Cutting-edge building in midtown Sacramento will use …

Developers broke ground a few days ago at 16th and N Streets 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 Zeta Communities 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.

Theres tremendous time saved because were working on what will go on top of the foundation while (the general contractor is) doing site work and utilities, said Dennis Gleason, project manager at Zeta. By the time they finish the foundation, we have units stored here that are ready to be shipped to the site and put in place.

Its 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 Zetas 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 Integrals investment management division, told an audience at Thursdays groundbreaking ceremony. He called the projects modular construction the future of efficient building techniques, although he said it wont 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.

Rents will range from $1,600 a month for a one-bedroom apartment to $2,150 for a two-bedroom unit, and premium corner units will rent for more, said Marc de la Vergne, deputy executive director of the Capital Area Development Authority, the city-state agency that initiated the project.

They (Integral) view Sacramento as a great place to launch the Eviva line of apartments, de la Vergne said.

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