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Friday, February 10, 2012
Street Interview
by Suzanne Hurt, published on June 29, 2009 at 7:06 PM
Storyline: Street Interviews
The Sacramento Press is all about providing an outlet for everyone in the community. We hit the street recently to get people's opinions about how to make Sacramento a premiere city.
This week's question: Kings fans say Sacramento needs a professional sports team to be a world-class city. What else do you think we need to reach that status?
Yolanda Benson
54, Lobbyist
Elk Grove
"We need to make sure we continue to support research at universities. We need research facilities and we need to do what we can to support innovation. So that probably means coming up with some sort of economic development strategy that goes after those high-tech jobs. We have aerospace. We need to work around that, and I think we have a good leadership in the city to try to encourage that. We need more green tech jobs. We have to come up with something to lure those businesses here."
Don Peterson
71, Local Government Agency Lobbyist
Loma Rica
"Full advantage must be taken to develop the harbor (the Port of West Sacramento). It's barely reached its lowest potential in terms of freight, as well as passenger, and as a recreational harbor. People don't understand how many jobs can really be developed if this were the principal port of call for even more of the Sacramento and San Joaquin agricultural products, and for developing this as a port of call for the export of unfinished wood, not to mention wood chips and the potential development of fine woodworking with wood coming back."
Jennifer Toney
31, Engineer
Sacramento
"I definitely think we need to keep the Kings. I think we need a centralized place where people can go out. We have a lot of clubs and restaurants. It's spread out. It makes it hard to get around. Something like the Gaslamp (Quarter) in San Diego or the River Walk in San Antonio. That's the one thing we notice when we go out in different cities -- there are areas where we can go from restaurant to restaurant. It seems to liven things up."
Dave Howard
61, Political Consultant
West Natomas
"I think of cultural amenities: a good symphony, a strong opera, great zoos -- Berlin zoo comes to mind; the San Diego Zoo is a fantastic attraction. And also, I (see) the lack of a really major university here. Not to be critical of Sac State, but it's not a UC Berkeley or a Harvard."
Tonya Davis
35, Environmental Project Assistant
Sacramento County
"I don't think we have enough culture here. When people come see our professional team, there isn't enough to do. If there was a little more diversity, a little culture, something for everyone to do -- more diverse restaurants and social activities, night life. I was just in Lake Tahoe. I noticed a lot of places are going green. The amazing thing about the people in Lake Tahoe is everybody pitches in. They want the lake to look good and be clean."
Mubashar Nadeem
34, Taxi Driver
Sacramento
"The airport could be improved. There should be a lot of international flights. There should be a lot of amusements. There is not a lot of industry here, particularly the textile industry. No stone industry, no furniture industry. They should decrease the taxes. It's very costly to live here. When I came here two years ago, I didn't know the name of Sacramento. But I knew the names of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. There should be sports facilities over here. Big stadiums."
We welcome your suggestions for future "Street Interview" questions. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. She can be reached at suzanne@sacramentopress.com or 804-2856.
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The other real goal to reach is making Public transit safe, fun and practical - why don't we have horse drawn trolleys or a bus system that runs every 5 min? How about cleaning up the place? There is nothing pretty about our roadways. Safety is key. Sports are nice, but promotion will not come without safety.
We could have electric trolleys, and we could have a bus system that runs every 5 minutes, and we could have more police officers to help maintain public safety, but those things are not free, you and I have to pay for them. Nobody wants to pay taxes, so we don't have those things.
The phrase "World-Class City" (or "Premier" or whatever) is a subjective and therefore artificial and meaningless. Making this subjective and non-tangible characteristic a goal of our city's growth planning is dumb. The best cities in the world are the ones that seek to be great places to live, not ones that seek to be world class.
In other words, we already have what you think we should have...but, like a lot of the great things about Sacramento, they are already here but they aren't marketed very well.
We already have some tall buildings, but the closest thing to a skyline-defining one is the Darth Vader building. The idea of a public-accessible observation deck (maybe a restaurant or bar?) in some downtown building is an appealing one, though: you don't really get a sense of the size and scope of the city of Sacramento unless you're looking at it from the air. The terrain is too flat to get much of a look at the city from anywhere but up in a tall building--and easier than doing so from a plane. Maybe some office building with some vacancies on an upper floor might consider such a use...
State capitals are seldom the biggest or most dramatic cities in the state--if you compare us to, say, Springfield, Albany, Carson City or Tallahassee, we don't look so bad. We're not quite up there with Austin or Phoenix but I'd say we're in the ballpark, even though I'm sure the mayor would disagree. (And if you look at population density, we have a lot less sprawl than either of those places.)
Tourists are nice, but we already get plenty of tourists--a couple million a year just through Old Sacramento. If we market what we are, we can increase that number and encourage some of them to stay. Plenty of people who don't live here already think Sacramento is worth visiting, but a lot of folks here in town seem to think that Sacramento is awful as it is, and the only way to make up for that is to demolish the city and build a new one that's just like some other city. Trying to turn Sacramento into something it isn't is a waste of time and effort, and even worse, we risk losing what makes us unique in favor of a falsified Disneyland illusion. A basketball team is nice, but it doesn't make a city--nor would its absence break it.
Oh, by the way, California is the tenth largest economy in the world, not the fifth.
The Fresno comparison is tiring. Have you been there recently? It is nothing like Sacramento and never has been. You can't really know what a tourist thinks unless you are one and have an outsider's view. I really doubt the Kings are so important, that they do make Sacramento a little more well known is true, but I doubt anyone comes from say, Missouri, to watch a game.
There are so many erroneous assumptions about what this city needs. Read what WBurg has said. Pretty much nails it.
We have over 800 houses of worship, but no religious conflicts. We have 50 cultural cuisines in less than 30 blocks on Broadway, but no significantly "ethnic" parts of town. We have *year round* local fresh produce and meats which are considered the finest in the world, but we just think of ourselves as just another farm town. Some of the finest prize fighters and martial artists in the world make their retirements here, open studios, and we don't think anything of it. We have more body mod shops per capita than anywhere else in the US, its considered "not unusual" here, yet Sacramento thinks of itself has horribly awfully normal. Walk around in any supermarket, and its almost impossible to walk out without hearing three different languages spoken before you reach the door. Sacramento is unique, both extremely diverse as well as integrated, and we are the only ones who don't seem to notice.
Personally, I think that a lot of the issues with promoting our uniqueness and diversity lie with the city government, and its lack of understanding of the above traits I mentioned. I think that it perceives things that its own citizens do which attract attention (Sam's Hof Brau, Thursday Market, cruising on Broadway) as a potential black eye rather than something to get excited about. It would be nice if the govt could separate the concept of a good idea/event from some of the negative things that ultimately rise up as an indicator of success. Maybe then we would have some of our more visible cultural uniqueness intact.