Elk Grove's next 3,500 homes would go south of Kammerer Road

South of Kammerer Road and west of Highway 99, Elk Grove's last subdivisions give way to wheat, wine grapes and the McConnell Estates tasting room. A developer wants to put about 3,500 homes there.

The plan is called The Reserve, 850 acres of farmland outside the city limits that Elk Grove would have to annex. The city opened its environmental review this summer, and the first comment period closed Aug. 31. Next door, the proposed Elk Grove Crossing plan covers another 319 acres and about 1,820 homes. Together, the two would add more than 5,000 homes to the city's southern edge.

Elk Grove is a city of about 177,000 people where home prices have drifted down this year. According to Houseberry data for Elk Grove, the typical home was worth about $621,400 in October 2026, down from about $630,900 in November 2025.

The timing matters because of a vote across town. On Nov. 5, the Elk Grove Planning Commission voted 4 to 1 to recommend rejecting Summer Villas, a 499-home senior community on Sheldon Road inside the city's protected rural area. Read the two together and the city's growth plan is plain: build south along Highway 99, not east into the large-lot country.

What would go where

The plan steps down from north to south. Apartments, townhomes and mixed-use buildings would line Kammerer Road. Medium- and low-density neighborhoods fill the middle. At the southern edge, near the Cosumnes River, lots get bigger and transition to agricultural-residential land.

Lotz Parkway would extend south from Kammerer to a new roundabout. Two new stormwater basins would take up about 44 acres. The Cosumnes Community Services District, which bought land on Kammerer in 2022 for a regional park, would lead the design of the park and sports area, Onsite Observer reported.

The pipes are the hard part. The site sits outside Zone 40, the county water agency's service area, which ends at Kammerer Road. Sewage would run about five miles north and west through existing Elk Grove neighborhoods to the Laguna interceptor, in a trench shared with Elk Grove Crossing.

The fight already happened, in 2018

Anyone hoping to stop The Reserve at the boundary line is late. In February 2018, Sacramento LAFCo voted 4 to 3 to add 1,156 acres south of Kammerer to Elk Grove's sphere of influence, the area the city may eventually annex. Environmental groups including the Sierra Club sued, and a court dismissed the challenge in 2020.

What is left to argue is the shape. State agencies have already weighed in. The Department of Conservation flagged prime farmland on the site, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife asked for a study of Swainson's hawks and burrowing owls, both recorded nearby.

Our view: if Elk Grove is going to tell a 499-home senior project on Sheldon Road no, it has to say yes somewhere, and the land along Highway 99 that the county already put inside the city's growth boundary is the right somewhere. We would push the city for the denser version along Kammerer, close to the freeway and the planned jobs land, rather than another field of 81 percent single-family lots. Every rooftop that goes into the Kammerer corridor is one less argument for opening the rural east.

The neighborhoods next door

The closest existing neighborhoods Houseberry scores are in south Elk Grove. Houseberry's October 2026 figures:

• Bilby Road / Bruceville Road: about $682,000, safety score 3.9 out of 5
• Near Bilby Road: about $628,000
• West Stockton Boulevard / Red Fox Way: about $558,000

All three dipped slightly over the past year, in line with the city. New construction to the south would compete with them for buyers, but that is years off, since a draft environmental report, an annexation vote and the water expansion all have to come first.

Elk Grove's strength on Houseberry's scale is safety. Seven of the 27 Elk Grove neighborhoods we score rate 4.0 or better out of 5, and the city as a whole scores 3.7.

The next document to look for is the draft environmental report, which will put numbers on traffic on Kammerer and Highway 99 and on the water supply. Before then, compare the south Elk Grove neighborhoods on Houseberry's Elk Grove ranking.

Sources

• City of Elk Grove, The Reserve Specific Plan notice of preparation, July 28, 2026
• City of Elk Grove, Elk Grove Crossing Specific Plan notice of preparation, April 2021
• Onsite Observer, Elk Grove reviews 850-acre proposal for 3,500 homes, Oct. 6, 2026
• Elk Grove News, Planning Commission denies Summer Villas amendments, Nov. 5, 2026