Last week I attended the Center for Creative Land Recycling 2025 California Brownfield Workshop in Sacramento and got to tour the Mirasol development in the River District. The site was formerly 218 units of low rise and single story public housing that was built in the 1940s and torn down after it had fallen into disrepair over the decades, an unfortunately familiar story. But, instead of developing the area with another use, the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency (SHRA) built new public housing. 

On this 22 acre site they have built double the number of units (~430 if my memory serves from the tour), a new 1.2 acre city park, a community garden, fruit tree orchard and I saw an early childhood education center going up. All of these new assets are protected by a fantastic stormwater system that has already weathered 2 years of heavy rainfall. When these stormwater systems (pictured below) aren’t preventing flooding, they are great greenspace for the community. (Read about our bill with Senator Cabaldon, SB 772, to help fund infrastructure to support housing, like climate adaptation projects). 

In addition, the SHRA staff leading the project have been instrumental in bringing the long-planned Dos Rios light rail stop online to serve the new residents of Mirasol. It’s right across the street from the development and Mirasol has been a catalyst for getting it finally built. 

The only unfortunate part about this project is that it took over 20 years and 14 different funding sources to make it happen. The SHRA staff were incredibly resourceful and cobbled together many different grants and loans, but this all takes time. They found there was some contamination on the property and got their clean-up plan approved, executed the plan, and by the time they went to build the last phase of the project, the regulations had changed. They were forced to reassess their clean-up plan for the last phase of the project and install different and more expensive technology for ongoing monitoring. As you can imagine, scope and budget changes mid-project further extended timelines as they went to seek new and more grant funding. 

Mirasol is a great example of land reuse in our existing communities, near transit with access to good jobs in downtown Sacramento, lovely greenspace. It’s exactly what we need more of. It just shouldn’t take someone’s whole career to build one project. 

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