Bait And Switch
Did city buy 102 acres for homeless or soccer?
By R.E. Graswich
Photography by Aniko Kiezel
April 2025
The California Highway Patrol was trying something new. Something that needed plenty of open space, “including a range to train patrolmen to fire from moving cars and motorcycles,” CHP brass said.
They settled on 240 farm acres near M.F. Silva’s dairy. Dormitories, classrooms, a cafeteria and gym rose over the bean fields, plus an asphalt track and gun range.
The address was 2812 Meadowview Farm Road. It was 1952. The CHP was building its first permanent cadet academy, an elite school for traffic cops.
Cadets studied, sped, skidded and shot in Meadowview until 1977, when the CHP opened a new academy across the river.
But pavement from that mid-century training ground still exists. The old CHP academy is back in play.
The former campus is the stage for a City Hall drama about broken promises, fluid priorities and backroom deals.
In 2022, the City Council bought a 102-acre parcel behind the old academy buildings—land where cadets learned to drive fast and shoot straight. The goal was to create a homeless services center.
Politicians and local media celebrated the purchase as serious progress in the mission to remove encampments from city streets.
“We have a unique opportunity to build affordable housing, civic amenities and bring resources that will benefit our unhoused neighbors and families,” said Mai Vang, City Council member for Meadowview.
She added, “I’m proud to have led the work” to buy the old CHP land.
It was Vang’s big moment. Since her election in 2020, she had been invisible on City Council. She was a faithful vote for Mayor Darrell Steinberg without her own identity.
Vang’s job was to sing chorus on shoveling city dollars into youth services. Steinberg was the maestro. Vang, a former city school board trustee, served as cheerleader for kids.
The old CHP real estate represented higher ground. In leading the $12.3 million purchase of the former cadet site, Vang represented the entire city, not just her special interests. She was part of the unsheltered solution.
Steinberg knew the significance of the Meadowview land. He said, “This acquisition is the first of several breakthroughs we expect to announce soon in our ongoing effort to create more safe spaces, bed and roofs for people experiencing homelessness.”
Then a curious thing happened.
Steinberg and Vang vaporized their plans to “benefit our unhoused neighbors and families.” The old academy purchase was not “the first of several breakthroughs” on homelessness. It wasn’t even a burp.
Six months after buying the 102 acres, Steinberg made a speech promoting a $50 million sports complex in Meadowview. The plan included a soccer stadium with 2,000 seats, plus 24 fields for youth and adult soccer games.
“We won’t just be building fields, we will be building up kids,” Steinberg said.
Vang mirrored the mayor. She said, “Our youth’s vision for community-centered amenities, services and programming inspired me.”
When I heard about the soccer park, I thought Steinberg and Vang must have stumbled across an empty strip mall.
They couldn’t mean the old CHP academy—the city’s “breakthrough” site for unsheltered people.
But I was wrong. They did mean the old academy—those 102 acres behind the Job Corps Center, which took over the CHP buildings in 1978.
Fast-forward three years since Steinberg and Vang’s switcheroo. Kevin McCarty is mayor. The old CHP track and shooting range are vacant. No soccer stadium. No homeless facility. No explanation. Just confusion about “what the community wants.”
Most communities prefer soccer fields to homeless centers. But the City Council bought the 102 acres to help unsheltered people. Without a centralized homeless facility, encampments grow.
Now the city has a $62 million deficit. Not $50 million for soccer. Or for unsheltered people.
But there’s hope. Before moving out, the CHP harvested lead from the Meadowview shooting range, almost 7 tons of bullets. The metal was worth $2,275 in 1977.
CHP brass said plenty of lead remained. They just scratched the surface.
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
