The Business Journal loves to tell stories that bubble and gush about the future of Country Club Plaza (CCP) - they keep coming back like a bad penny. You may recall our post about the Seattle investor's Macys-as-storage plus hotel rumor. That project turned out to be a non-starter. Well, it's a year later and that tale has a new twist. 

The Business Journal's latest article about the project at CCP has a new narrative (Ben van der Meer "Redevelopment plan for part of Country Club Plaza drops hotel for housing", Sacramento Business Journal, Sept. 30, 2025 - behind a paywall, sorry). It's like the old one but swaps out the hotel for 200 apartments. Out of state investors "hoping to close escrow"? Check. Macys repurposed as self storage? Check. But why apartments? Might it have to do with the flurry of new state legislation that streamlines housing permits for developers while running roughshod over communities? Hmmm...why not? And, if you are a publication with rose-colored glasses for any hair-brained development, why not just play along with it?

Our Newsroom Elves are doing their best to root out the truth about this latest rumor, but it's not an easy task. Some of the factors leaning in the direction of "might be true" include:

• The County's plan for the area is 45 years out-of-date and has no vision for the community's future, which means anything goes
• The County gives deference to developers - especially those with no ties to the local community 
• The Arden Arcade CPAC never met a development project it did not like
• New state laws make it easier for developers to profit by building housing

But on the "might not be true side", consider that:

• Arden Arcade is already overrun with apartments, far more so than elsewhere in the region
• Sacramento County's plan for housing in the unincorporated area complies with state standards and there are nearby commercial sites that could be used for housing - like @ Howe/Hallmark - that don't require demolition (i.e. cheaper to build)
• The region's housing "problem" is about low-cost housing that's too expensive to build without subsidies
• Subsidies for low-cost housing are hard to come by/unrealistic, particularly when no valid transit exists
• Our community is already overbuilt for self-storage places (including the new hi-rise one @ Watt/Whitney)
• The Business Journal makes it sound like it a done deal.

You know, it's one thing to reconfigure a large, traditional community-core commercial center as a mixed use retail+office+hotel+residences+event center people place. But it's another thing altogether to just float short-term developer pipe dreams that seek to profit off of a failed community-core commercial center. The former is what the City of Citrus Heights is getting on with at Sunrise Mall. Theirs is a complicated project that requires careful planning and will take a very long time to get done. The latter is the game at CCP and at Country Club Center across the street (where the Amazon ghost store is) as well as at the once-vibrant Sam's+Tower site on the NE corner of El Camino and Watt. Those projects in our community - with developers vying for position while the County just stands by - are just simplistic, short-term concepts drifting around in a planning vacuum. Watt and El Camino is at the heart of our community. For developers, though, it is just a place their Monopoly tokens might land on the game board - like Park Place or Baltic Avenue. What we want for our community doesn't really matter. Well, OK, except for drive-through chicken sandwiches - can't have enough of those, right? ;-)

We are trying our best to find out what's really going on at CCP. If we can, we'll let you know.