Mid-Rise Residential Project Opens in Downtown ‘Walkers Paradise’

The onetime sleepy city of Sacramento, California, home to the California State Legislature, has been working to change its government-town image for decades. The recent delivery of Envoy, an amenity-rich, mixed-use residential and retail project, is helping the city take one more step in that direction.

Situated in Sacramento’s downtown core that is anchored by the California State Capitol, historical museums and churches, Envoy’s contemporary materials and design contrast, but also blend, with the traditional architecture that defines the downtown area. With a Walk Score and Bike Score of 99 out of 100, the location is considered a "Walker’s Paradise," providing excellent pedestrian and bike access to numerous amenities and cultural attractions.

Developed by Anthem — a real estate development company that invests in, develops and manages commercial and residential properties — Envoy is one of the largest and most prominent mixed-use projects in Sacramento’s urban core. Located at the southwest corner of 11th and J Streets, the roughly 190,000-square-foot, seven-story building sits along one of Sacramento's busiest urban thoroughfares.

There are 153 total units in Envoy, with the majority (98) offering 1 bedroom. Twenty-nine are studio units and 26 offer two bedrooms. Located on a parcel of 0.66 acres, the mid-rise apartments occupy 178,480 square feet and the ground-level retail comprises 10,320 square feet.

Amenities include 102 covered parking spaces, various social and work lounges, a fitness studio, an open-air central courtyard, a rooftop terrace and a pet care station.

Scott Kingston, a senior vice president at Turtin Commercial Real Estate, oversees retail leasing for the project. He said that one of its strengths is the visibility it offers to “pedestrian traffic going down J Street and K Street to the [Golden 1 Center] arena, the convention center, the state capitol and the Memorial Auditorium.”

Kingston said that demand for retail space in shell condition is picking up because second-generation space has been mostly absorbed. He added that they have received letters of intent in the past couple of weeks for retail space at Envoy from both “local credit retailers with some cool concepts to a national credit operator with thousands of locations across the country.”

Kingston said he is “very bullish on demand for reasonably sized retail spaces of 2,000 to 4,000-square-foot suites."

Given the project’s proximity to sports and cultural venues as well as office buildings, “there's a heavier emphasis on food and beverage,” Kingston said, for breakfast and lunch during the day as well as in the evening before a concert or an event.

However, a primary issue for the buildout of interior tenant spaces continues to be the cost of construction that is “still absolutely at peak pricing,” Kingston said.

He added that these costs make it hard to secure tenants “because not every landlord wants to completely build out a tenant space, and not every tenant has the capital, especially smaller local and regional retailers, to take a space from cold or warm shell to fully finished condition.”

However, by negotiating lease terms and concessions, landlords and tenants are coming to agreement.

Sacramento’s Downtown Commons (DOCO) is a regional entertainment and shopping destination in the heart of Sacramento. Redevelopment of this roughly eight-block area jump-started a resurgence in investment and development downtown, Kingston said. With an open-air central pedestrian core, the area houses Golden 1 Center — home to the Sacramento Kings NBA team — the Kimpton Sawyer Hotel, a movie theatre, a Macy’s department store and numerous food vendors and other retailers.

Kingston said DOCO is located just four or five blocks away from Envoy, and that location brought “local, national and in this case international attention from developers looking to take advantage of the energy that the new arena and the surrounding retail and hospitality components brought back to downtown Sacramento.”

Further espousing the region’s attributes, Kingston added, “we have an incredible food scene in Sacramento that started to get national press, a great way of life, a great bike path system that connects Sacramento up to Folsom.” In addition, the city is surrounded by the Sacramento and the American rivers.

Kingston said that Envoy, completed in mid-2023, was designed to appeal to young professionals seeking an urban lifestyle in a vibrant downtown setting, an environmentally-friendly recipe.

Those professionals hail from a variety of employers downtown that include the state of California, as well as the city and county. Envoy sits in what is called the Governmental Affairs District, which stretches east-west from roughly 10th to 15th Streets and north-south along J, K and L Streets.

“All of the lobbying firms, trade associations, nonprofits and businesses that work with state government are located here because the capital is located nearby at 11th and L Streets,” Kingston said.

Working with office as well as retail tenants, Kingston added that there are more private sector tenants — specifically tech companies — currently looking to move to downtown Sacramento. “We're working on a couple right now, and we feel pretty confident that the office market is improving and we're seeing quite a bit of demand from private sector tenants looking for space downtown.”