The apartments never came. Rancho Cordova may get 166 houses

Drive south on Kilgore Road from Highway 50 and the office parks run out at International Drive. On the northeast corner, around the white Delta Dental building, a field of dry grass runs east to the Folsom South Canal. Across the intersection sits a second empty lot beside a state office building. In December 2022, Rancho Cordova cleared the way for 417 apartments and townhomes on most of this land. Nothing got built.

The new plan, Capital Village Residences, puts 166 detached houses on about 28 acres, and 59 of them would come with an optional attached ADU, a small second unit with its own door. The City Council took it up as a consent item on Monday, Oct. 19. The vote record had not been posted when we published. The site sits a few blocks east of Capital Village, which Houseberry scores 3.6 out of 5 on amenities, the best of Rancho Cordova's 21 ranked neighborhoods.

This is a story about what a city gets when an apartment approval sits idle for four years. Fewer homes, in a form buyers in eastern Sacramento County already know, on land that was one of Rancho Cordova's best shots at apartments near Highway 50.

What 417 homes turned into

The 2022 project was called the Residences at Capital Center. Cole Partners Development Company and The Grupe Company proposed 240 apartments with a two-story clubhouse and pool, 177 townhomes with a clubhouse of their own, and a 3,750-square-foot commercial building, according to the city's 2022 state environmental filing. The council adopted that environmental review on Dec. 5, 2022.

The 2026 version comes from Guardian Commercial Real Estate, filing for owners Nelson E. Bahler and GGC Hwy 50, LLC. It adds a separate 5-acre parcel at the southwest corner and drops the apartments entirely. Plans 1 through 3 are two-story houses on lots of about 45 by 70 feet, roughly 3,150 square feet of land each. Plans 4 through 6 mix one and two stories on 50-by-80-foot lots. The fronts come in three farmhouse styles. About an acre of lawn, play areas and picnic spots gets spread through the blocks, with walking connections to the existing trail system, per the Oct. 19 agenda packet).

Read the last row twice.

The 2022 plan sat right at the 18-an-acre ceiling the city's general plan allows on this office mixed-use land. The new one sits just under the 6.1 floor of the medium-density range that the zoning code applies to standalone housing here. Staff found it consistent anyway, because the general plan's wider range of 2.1 to 18 controls.

We'd take the houses. The math still hurts.

We think the council should approve this plan. Four years after the apartment approval, the field is still grass, and 166 houses that get built beat 417 homes that stay on paper. The staff report doesn't say why the apartments were dropped. It doesn't need to.

But nobody should call it a wash. The swap costs 251 homes, 60 percent of the old count, on more land than before. Even if every buyer of Plan 3 and Plan 6 takes the ADU, the site tops out at 225 units, 46 percent fewer than 2022. And that ADU is an option at the sales office, so the real number will land somewhere between 166 and 225.

The 59 ADUs are still the best part of the plan. An attached unit with its own entrance is a place for a parent, a grown kid or a tenant, and it makes a 45-foot lot hold two households. That is real housing, built by a homeowner one door at a time.

Capital Village is the neighbor to compare it with

Capital Village, a few blocks west along International Drive, is the closest thing Rancho Cordova has to a walkable town grid. Houseberry's review describes Craftsman-style homes, townhomes and apartments on small lots around a village green, with Highway 50 and the Gold Line light rail close by. The trade-offs show up in the scores: 2.5 out of 5 overall, 15th of 21 in the city, with 2.2 on safety and 2.4 on schools.

Its 3.6 amenities score is more than double Rancho Cordova's citywide 1.6, according to Houseberry's Rancho Cordova city page. That gap is the case for building more homes right here, close to the shops and offices, rather than at the city's edge. The schools listed for Capital Village include Navigator Elementary at 2.4, Mills Middle at 2.1 and Cordova High at 2.8 on Houseberry's school score, which is built from state testing data. Confirm boundaries with Folsom Cordova Unified before buying on them.

Prices are flat. Houseberry data puts Rancho Cordova's typical home at about $494,900 in September 2026, up from about $486,900 in October 2025, after a peak near $499,500 in March. New farmhouses here will be priced against that, and against the builders on the east side.

The edge now sets the density for the middle

The same agenda carried two Lennar final maps for Douglas 103 in the SunRidge area, south of Douglas Road: Village 1 with 49 lots on 9.078 acres and Village 4 with 16 lots on 3.609 acres. They belong to a 198-lot design review the city sent to the state in August, per the Douglas 103 filing. A mail ballot on a new stormwater fee for the subdivision came back with zero No votes. On a new subdivision, those ballots go to the landowners, not future residents.

Do the per-acre math and something odd turns up. Village 1 works out to about 5.4 lots an acre. Capital Village Residences is about 5.9. A site in the office core, minutes from Highway 50, would be built at roughly the same density as subdivisions on the city's eastern edge.

That edge is where Rancho Cordova's top scores live. Only 2 of its 21 ranked neighborhoods reach 4.0 overall on Houseberry's Rancho Cordova ranking, Kavala Ranch and Sunridge Anatolia, both master-planned on the east side. Both score above 4.5 on safety.

Questions buyers are asking

When could these houses go on sale? The Oct. 19 packet gives no date. After the council's action is recorded, the builder still needs final maps and building permits for each phase.

Is the price set? No price appears in the filing. The citywide typical home was about $494,900 in September 2026.

Can an owner rent out the ADU? It is an attached second unit with its own entrance, and California law generally allows renting ADUs long term. Check the final conditions of approval from Rancho Cordova and any HOA rules before counting on the rent.

If the council's vote stands, the field off Kilgore Road becomes 166 front porches instead of 417 front doors. Before you weigh one against Lennar's east side, see how all 21 Rancho Cordova neighborhoods stack up on our Rancho Cordova neighborhood ranking, or read about the neighborhoods under the flight path in our Mather air show guide.

Sources

• Rancho Cordova City Council agenda packet, Oct. 19, 2026, Item 10.1 and Items 9.5 to 9.7)
• The Residences at Capital Center, state CEQA filing SCH 2022090063
• Douglas 103 Major Design Review, state CEQA filing SCH 2026081101
• Houseberry: Rancho Cordova neighborhood ranking