All News

The feeling of putting in the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle is very satisfying. So the Citrus Heights community must be very satisfied that it is putting the final piece of its nearly $36 million Auburn Boulevard Complete Streets project together after almost 20 years. Soon, this stretch of Auburn Boulevard will be a reflection of the city’s transformation.   

This stage is $23 million in grant-funded improvements from Rusch Park to the Roseville city limits, including the last of four grants that SACOG awarded for the corridor. The city started construction this summer, after years of securing funding, design work, significant utility coordination, and right-of-way acquisition.  

The project will include widening sidewalks and adding bike lanes, undergrounding utilities, storm drain upgrades, new landscaping and trees, new roadway medians, decorative street lighting, traffic signal modifications, updated pavement striping and pavement legends, enhanced crosswalks and transit stops, and a custom gateway arch welcoming drivers into Citrus Heights, incorporated into a new signalized intersection.

The overall corridor project is no small puzzle either—neither physically nor emotionally in the minds of Citrus Heights residents and businesses. Physically, the corridor stretches 1.75 miles from Sylvan Corners to the Roseville city limits. The corridor had seen heavy traffic volumes and declining retail and commercial uses in the 1980s and 1990s. In late 1996, over 65 percent of voters approved the incorporation of Citrus Heights into a city.  But emotionally for voters, one of the key drivers to incorporation was to create Citrus Heights’ own sense of community. And Auburn Boulevard has been the central artery of the city, the one that gives lifeblood to the rest of the community and one that creates placemaking for the city. Citrus Heights Community Development Director Casey Kempenaar said, “Making Auburn Boulevard safer for pedestrians and revitalizing its land uses as the city’s center has been the top community development priority of this city for the past two decades.”

The overall Auburn Boulevard Complete Streets project started in 2005 with the city’s adoption of its Boulevard Plan, proposing to revitalize this vital corridor from Sylvan Corners all the way to I-80. The project was split into two major phases, with Rusch Park the midpoint. The tough part of this current construction project is the things people will not see: the undergrounding of overhead utility lines (with funding support by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District), which is a significant component of the project, both in cost and for the construction timeline. What the public will see and enjoy are the benefits of the new streetlights, planting more than 200 trees, installing 10,000 feet of bike lanes and sidewalks, and driveway consolidation. The corridor also connects to the Louis-Orlando Transit Center with access and connections to bus lines and light rail, another benefit to the Citrus Heights community and a complement to the Auburn Boulevard project.

Soon after the construction on the north half of the corridor is completed, the city will have its puzzle all put together and it will be able to move on to other focus areas of the city. For more project information, visit the city’s website: Auburn Boulevard Complete Streets Phase 2 | Citrus Heights, CA - Official Website.