A developer wants to turn a 4.8-acre site in the Carmichael/Old Foothill Farms community into a three-building industrial park. Tower Development Corp. is behind the plan at 4600 Auburn Boulevard.
The county is currently reviewing the plans for the infill project, according to The Business Journals. A related county environmental record is filed under the project on CEQAnet. Tower Development Corp. is the applicant, with an address at 9940 Business Park Drive in Sacramento.
A Small-Bay Niche With Tight Vacancy
The proposal would land in a corner of the Sacramento industrial market that has looked relatively healthy even as the broader sector cools. For buildings between 4,000 and 50,000 square feet, average asking rents have climbed roughly 51% over the past seven years and vacancy sits below 3%, per a report from Peck CRE. The report also notes that the I-80/Roseville Road submarket, which includes stretches of Auburn Boulevard, holds about 1.3 million square feet of incubator industrial space with vacancy below the metro-wide average of 5.1%.
A recent sale nearby illustrates the appetite for that small-bay product. At 5753 Auburn Boulevard, a 32,255-square-foot multi-tenant industrial park on roughly 2.07 acres recently sold to a private investor, trading at a 7.5% capitalization rate while fully occupied, the same Peck CRE report states. That property consists of four single-story buildings with more than 22 individual small-bay units.
Broader Market Sends Mixed Signals
Zoom out to the countywide picture, though, and the numbers get murkier. Sacramento's direct industrial vacancy rate stood at 6.1% in the third quarter of 2026, down from 6.3% the prior quarter but up from 5.8% a year earlier, according to a market report from Kidder Mathews. The total availability rate for industrial space was 10.1% in the same quarter, unchanged from Q2 but up more than a full percentage point from 8.9% a year prior, the report notes.
These vacancy figures come from different reports covering different geographies, time periods, and market segments, so they should not be read as directly comparable rates. Kidder Mathews reported that direct net absorption turned positive again by Q3, at 347,711 square feet, with leasing activity totaling 1,844,791 square feet that quarter, below the roughly 2.7 million square feet recorded in Q2.
Other Projects Moving in the County
Developers have kept building despite the choppier countywide numbers. Approximately 1.6 million square feet of industrial space was under construction in Sacramento as of the third quarter of 2026, per Kidder Mathews.
Project Location
The proposal at 4600 Auburn Boulevard is approximately 200 feet north of Pasadena Avenue.
