Clifton Taylor is president of Taylor Builders, a land development and investment company based in Roseville. He was one of PBA's earliest supporters, signing on before the organization had a public track record. He sat down with PBA to talk about why he made that bet, what he and his wife and business partner Isabel Domeyko are building across Placer County, and what the region must get right over the next decade.
You were one of the first private-sector supporters to say yes to PBA before the organization had an established track record. What was your thinking?
A big part of it was the people involved. I knew they had well-thought-out, purposeful intentions. Placer has a common set of issues that are genuinely unique to this county, and as more regional initiatives have come online, having a Placer-focused platform helps position our collective objectives with a more unified voice. There's a real opportunity for PBA to play a bigger convening role as we move into the next regional planning cycle, but that's a longer conversation on its own.
You have supported the DC Summit since year one. What keeps you coming back?
I have participated in Sacramento's Cap-to-Cap for years, and it's a well-connected event. What I appreciate about PBA's DC Summit is that it gets a cross-section beyond the headline elected and appointed officials. You get special districts, utilities, and nonprofit stakeholders all in the room together.
If you are doing a lot of business in Placer, that is where you find out where you have alignment on things you are working on, where the challenges are, and who is engaged so you understand how to navigate the issues you deal with day to day. And I will always say, if you want to be in business, you have to show up. You have to be able to hear the good with the bad and figure out your role in the overall ecosystem.
You grew up outside the region. How did you end up in Placer County?
I grew up in Corning, a small rural community north of Chico, then went to UC Santa Barbara. I began my career as a planner with Yuba County. In 2002, when the real estate market was booming and builders and developers were hiring younger people to work on permitting, entitlements, and regulatory issues, I landed in Roseville.
I have been based here, either with a company based in Roseville or running our own, for over 24 years now.
What makes Placer County the place you want to call home and invest in?
It is the basket of things you get as a resident and a business owner. The community prioritizes quality of life, from public education and public safety to regional parks and sports tourism. They have nurtured relationships with partners like Westfield Galleria to keep a marquee retail destination thriving in a period when malls broadly are not doing well. They have built a strong relationship with the tribe and brought in marquee entertainment and destination elements.
It is really an economic-development-focused community that is not cutting corners on quality of life. For a lot of our buyers, they will commute to a job, but they do not want to commute to a school or a hospital or wonder whether public safety is going to show up. Placer provides that platform.
Tell us about the investments you and Isabel are making here. What are you building and why does it matter?
At our core, Isabel and I consider ourselves locally focused investors. We are co-founders of the Lincoln Potters Baseball Club, a collegiate wood bat baseball organization that has become an entertainment and food and beverage destination, the heartbeat of Lincoln. We have received incredible support from the broader business community because people recognize how special that is.
Beyond that, we are involved in infill development, which aligns with our passion for placemaking and our belief that the dollars we have available should stay in the community we live, work, and play in. My question is always: how many people are reinvesting in the place they live and love? Isabel and I prioritize that over total returns when it comes to our personal investments.
We have been fortunate to have a strong partnership with JEN Partners out of New York, who brings risk capacity and capital-raising ability that complements our local expertise. That has allowed us to take on some of the largest projects in the region. At this point we have built close to $750 million worth of public infrastructure. At any given time, roughly 50 to 60 percent of our business is in Placer County, across Rocklin, Lincoln, Placer County proper, and Tahoe.
The Placer One project has really become the opportunity for Isabel and me to put our imprint on something significant. It involves partnerships with Sacramento State, Sierra College, Placer County, the tribe, and Buzz Oates to our north building Placer Commerce Center. Within all of that, we are trying to put our own flavor on it with a strong public art presence and placemaking that we hope people look at and say: that came from people who are genuinely rooted here.
We are also working on a large-scale conservation project up in Tahoe that will get attention later this summer. We inherited three lawsuits, all on appeal, and everybody was at odds. Now we are getting ready to celebrate something. Those are the kinds of outcomes that really motivate us.
Looking at the next decade, what does Placer County have to get right?Affordability, above everything. How do we keep building the things this county needs without pricing people out? There's a real regulatory and cost burden facing anyone doing large-scale development right now, and a shift coming in how this county grows, from greenfield to infill, that most people haven't fully clocked yet. Both of those are worth their own conversation, and we get into them elsewhere.
In your work, what are you most excited about right now?
Building public infrastructure for a CSU campus is pretty remarkable. As someone who grew up modestly, the idea that my company would lead the placemaking effort and partnerships for a public university is genuinely incredible to me.
The last 18 months have been challenging with overall economic inconsistency. But navigating those challenges tends to surface new opportunities. We have a really committed team that has been with us for a long time and they are absolutely in stride. That part I am proud of, not just for me but for them.
I also feel like I have had to recreate myself four times inside Taylor Builders, and we have been growing so fast that I never got to stay in any one role long enough to feel settled. What I am excited about now is that the next opportunities, whatever they are, I get to take on with a lot more experience and a much clearer sense of my role.
When I look back, though, I think: I probably should have been a little more scared.