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Noel Neuburger | Sacramento Business Journal

In the next week, grading equipment will get moving at McKinley Village, which will eventually have 336 homes, a community center with pool, and parks and community gardens.

Infill housing project McKinley Village has gotten underway, but it’ll be months still before most people notice anything going up on the Sacramento site.

Megan Norris of development groupRiverview Capital Investments said in the next week, grading equipment will get moving on the property, which will eventually have 336 homes, a community center with pool, and parks and community gardens.

Norris, a vice president at Riverview, said the grading phase should last a few weeks and be followed by beginning work on infrastructure, such as sewer, water and other utility lines below ground, whichTeichert Construction will handle. Streets would follow on the site, which is a former orchard southeast of Business 80 and north of east Sacramento.

“We’re working on the permits for the rec center and model homes,” she said, adding construction could begin on those parts by the end of the year, and could be fully built by late spring or early summer of 2015. The first home sales would begin around that time, and The New Home Co.is scheduled to be the builder.

Though the project went through a lengthy review process before approval, interest from potential residents hasn’t flagged. Norris said inquiries about when McKinley Village homes would be for sale on the project’s website have risen in the last couple months, and she also gets calls regularly.

Not everyone may be happy the project is breaking ground. A group of East Sacramento residents, concerned primarily about traffic from McKinley Village affecting their neighborhood, filed a lawsuit earlier this year against the project. Though there was a settlement conference Monday between those plaintiffs and the defendants, there was no resolution and the suit remains active, Norris said.

For those involved in the project’s planning, the start of grading is a highly anticipated step, Norris said.

“Everyone is very enthusiastic to see it come to fruition,” she said.