Bob Shallit: Nehemiah teams with Bay Area firm on midtown condo-retail project
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Published Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009
A Bay Area company known for turning blighted urban sites into cultural hot spots has been tapped to build an eight-story condo and retail project along midtown Sacramento's 16th Street corridor.
Em Johnson Interest Inc. of San Francisco will team with a division of Sacramento-based Nehemiah Corp. on the $37 million project, which is scheduled to start construction next year.
It won't be just another residential complex, says Nehemiah chief exec Scott Syphax.
"This is a signature site," he says of the property a block from Capitol Park at the northwest corner of 16th and N streets. "And this will be a transformative project."
One goal is to link the 98-unit project with the planned Capital Unity Center museum across the street.
A similar neighborhood connection is a hallmark of Em Johnson's highest-profile project in the Bay Area.
Along a once-blighted block in San Francisco's Fillmore District, the company completed a 13-story building in 2007 that includes condos, a restaurant, a nightclub and center celebrating the Fillmore's jazz heritage.
That type of neighborhood-changing project is one reason the Johnson-Nehemiah team was selected for the project, says Marc de la Vergne, development manager of the Capitol Area Development Authority, which owns the parcel.
Another was the likelihood of Johnson-Nehemiah getting construction financing from a large East Coast union pension fund, enabling the project to get under way quickly and "contribute to Sacramento's economic recovery," de la Vergne says.
He views the project – with condos priced between $296,000 and $500,000 – as a bridge to other CADA projects planned for 16th at O and P streets, as well as the proposed Crystal Ice mixed-use project at 16th and R.
"If we can get these all out of the ground," says de la Vergne, "you'll see the most dramatic transformation of any urban corridor in the city."
On the move
In this year's biggest lease deal, chipmaker Numonyx Americas has agreed to take 96,000 square feet in a new Folsom complex.
About 400 local employees will relocate in December, moving from current digs at Intel Corp.'s Folsom campus to a 58,000-square-foot building that Sacramento-based Evergreen Co. developed "on spec" at 2235 Iron Point Road.
Another 50 to 100 staffers will join them in mid-2010 when a 38,000-square-foot addition is completed. It will accommodate Numonyx's need for additional space for the design and testing of computer chips.
"This was a spec project that turned into a build-to-suit, which is unusual," says Dennis Neeley, a senior VP with Grubb & Ellis, who represented Evergreen in the deal.
Numonyx was formed a year ago through a merger of Intel's flash memory division and a unit of Swiss tech giant STMicroelectronics.
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