Good question. How about the old benches? Could they be recycled and reinstalled in other parts of downtown and midtown?

I don't think the benches are being removed, althougfh some of them are in pretty rough shape and could use replacement. The benches aren't in the light rail right-of-way where cars will run.

Hi Scott,

There are currently a few redevelopment projects under way (notably the south side of the 700 block and 800 block) that seek to accomplish what you are talking about. See the last link in the article for photos and some background on the 700 block. While redevelopment remains a controversial issue as far as how much economic growth the projects get from the amount put into them, the work is being done.

The only problem with that is that Trader Joe's require parking lots.

Agree! a few years ago there was talk about bringing a Whole Foods to L Street, around the ex-Greyhound location, if memory serves me correct. An urban grocery store would definitely be key to the area's resurrection, especially if it were open 24 hours!

When I spoke with Bay Miry and Ali Youssefi about the redevelopment project on the 700 block, they told me they would like to bring in an urban grocery store (but the space they have for it is smaller than a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods).

They said they will first talk to the owners of the old Greyhound station so they don't duplicate efforts.

As such, nothing is sure yet, and any grocery tenant that might come in would need to want to, which would be up to them, but with the housing going in on the 700 block, it seems likely that some form of grocery store in the area would do well.

Mark, it sounds like you're saying we are halfway there. K Street is busy during office hours and parts of it are busy at night (according to Downtown Sacramento Partnership, the 1000 block of K gets 8-10,000 visitors every weekend, the equivalent of two well-attended Second Saturdays per month.) But we need early-evening uses and residential uses, which hopefully the 700 block will start, and the 800 block will follow up (although that might take a while.) In the short term, filling retail spaces and evening programming might give a boost until the housing is on line?

I think it's funny that so many people think Trader Joe's would be some sort of urban panacea . When people go grocery shopping they usually don't hang around because they need to get their groceries into the refrigerator. We want people to linger downtown -do some shopping, dining & drinking, see a movie, take a stroll, etc.

It's not about lingering as much as it is about 1, foot traffic on well lit streets and 2, making the area friendly for residential development.

Also, while people may not linger, they might get their dry cleaning done, get something packed and shipped or get a quick haircut. I live near the Safeway at 19th and S and love it or hate it the thing creates lots of opportunities for small businesses who fill the surrounding spaces and the area immediately surrounding feels much safer than even 2 blocks away in any direction.

While the "energy flow" bit is nice, part of it also has to do with "cash flow." The city can't get federal transportation funds for K Street unless it carries auto traffic: apparently the feds don't consider bikes, light rail and pedestrians to count as "transportation."

A downtown market would help a lot, in part simply because there are no supermarkets west of 17th Street in the central city! Such a market would have a lot of uses: the 100,000 or so office workers downtown could walk there more conveniently than the Safeways on 19th or Alhambra for necessities, lunches, or tidbits for office potlucks and parties. Central city markets are inevitably places where you run into your neighbors: it used to be a long-standing joke that you'd run into more of Sacramento's music scene at Safeway at 3 AM than at most shows. Generally I run into someone I know every time I go to Safeway or Grocery Outlet, which often turns a quick shopping visit into an impromptu bull session in the aisles if it's someone I haven't seen in a while.

Plus, the most important sort of "lingering" is done by people who live in the neighborhood. While there is enough demand for a market just from the office workers and 18,000 or so people in the western half of the Grid, having a market downtown means anyone who chooses to live there (in the handful of existing housing or, hopefully, future housing opportunities) won't have to hop in a car to hit a supermarket. It's an amenity one finds in complete urban neighborhoods, and would generate lots of foot traffic in the early evening (peak shopping hour.)

One "plus" of using the old Greyhound depot as a market is that the old bus barn between the depot and the Berry Hotel could be used as parking--but, as found in Trader Joe's in high density urban neighborhood like West Hollywood, a parking attendant will be needed to ensure that those who park there are actually parking at Trader Joe's. Or, alternately, they could work out a deal to validate parking for those who use the city lot under the Westfield mall a block away.

It hasn't been the main shopping district of the city in about half a century, and personally I think the attempt to simulate a suburban mall on K Street has always been a losing proposition. Returning K Street (and the downtown core) to a traditional urban neighborhood is a winning strategy; it has already worked for Midtown, but downtown has more potential than Midtown as an urban neighborhood. Plenty of cities don't have a place where people from all over the city and region converge; a lot of low-density American cities have several such points, and in many of them, there are people who haven't been downtown for decades because they have no interest in leaving a suburban environment. There is little profit to be gained trying to convince those people to come downtown, when instead we can appeal to the people who DO want to visit an urban neighborhood, especially those who want to live in one. What sets the central city apart is its difference; rather than trying to imitate the suburbs, an urban neighborhood provides a contrast. It's already working to some extent, we just need to finish down the course we're already on.

I'm not thinking high-traffic grocery store either. A neighborhood market, someplace big enough for a produce and meat section and a deli counter, but not as limited as the handful of little bodegas downtown, would be just about the right size to fit inside the Greyhound depot, or maybe inside a vacant chunk of the Westfield mall.

Just say no to Tesco

You are correct--we don't have to wait until condos get built to do that, and in fact, it is happening now. The 1000 block (Dive Bar, Pizza Rock, District 30, Crest, Pyramid, Cosmo/Social) draw around 8000-10,000 people every weekend--that's half the attendance of Second Saturday, but it's every weekend instead of only one day a month. So the parking/traffic/mayhem impact is less, but the economic effect is potentially greater. So even if Dive Bar isn't your thing, it seems to be working, at least in the evenings. But in the long run, more downtown residential offerings are going to be necessary--otherwise, once the novelty wears off, attendance will slow down and there won't be the necessary residential population to support the neighborhood beyond that point (as there is in Midtown.)

The major difference is, what creates the draw? The old model was to allow vacant buildings to decay, with the hope of qualifying as "blight" to draw public subsidy in the form of redevelopment dollars. The appearance of urban collapse was almost encouraged, because the worse your neighborhood appeared, the easier it was to get federal funds for property acquisition and "blight elimination." I've read a lot about urban downtowns--about the only ones who didn't call their downtown "the worst slum west of the Mississippi River" were the ones east of the Mississippi.

That worked when we had plenty of tax dollars, and the mentality was based on bulldozing old things to create new ones, but today there's a different strategy. Redevelopment by bulldozer is old news, and changes to redevelopment law have made tax-increment financing at least temporarily more difficult. But it's not the only tool in the box, just the one cities like Sacramento has used the most.

Adaptive reuse, especially by simplifying permits allowing the use of existing buildings, is a popular approach. By filling those vacant storefronts with activities, generally requiring a lot less investment up front, you attract investors who see opportunity and want to get in on it.

St. Rose of Lima Park needs a lot more programming, I'll agree, but it's a city park, and city parks are pretty starved these days. Although, as a result, they might be open to more special events if there are people willing to put them on. The project on the 700 block will include kiosk vendors in the space adjacent to the light rail line, and the new row of storefronts and shop owners would no doubt like to see more activity at St. Rose; what's your idea?