When the La Valentina Station Project in Sacramento, California, was working its way through the approval process in 2009, it seemed like a perfect development for the city's downtown. Domus Development and the city's housing agency were together planning to turn a vacant, blighted lot into a mixed-use building with 81 below-market-rate units and commercial space on the ground floor.
One major snag was the city's requirement that the project include over two spaces of parking for each new unit of housing it added.
