Old Sacramento underground would be nothing like Seattle's underground. How many more people will be drawn to Old Sacramento to see this 'wonderous attraction'? Not very many. Big demand? Are you serious? This is just one more lame idea that old timey Sacramentans like to come up with. It's a complete waste of time and money. $185,000 could go to plant trees -which would improve Old Sacramento and have a much more significant positive long-term impact on the district.

Markes: It would be very difficult to plant trees in Old Sacramento, considering that the sidewalks are hollow because the whole thing was raised about 15 feet from its original grade. If you cut a hole in the sidewalk and dropped in a tree, it would fall down into the building's basement!

Every time that Channel 6 shows repeats of the "California Gold" or "ViewFinder" episodes about the underground sidewalks, the folks at HOSF get deluged with calls asking when they can go on the tour. The one weekend when public tours were held, during Gold Rush Days a few years back, there were lines all the way across Old Sacramento to take the tours. Demand has already been proven--it's just a matter of providing some supply.

You are right about one thing--Old Sacramento's underground is not like Seattle's underground. The idea is not to mimic Seattle precisely, but to focus on a piece of history that is unique to Sacramento.

It was a VIEWFINDER program on KVIE hosted by Jack Gallagher, featuring Cosmo Garvin, entitled 'Subterranean Sacramento'.... Here's a pdf of the script:

http://www.kvie.org/programs/kvie/viewfinder/subterranean/ViewFinder-SubterraneanSacramentoTranscript.pdf

...with the video for sale from PBS ... here...

http://www.kviestore.org/dvvisusa.html

I was unable to find the video on youtube or another resource for free public consumption... But, it is PBS, and I'm sure in these times, they need all the help they can get -- plus the video is only $15...

In a way, I can see your point in terms of the aesthetics of Old Sac... But these are hard times and capital investment in real estate in this era is just not in the cards to make such improvements as you conceptually suggest a reality...

So much of newer development in the downtown/midtown area is mere mimicry of other places, rather than cultivating our own aesthetics and culture based on what we have, OR in the alternative, importing that which is excellent from elsewhere, including collecting world class architecture and architects from around the globe for our major commissions and concepts.

I believe the Crocker is an effort toward this, and there are dribs and drabs in and around the central core of Sac, but our major commissions are just as dull as dirt, especially if David Taylor had anything to do with them... My God, how many more kleenexbox erections has this guy got in him???

We need to cry out and DEMAND that our built environment reflect such new efforts as the Crocker and a few other creatively considered buildouts in the area, rather than allowing mediocrity, as in Taylor's highrises and Buzzy Oates' tilt ups demonstrate...

Perhaps by giving 'design review' some much needed TEETH!

That's why the Underground Tour is a good idea--this is something unique to Sacramento, something that couldn't be transplanted someplace else. There are other underground tours, but this one tells a story that took place here. This is the engineering project that literally saved the city--if it had not been for the street raising, we would certainly have lost the state capitol, and perhaps would have resulted in the abandonment of the city. Instead we undertook a massive engineering project, diverted a river, piled up a whole bunch of dirt, and kept going where nature emphatically said we couldn't.

OOPS, the show is on the history channel tonight (Sun) at 9pm. It's actually called "Cities of the Underworld". Good stuff...

For starters, it's a loan, to be paid back by proceeds from the tours. Second, the private sector has had 45 years (the amount of time since Seattle started holding underground tours) to start a tour program and has not delivered. The private sector hasn't stepped up because they don't consider the underground sidewalks to be important or interesting. Maybe if they see an Old Sacramento tour program functioning profitably, they will change their tune?

Another way that this tour will be different from Seattle's is that it will be firmly grounded in local history, which is a fairly wild and wooly story in itself: the story of the floods that devastated the city in its early years, the first efforts to build levees and street raisings, the even more devastating 1862 flood, the overnight cities that appeared on high ground during floods, the political battles to get the street raising done, the stories of the contractors who did the work...and that's not counting the century or so of stories about the sidewalks after they were built.

Why wouldn't an underground tour help integrate the historical district back into the city by reintroducing its citizens to a part of our history that has been literally hidden underground for more than a century? Sacramento's underground is something many, many people here are curious about, and it would bring them back to Old Sacramento where they would be likely to spend money on other things while visiting. That money promotes the local businesses there, generates sales tax, and promotes reinvestment, while providing an attraction that will draw tourists from out of town and locals back to Old Sac.

The fact that other cities have turned their underground spaces into tourist attractions is no reason to criticize the idea, given their successful track record, and it's hardly a "copy-cat"--we raised our streets 25-30 years before Seattle did, and over a much larger area. In other words, they copied us!

A man whose only response to a query or idea is to say 'Nay' becomes to the public as a sheep's bleating is to a Shepard; it becomes a part of the landscape such as the trees, breeze, or dung. In any case, it is rarely noisome and not worthy of contemplation or thought.

There have been two programs on the underground sidewalks--both a "California's Gold" with Huell Howser and "Viewfinder" with Jack Gallagher. As mentioned above, both tend to result in a torrent of calls about tours whenever Channel 6 shows them.

The City Council passed it unanimously--tours should start in May!

This is not the first experiment with underground tours. In 2006, HOSF staff held tours over "Gold Rush Days" weekend and had to turn away hundreds of people (the lines extended all the way across Old Sacramento!) Every time Channel 6 shows the "Viewfinder" or "California's Gold" episode about the sidewalks, they get more calls asking for tours--they have a list with a thousand or so names on it! Finally, the latest round of stories has resulted in ANOTHER wave of calls asking to be put on the waiting list for tours. So yes, I think that a wager over the success of this tour program would be a very safe bet indeed.

So, Markes, how much do you want to bet?