Common Ground
Developers, residents can work together
By Jeff Harris
October 2026
People dislike two things: change and the way things are. Anyone who serves on a city council quickly learns this contradiction.
Residents complain about vacant buildings, traffic, homelessness and a lack of affordable housing. Then someone proposes redeveloping a nearby property and groups organize to oppose it.
Councilmembers must navigate this environment.
The proposed six-story apartment on the former Mary Ann’s Bakery site along Alhambra Boulevard is a good example. The project would build 332 apartments on an underutilized industrial property.
Sacramento needs housing. Infill development makes more sense than pushing growth outward. The Alhambra site is large, centrally located and ripe for redevelopment and residential density.
But welcoming density doesn’t mean forgetting scale.
In my time on City Council, two development teams explored residential projects at the Mary Ann’s site. I supported redevelopment and worked with developers and the community to keep the project at a scale I believed the neighborhood could absorb.
Neither proposal moved forward. The pandemic disrupted the development market. Both projects disappeared.
But I learned important lessons about the role of local elected officials.
City Council members don’t design buildings. They shouldn’t dictate architecture. Likewise, neighborhoods shouldn’t have veto power over private property developments.
A City Council member occupies a unique role among developers, city planning staff and people who live near a project. A council position holds influence, but the key is knowing when and how to use it.
The time to use influence isn’t when people arrive at a City Council meeting and demand to stop a project. By then, positions have hardened. Architects have produced expensive plans. Developers have invested money for entitlements.
The important work happens earlier, when a City Council member brings parties together and asks whether a project can accommodate the developer’s goals (housing construction at reasonable cost) and neighborhood concerns (scale, density, preservation, traffic, parking).
The process might mean changing setbacks, breaking up long walls, preserving trees, altering circulation, improving architecture or stepping floors away from adjacent homes.
Sometimes it means telling opponents their demands are unreasonable.
The Mary Ann’s Alhambra proposal shows why the distinction between density and scale matters. Density is a number. Scale is what people experience.
The architects tried to address the distinction. Portions of the historic brick structure are incorporated into the design. Upper floors are stepped back to reduce the apparent height.
However, two other sides of the building remain monolithic.
As proposed, the new structure will rise in an area developed at a much smaller scale. The project requires special approval to exceed height limits.
It’s reasonable for neighbors to ask whether the transition could have been handled better. It’s not reasonable to expect this parcel to remain underdeveloped.
Recent California housing laws changed the debate. The state now limits the discretion cities exercise over housing proposals.
The new rules mean early local civic involvement is more important than ever. By the time the Mary Ann’s project reached the City Council, the opportunity to substantially reshape it had passed.
Sacramento needs more housing. Established neighborhoods should accommodate some of it, including buildings larger and denser than yesteryear’s designs.
The challenge for City Council is to make sure the changes produce better neighborhoods, not just bigger buildings.
Good development requires compromise. Developers might need to modify plans. Neighbors might need to accept more density and height.
Everybody bends a little. That’s what good city government looks like.
Jeff Harris represented District 3 on City Council from 2014 to 2022. He can be reached at cadence5371@gmail.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
