The president of the University of Sacramento has announced a signed agreement with Cordova Hills, a 3,000-acre master-planned community, to establish the university’s main campus along the eastern side of Grant Line Road within Sacramento County’s urban services boundary.

“This marks a new era in the history of the university,” said Legionaries of Christ Father Robert Presutti in an interview June 12 at the university’s downtown Sacramento campus. “We’ll move ahead now to build the world-class private university we’ve been planning that will serve as a resource to the entire Sacramento area.”

University officials hope to break ground at Cordova Hills in 2010, with plans to launch the first phase of the campus with students in the fall of 2012.

For the past few years university officials were in discussion for land at the former Mather Air Force Base for the campus, but determined that the approximately 200 acres they were offered in the Cordova Hills project better suited the university’s long-term vision, Father Presutti said.

He said the University of Sacramento, one of a network of 15 universities operated around the world by the Legionaries of Christ, a congregation of Catholic priests, hopes to eventually have 5,000 undergraduate students and 2,000 graduate students.

Along with the university, Cordova Hills is slated to have a mix of residential and commercial development, including high density to lower density residential along the project’s eastern boundary. The project will also have recreational and open space and a large network of hiking and bicycle trails.

“We’re fortunate to be able to collaborate with the University of Sacramento,” said Ronald Alvarado, project executive and manager for Conwy LLC’s Cordova Hills project. “We’re pleased to have the opportunity to build a master-planned community that has the university as a key element of our overall vision.”

The Legionaries of Christ accepted Bishop William K. Weigand’s invitation to develop a private Catholic university in the Sacramento area in November 2002, after Legionaries’ officials evaluated cities throughout the United States as possible locations for the religious order’s first American campus.

After analyzing several locations for economic strength, household income and Catholic population, Legionaries officials chose Sacramento, noting that the metropolitan region was the largest in California without a private four-year university.

The university launched its first program, a master of arts in education, in January 2005 with 40 students and held its first commencement ceremony in January. Currently 80 graduate students are enrolled in the master’s degree program and two certificate programs.

In the fall of 2008, the university will launch a second master’s degree program called the Global Leadership master’s in business administration, Father Presutti said.

That program will operate jointly with two other Legionaries of Christ universities in Madrid, Spain, and Mexico City, and the Management Institute of Paris.

The Legionaries currently operate universities in the United States, Mexico, Spain, Chile and Italy, and a graduate school of psychology in Arlington, Va. The Legion opened its first university, the Anahuac University, in 1964 in Mexico City.

According to estimates provided by the university, the construction of the new campus over approximately the next 25 years will result in more than $1 billion in new economic activity for the Sacramento region, $250 million in new annual economic activity and 2,800 new jobs.

The University of Sacramento exists “to prepare students for lives of integrity, prosperity and service to their neighbor, whether next door or across the globe,” according to a press statement. The university promotes “a wholly integrated education where all aspects of the human culture come into dialogue.”

Father Presutti said the university’s Catholic identity gives it both a base from which to draw students and ties to a centuries-old academic tradition, and that the Legion’s universities throughout the world draw students from various social, ethnic and religious backgrounds. More than 15 percent of the student population is Jewish at the Anahuac University in Mexico City, he said.

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