Naturally - this city has no interest in actually capitalizing on what makes it special -its architectural history and underground city - because they're too busy trying to be like everyone else. Isn't this like the 20th time they've done "streetscape enhancement"? Now we have lost forever a huge resource and potential for heritage toursim dollars. It's like the Winchester House - keep adding on and adding on items that have no rhyme or reason to keep the crazy away.

William: Have you seen any environmental reports for this project? I have not been able to find anything on the City's website. It would seem to me that substantial impacts to the potentially significant "underground sidewalks" from this project should have triggered some sort of CEQA review.

My guess is they went for a "replacement of existing facilities" exemption. You can go to the City Planning Counter and ask to see the NOE.

Planning: that's probably what happened. However, it's my understanding that you can not categorically exempt potential impacts to historic/cultural resources.

From the preliminary statements about the Planning Department mentioned by the City Attorney's office, demolition without proper CEQA review was just one of the things that kind of stopped happening in recent years--thus resulting in some rather dramatic turnover in city administration. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't bother with historic structure review at all.

A recent attempt to survey surviving underground spaces in downtown Sacramento was met with so much resistance that the survey crew was denied access to more than half of the underground spaces! Makes you wonder what they're hiding under there!

Okay, moolaroo...what do you think should be done with Old Sacramento? In detail...what would you like to see there?

Let’s focus on what we have in our region - we should turn old sac into a year round farmers market like Grandville Island in Vancouver or the water front in Seattle. Make it a daily destination for locals and tourist's - focus on sustainable food that is grown throughout our part of the world and teach people how to cook and eat quality food. This will create an environment that will allow quality restaurants from around the region to access these resources and teach our good citizens that the food they consume can not only be good for them but good for the farmers and good for the environment. - Just my 2 cents

In response to Bill's question: Heritage Tourism. Williamsburg of the West.

To do that we would need 5+ million guests annually to support the shows, unique retail and F&B. Classic, not kitsch. Great "bones" abound but like Arco, it needs a "revenue generating make-over" to support high operations and maintenance costs.

Heritage tourism and the Williamsburg of the West was the original idea--take a look at the original Old Sac planning documents. Yesterday's classic can often become today's kitsch, and sometimes a plan either doesn't age well or the real-world application doesn't meet up to original expectations.

As to heritage tourism in the current day, the opening of underground tours is the beginning of an Old Sacramento program based more around heritage tourism--and not just the Gold Rush and the Transcontinental Railroad, but hopefully more and more of the century and a half of Sacramento history beyond those two watershed events.

As to a full-time farmer's market, it seems like K Street downtown is a fantastic place for that. Gee, I understand there is going to be a vacancy at the corner of 7th and K...

Comic Kathy Griffin sometimes refers in her act to a one-time visit by Oprah to the Massachusetts Plimoth (not Plymouth) settlement just south of Boston where people with little to do in their lives re-enact frontier life of the 17th century...

When confronted with the conditions for women and especially black women of the Plimoth era, Oprah kvetched "I ain't gonna be no slave!" Her 'friend' Gayle was unprepared for the rusticity of 'authentic' Plimoth of the day and said that she preferred a stay at a local Hilton Hotel to acting out antique-ish Plimoth settlement life...

Surely there's a more authentic and useful way of preserving history rather than attempting to paint a caricature cartoon of a city's past... A reference to an "In Old Sacramento" (which btw, was on Encore Classics last night at 3am) faux Victorian facade is NOT a nod to history -- it's a bad architectural joke that could be vastly improved by a built environment that is authentic to today, even if the shell of a building is antiquated.

Sacramento is better than a mere blah 'horse n buggy days' affectation -- at least it SHOULD be by now... and modern uses should be primary rather than trying to force the round peg of contemporary life into the square hole of a 'painted lady' just for the 'painted lady's' sake...

So, then, bbbbmer, how would you paint a more authentic and useful way of preserving history in Old Sac? Be specific here.

The candy shops and T-shirt shops survive in Old Sacramento because there are enough tourists buying candy and T-shirts to keep them open, not because old buildings somehow naturally draw candy and T-shirts. About a quarter of the buildings in Old Sac are re-creations, either because the building was too unstable to save or because reconstruction was considered easier than preservation at the time, but most of the buildings there are the genuine article. Calling it a faux Victorian facade (which is redundant, btw) ignores the fact of the genuine Victorian era buildings that are there. The only thing "faux" about it is the assumption that Sacramento only occupied that tiny six square block area--or that Sacramento has to be defined by that tiny six square block area. There is plenty of space in Sacramento for the modern--and not much left of the historic era of Sacramento's founding. Once it's gone, you can't get it back.

And don't call me Shirley.

javaplace: The city of Sacramento approved allowing cycling on K Street late last year. Your wish is granted!