They voted on half the deal and called it believing in Rancho Cordova. I know the sentence. It is what a city council says when the renderings are ready, the youth soccer teams are in the parking lot, and the part about money is scheduled for next week. Belief is a fine thing in a church and a terrible thing in a contract. A contract is the place where you write down what happens when the belief runs out. This one has a blank where that page goes, and the council signed the cover sheet.
Here is the record. OnSite Observer’s Vitaliy Moskalenko reported Oct. 27, 2026, that Rancho Cordova’s City Council voted 4-1 the night before — Mayor Garrett Gatewood, Vice Mayor Linda Budge and Councilmembers David Sander and Siri Pulipati for, Councilmember Joe Little against — to approve the design of a 7,500-seat arena and the sale of a 12.5-acre city-owned parcel at 2875 Kilgore Road for Downtown DOVA, a roughly 28-acre district of hotels, shops and up to 1,000 homes proposed by KozPure Development. The parcel’s baseline price is $3.54 million from a May appraisal, and can drop by as much as $600,000 for debris cleanup. One entity, DOVA Arena LLC, pays $300,000 cash for about an acre. Another, Alpha One Sports and Entertainment Group LLC, buys the other 11.5 acres with 20% cash and 80% financed by the city, due 10 years after the second closing. Then the part that isn’t approved yet: a financial participation agreement coming back Nov. 2 that staff estimate could total $185 million over 35 years. It would waive up to $3.7 million in building permit fees, pay up to $13.5 million in development impact fees out of the city’s general fund, cover up to $15 million in police and fire costs for up to 15 years, and for 35 years hand the developer half of the city’s 1% sales-tax share from the district, all the hotel tax from up to 800 rooms on the site and all the cardroom tax from up to 20 tables, those last two minus a 2.5% city fee. The land sale can’t close without that agreement. OnSite Observer reports the staff report gives no arena construction budget and identifies no committed private financing. Folsom Times notes it would be KozPure’s first significant development, and that the city put about $6.375 million in cash, land and deferred fees behind a 2013 entertainment center on the same property that, in Budge’s words, “just faded away.”
Now the defense, and the council made it with feeling. No bonds, no loan guarantees; the developer says, “The city is not serving as a backstop.” Sander called claims “that we would be on the hook for $185 million” “completely untrue,” and argued much of the shared tax would not exist without the project. Fair: a sales-tax rebate on a store that never opens costs nothing. Pulipati: “Opportunities of this scale do not come without risk. But doing nothing, that has a cost too.” Also: “I won’t apologize for believing in Rancho Cordova.” Fine. Then read the rest. A city that lends 80% of the land price, pays the developer’s impact fees out of its own general fund and waives the permit fees has stopped being a referee and started being a partner — just a partner with no equity, no construction budget to look at and no say over who the private money turns out to be. The developer brings the rally, the city brings the land, the loan and 35 years of tax receipts, and the only thing both sides agree to call it is private. Little said staff told council members the economics would likely be “a wash,” called the city “cavalier” with public money, and asked the only question that mattered: “So why am I voting on half the deal?” Two speakers asked the mayor to sit out; one said he had handed out DOVA T-shirts at a Planning Commission hearing, and the city attorney said there was “no evidence presented that there’s actually any financial conflicts of interest.” The mayor did not address it. He answered the room instead. “I am insulted when people call Josh a developer,” Gatewood said. “He’s a citizen that has chosen Rancho Cordova to develop in.” He is a developer. That is not an insult. It is the job, and it is the reason somebody across the table is supposed to be counting.
Deb wants to know if the city will sell her the lot behind the house at 80% financed if she promises to put a hot tub on it someday. Buck says only if she brings T-shirts. Joey has offered to hold the rally. I love them. They are seasoning.
“Believing in Rancho Cordova” is the alibi. The other half of the deal is the story. Sit with it until it confesses. A council that votes on the land and the building first and the money second has already told the money it will be approved — because who walks back a land sale and a design a week later? Maybe the arena fills every night. I hope the soccer is great. But belief is not a term sheet, and the people who will be paying the impact fees out of the general fund were not at the rally. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask, out loud, before Nov. 2: what does the arena cost, whose money is building it, and what does the city get back if it fades away like the last one?
Sources:
- OnSite Observer, Vitaliy Moskalenko, “Rancho Cordova OKs DOVA arena design and land sale before final tax-sharing deal,” Oct. 27, 2026
- Folsom Times, Bill Sullivan, “Cordova City council moves $2B arena district project forward in 4-1 vote,” Oct. 27, 2026
- The Abridged (KVIE), Felicia Alvarez, “Rancho Cordova downtown center and arena plans win key City Council approvals,” Oct. 26, 2026
— Theo Ashford-Lindström
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