Apartments on top of Walmart at DeWitt?

A multi-story affordable housing complex built on top of a Wal-Mart or Raley’s … or Trader Joe’s for that matter.

And located on land once earmarked for a Costco store at the PlacerCountyGovernmentCenter in North Auburn?

PlacerCounty supervisors provided the raw materials for such a vision during a wide-ranging discussion on affordable options this week during an update on housing needs.

Supervisor Kirk Uhler of Granite Bay was the chief proponent of a closer look at melding housing and commercial development, not specifying a particular location for a multi-story structure but name-checking Raley’s and Walmart.

“How many more apartment units going an additional one, two or three stories above the Walmart ceiling height … could you put on that piece of dirt?” Uhler asked. “You’ve now got two utilizations of the same square foot – the commercial floor area and the residential above it.”

The result could be more walkable commercial areas and better locations for transit, he said.

“Right now, in PlacerCounty, you’ll see apartments, where we have them, adjacent to the commercial square footage areas but not incorporated with them,” Uhler said. “So how do we get the dual utilization out of that one square foot?”

Supervisor Jack Duran, who represents the Roseville area, said that a revision now taking place of the long-range plan for the North Auburn government center is an opportunity for mixed-use projects. Early revisions of the updated plan call for housing on the government center property, also known by the DewittCenter name.

Duran said he recently toured the city of Alexandria, Va. with the Sacramento Area Council of Governments and saw about 10 different sites where buildings were used for more than one purpose.

“They had a Walmart building with four stories of residential on top of that and a fire station with five stories of residential on top of that,” Duran said. “There were just a lot of different options out there.”

Duran suggested the county work with developers to consider options rather than have staff focus on establishing new fees to pay for affordable housing.

“The project in Auburn is a real opportunity to use form-based codes and really experiment with what is available,” he said. “There is a huge opportunity to do a lot of mixed-use things there and really find out what works and what doesn’t.”

Discussions took place at Tuesday’s board meeting.

Both Costco and Walmart have considered North Auburn as potential store sites, although there is no official interest being expressed currently. Walmart axed plans in February after buying land north of Luther Road. Costco exited after off-and-on discussions with the county over a site at the government center identified as a potential location by the county.