Zeta Communities Building Modules for CA Project

Developers recently broke ground at 16th and N Streets in Sacramento, CA for the new Eviva Midtown Apartment Building. But in reality, most of the complex will be built miles away in a former aircraft hangar.

The six-story project – formerly called The Warren – will be constructed piece by piece out of prefabricated housing units assembled by ZetaCommunities at McClellan Park in North Highlands. The modular units will be trucked to the building site, where a crane will lift and stack them atop a concrete podium.

The individual units will roll off the assembly line at the Zeta plant complete with bathrooms, kitchens and flooring. They will be bolted together, connected to utilities and covered with a roof and external “skin” to create five stories of apartments above street-level shops and underground parking.

It’s the first time the method has been used in the capital, though several structures in Davis, San Francisco and Silicon Valley have been assembled from Zeta’s prefab units.

The midtown structure is also a first for Atlanta-based developer The Integral Group, which intends to build more Eviva-brand apartments in San Francisco, Denver and Atlanta. The Sacramento building is a prototype of sleek inner-city apartment buildings that will replace urban eyesores.

“The word Eviva is literally the center of the word revival,” Chris Martorella, president of Integral’s investment management division, told an audience at Thursday’s groundbreaking ceremony. He called the project’s modular construction “the future” of efficient building techniques, although he said it won’t be used in the other Eviva projects.

When completed in late 2015, Eviva Midtown will feature 118 high-end rental units, a yoga studio and a movie-screening lawn, among other amenities, Martorella said. Plans for the ground floor include more than 5,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.