The Sacramento (Calif.) school district plans to build a school in the city's historic downtown railyards.
The Sacramento Bee reports that the school board approved an agreement to build a school on the Railyards site, which is being overhauled into a large mixed-use development.
The school would be built on 2.5 to 3 acres and would serve up to 600 students from kindergarten through sixth or eighth grades.
The city says the Railyards project will transform the 244-acre site, which once served as the western terminus of the 1860s Transcontinental Railroad, into an urban environment that will serve residents, workers, and visitors.
The developers, Downtown Railyard Venture LLC, envision more than 1 million square feet of retail, 2.3 million square feet of office space, a hotel, 6,000 to 10,000 residential housing units, and recreational and cultural uses.
The project and the planned school are still years off. Infrastructure work is expected to begin in 2018. When the number of new students in the development reaches about 250, construction of the school would commence, officials say. The agreement calls for the school to be built with bond funds, if available, or residential development fees and developer funds
Developers say a second school would be built later when the number of new students in the area reaches 950.
The school district has projected that the development could add up to 1,900 elementary students, 300 middle school students and 400 high school students—students for which it does not have adequate space.
The developers have assumed that most of the people living in the planned residences would not have children, but the district has said it can’t rely on that assumption.
