeway.