Newest articles on The Sacramento Press tagged as "development"

Midtown neighborhood reacts to release of McKinley Village project plans

2013-05-06T14:24:25Z

Update: We spoke with the developer late Monday afternoon and an article on their response is in the works.

After an investment group turned in an application to the city for a new development near Midtown, a local neighborhood group convened on Saturday, May 4, to discuss the impact of the proposed project.

Last Thursday, May 2, the city released Riverview Capital Investments’ final plans for McKinley Village. Under different names and developers, the project had been proposed several times in the past, and last failed in 2006. The current model is a housing development with 328 single-family homes planned to go into 48 acres wedged between Capital City Freeway and the Union Pacific Railroad tracks near Sutter’s Landing Park in Sacramento. It was intially presented to neighborhood groups in February.

The proposed $120 million development is adjacent to the Marshall School Park-New Era neighborhood in Midtown, where residents gathered Saturday afternoon to study the latest plans and maps and discuss the potential neighborhood impact.

We’ll speak with Riverview today (a representative said they weren’t available over the weekend) , and they will likely have supporters they can refer us to, but many of the residents in the meeting on Saturday were opposed to the plans.

Their principal concern was traffic. The development will have a vehicle and bicycle path from Sutter’s Landing Park to Midtown, and from C Street and Elvas Avenue to East Sacramento. But residents believe there should be a path for vehicles opened to Alhambra Boulevard to lessen the potentially heavy traffic onto the residential streets. Currently, the developer has the Alhambra opening only for pedestrians and bicycles.

“I’ve seen what a deterrent traffic is to our neighborhood. It’s a very fragile community,” said 20-year resident Al Alvarez. “To have that much traffic come in on 28th Street would be very challenging.”

Other residents echoed support for a development, they say this development could induce traffic congestion on its narrow streets.

“We’ve seen a lot of possibilities for that space. We’re pleased to see residential development, but we’re very concerned about access,” said resident Laura Legrand.

What sets McKinley Village apart from its predecessors is it will only have housing. Neighborhood activist George Raya said that the lack of commercial space means it will cause more traffic issues than previous versions would have.

“This will have nothing. You won’t be able to get a Starbucks,” Raya said. Even for a cup of coffee or to pick up your dry cleaning, you will have to exit.”

Raya and other residents were also concerned about flooding. They say the levee would have to be punched to accommodate McKinley Village. City maps of the California State University-Sacramento levee show that if there was a breach, the plot of land reserved for McKinley Village has the highest risk of flooding in the area.

“It floods. It doesn’t have any drainage. There’s a need to get rid of the wastewater,” Raya said. Like many residents, he said he’s seen the large ponds that develop during the winter rainfall and stay as late as March.

For 25 years, developers have returned to the piece of land to make it into a sustainable community equipped with homes and businesses. In 1988, “Centrage” was supposed to mimic a miniature European city, with space for offices, retail stores, a restaurant, a daycare, a hotel and a lake. Four years later, the city council axed it.

The project was revived again as “Capital City Marketplace” in 1996, with a shopping center including two large stores and 13 smaller stores, restaurants, a hotel, an auto mall and a gas station. A year later, the developer withdrew the application.

Becoming “The Village” in 2006, the project proposed over 400 housing units, retail stores, a park, a church and open space. That died in 2007 when current developer Riverview Capital Investments withdrew the application.

In 2008, the conversation came up again to tweak the 2006 project by mainly decreasing the number of homes. Now what sets McKinley Village apart from its predecessors is it will only have housing.

Some longtime residents have been opposed to the development since it was first proposed and have not changed their mind.

“I have opposed it from the beginning since it was Centrage in the big box. It’s bringing traffic into a Midtown neighborhood and it’s not a Midtown development,” said Jan Maltzan, who’s lived in the neighborhood since 1974.

For resident Michael Murphy, the plan just doesn’t fit in the central city.

“It’s like taking an Elk Grove development and putting it in the middle of Midtown and East Sacramento,” he said.

The proposal will need to be approved by city council before it can go forward. According to the planning division paperwork, home sales are scheduled to begin in spring 2015.

The plans as they were released by the city on Thursday:

McKinley Village Plans

The $250 Million Challenge: Downtown Streetcar Corridor

2013-03-29T06:36:54Z

Yesterday, Sacramento Press contributor Tony Sheppard challenged fellow readers and contributors to share what they would do with a theoretical $250 million, in a way that might bring a greater return than a basketball arena. I started writing a comment but, as often happens, it ended up being an article in itself. So here it is.

Step 1: Build the Downtown/Riverfront Streetcar: $130 Million.

Streetcars are often called "development-oriented transit" because they promote growth of transit-oriented neighborhoods along their right-of-way. Portland is the canonical example of a new city streetcar line spurring growth in the "Pearl" District, a mostly vacant industrial district until installation of a streetcar line, and today Portland's most densely populated neighborhood. Their investment of $89 million prompted $2.5 billion in private development. Tampa, Florida's TECO line has spurred $600 million in additional public projects and $700 million in private investment.

The cities of Sacramento and West Sacramento cooperated on a draft streetcar plan in 2008, and revised that draft plan in 2011, approving a route from West Sacramento's city hall over the Tower Bridge, north to the Sacramento Valley Station and the edge of the Railyards, back down K Street through the heart of Downtown, and ending up at 19th and K Street in Midtown Sacramento. The project had an estimated cost of $125-135 million. The Memorandum of Understanding between the two cities was updated at the most recent Sacramento City Council meeting, but was kind of overshadowed by other items on the agenda. One of the funding mechanisms suggested for building a streetcar line, used in Portland and other cities, is a parking management plan. Parking revenue is used to repay construction costs for streetcar lines, and market-priced parking encourages streetcar use and "park-once" parking by providing a way for people to get around a neighborhood without a car. This plan is ready to go, the city of West Sacramento has collected extra sales tax revenue for years in anticipation of a streetcar line, but Sacramento has not backed up our neighbor city with construction funds. By funding the process locally, we don't have to wait for future rounds of federal funding that might never arrive. By partnering with the city of West Sacramento, the city of Sacramento won't have to come up with those funds alone.

Step 2: Add market-rate housing along the right-of-way: $70 Million.

We're not the only city with a troubled downtown mall. Providence, Rhode Island's "Providence Arcade" was in even worse shape than Downtown Plaza--it closed completely in 2008 due to a lack of tenants. Providence Arcade was originally built in 1824 (older than Sutter's Fort) and is a National Historic Landmark, so rather than knock it down for a new project, they decided on a different strategy. With an investment of $7 million, they built 48 small-scale urban lofts (between 300-500 square feet) and 14 small shops, aimed at local businesses instead of conventional mall chains. Before the mall reopened, they had a waiting list of tenants twice as long as the number of available spaces.

Assuming we want to think larger than Providence, but use the idea as a model, a fund of $70 million could be used to create 10 times as many market rate small apartments and shops in existing buildings along the streetcar alignment. So they have a National Historic Landmark? So do we--in Old Sacramento. Most of Old Sac's ground floor shops are full, but about half of the upstairs offices are vacant. Old Sacramento's residential buildings, however, are almost always at capacity, suggesting a greater unmet need for housing. Old Sacramento's restored historic buildings and reconstructed buildings can fill vacant spaces with residents, bringing economic activity to the district and "eyes on the street" A streetcar that lets Old Sacramento residents easily serve basic needs without a car would also address concerns about lack of parking access and permits in their neighborhood.

Outside of Old Sacramento, there are many other downtown buildings along the streetcar alignment that sit vacant, including city-owned properties like the Plaza Building, or privately owned upstairs rooms currently sitting vacant like those above Procida Florist on J and 12th or Hamburger Pattie's on J and 17th, that could be reactivated by adding residents interested in small, efficient places to live in the downtown core. Today's generation of professionals actively seek homes in the heart of downtown, and new high-tech companies choosing headquarters look for facilities in emergent downtowns. They prefer urban neighborhoods where their prospective employees can find the amenities they seek, including housing within walking distance of the office.

In addition to 480 apartments, this project would pay for 140 small stores, with priority for locally owned businesses, to open along the streetcar right-of-way. These stores could go into the ground floor of currently vacant buildings, especially long-vacant and blighted spaces like the ground floor retail space of the Renaissance Tower at 8th and K Street, vacant for over a decade.

Complete the 800 K Project: $30 Million.

Across K Street from the Renaissance Tower is a vacant quarter-block at 8th and K Street, and three buildings at 8th and L Street, including the Bel-Vue Building. A proposal for this block was cut short by the end of redevelopment, but a portion of the $250 million (along with existing funding sources like the $5 million MOPA fund held by the City of Sacramento) could reactivate the dormant 800 Block project, to construct a new mixed-use building at 8th and K and rehabilitate the Bel-Vue. This project included both larger market-rate housing and smaller mid-income housing on the site. A recent article in the Sacramento News & Review mentioned the hesitance of banks to fund urban infill projects that don't meet the standard suburban mold, but a city fund to create these projects could provided needed construction dollars in a way that meets contemporary market needs.

Each new downtown resident spends a much larger proportion of their disposable income within the downtown district than a commuter or suburban visitor--at an approximate ratio of 20:1. 500 downtown residents, spending money in their own neighborhood, have an economic effect equal to 10,000 visiting suburban residents. But, in addition to their own spending power, the presence of an additional 500 or more new downtown residents will draw visitors. The stores opened to serve the daily and occasional needs of downtown residents will also serve the needs of visitors and commuters. Friends and family visiting downtown residents will also become patrons of downtown businesses, and recreation/entertainment venues will draw both local and regional customers. And these downtown residents are far more likely to work downtown, meaning they won't add more cars to our highways at rush hour.

Some may have noticed I haven't mentioned the Downtown Plaza property in this plan. That's because, geographically, it is probably the best spot for a sports arena and entertainment complex of some type. But a more economically healthy downtown, one based on mixed use instead of solely focused on drawing suburban visitors, will be much better suited to draw increased private investment and make a downtown arena economically feasible with a smaller ratio of public investment to private expenditure.

Disclosure: William Burg is President of Sacramento Old City Association.

Opinion: What else could $250M buy us?

2013-03-27T22:16:02Z

Let's come at this from another perspective. And just in case I sound like I'm anti-arena, I'm not – I'm just inclined to be wary of public spending on developments of this nature as they rarely pan out. Money often gets made, but it's not by the city or municipality involved. Deals are made that involve fabulously wealthy people who generally get wealthier (the Maloofs being bad examples) with public assistance. And if the overall business proposition involved was so appealing, there would be private investors lined up around City Hall, bidding on the opportunity to build an arena and operate it. The only time recently we've had that kind of rush to bid on something was when the city proposed selling off parking as a private concession – precisely because it was good for the private enterprises rather than for the city.

So here we have $250 million taxpayer dollars (or their equivalent in terms of city-owned land) being thrown into a deal that is essentially a business startup for a small group of very wealthy private investor/operators who want to operate one of the most exclusive business franchises in the country. And that money covers more than half of the startup and development costs. And the initial question is simply "Does it make sense?"

For all of the energy and eagerness that has gone into this, nobody has spent any time eagerly rushing to figure out what $250m could accomplish given that the City is apparently willing to put that kind of sum into business development. And the deal on the table, as has been discussed, doesn't really add something new to the balance of what the City currently has. It just moves it from one location to another, leaving Natomas with a big hole - which could certainly be developed for other purposes, such as a small or satellite college campus, but the arena conversation tends to suck the air out of the room.

So if we're collectively willing to throw $250m of our money at Downtown, what else could be done with it? How many small businesses or residential developments could start up if the City is willing to put in over half the initial costs? An arena isn't the only way to spice up a downtown neighborhood - and $250m is a lot of money, especially if we're looking at it as matching funds in development proposals (or somewhat better than matching).

It's not just "is this a good idea?" which is already a complicated and nebulous question, it's "is this the BEST idea?" And, unfortunately, nobody in charge of our money is actually considering alternatives.

Arena plan puts the 'king' in parking

2013-03-26T19:13:51Z

In order to build a downtown arena, Sacramentans will have to give up that which they hold dearest: free parking. The funding plan requires expansion of on-street metering downtown, and will increase parking rates at city lots. The arena’s presence dramatically changes the economics of private parking lots, in ways that threaten the main funding source for the arena.

By releasing the term sheet at the absolute last minute, on a Saturday night, followed by a Monday city holiday and a crashed City of Sacramento website, the opportunity for public review is so limited that it is effectively nonexistent. Three days is simply not enough time for a detailed look at the term sheet, but it was sufficient to find a major flaw in the funding plan.

Arena Construction Funded by Parking Plan

The city’s contribution to the arena plan includes $38 million in private land given to the arena developers, the $5 million in Sheraton MOPA Fund money, and $212.5 million in bonds to be repaid by future parking revenues.

What repays those future parking revenues? The city’s public-owned parking spaces downtown, both city-owned lots and street parking. Today, the city owns 5721 on-street parking spaces between F Street, P Street, Front Street and 17th Street, and 8580 spaces in city-owned lots and parking structures, for a total of 14786 city spaces. Of those 8580 lot/structure spaces, 3700 are inside Downtown Plaza and will be given to the developer. Some will be demolished, others will become a portion of a 1000 space “VIP” parking area inside the arena. 181 of the city-owned spaces are on Lot X, the city block between 3rd, Capitol, 2nd and N Street, and Lot Y, at 2nd and O Street near the Crocker Art Museum, with 85 parking spaces. This leaves 4,614 off-street spaces, or a total of 10,335 city-controlled parking spaces—30% fewer spaces than currently exist.

City Parking Supply Will Shrink—But Profits Expected To Triple?

The revenue generated by the city’s parking spaces (not just downtown, but citywide) creates a $9 million profit to the city. In order for the arena financing plan to work, it must generate enough money to pay off that $220 million debt in 35 years, and replace a portion of the $9 million in lost revenue that currently goes to the General Fund. A $220 million bond with a 35-year term and 5% interest requires payments of about $16 million per year. The “backfill revenue” chart on the Term Sheet assumes $3 million from increased parking revenue and $625,000 from parking revenue during ESC events. Thus, in order for the arena plan to break even, parking profits have to increase from $9 million per year to $20 million per year, with 70% as much downtown parking, effectively a tripling of parking revenue profits while losing one-third of the parking spaces that supply the revenue. The only way to accomplish that goal is to dramatically raise parking rates, and increase metered hours for the on-street parking spaces that represent more than half the downtown parking supply.

Metered Parking Hours Must Extend To Pay Debt

Currently, except in a few high-traffic areas like around Music Circus, street parking in downtown Sacramento is unmetered after 6 PM on weekends. This means that no revenue is generated at night or on weekends. In order to increase revenue and pay for those bonds, Sacramento’s street meters will have to run until midnight or later. Otherwise, arena visitors can park on the street without paying—at least, the first 5721 visitors to arrive downtown, minus spaces occupied by the cars of downtown residents. This practice is common in cities with high demand for parking spaces at night. Of course, visitors could always park farther from the arena, such as in Midtown, and walk downtown, if Midtown parking meters stop charging at 6 PM. If Midtown’s parking spaces get overly clogged at night, they might have to charge for late-night parking too, just to make space for Midtown visitors. And because there are more residents in Midtown than Downtown, most of whom do not have off-street parking, arena visitors will have to find spaces among Midtown residents’ cars and the cars of those visiting Midtown restaurants, clubs and theaters. There are only about 4500 street parking spaces in the Midtown business district, and a 2006 City of Sacramento parking study found that Midtown’s street parking at night is almost as crowded as Downtown’s street parking during the day.

Private Parking Competes with City Parking

Under the proposed arena plan, private parking lots will not have to pay any additional fees. At Thursday’s meeting at City Hall, City Manager John Shirey said that the term sheet will not include a tax on private parking lots. This means that, while an arena will bring much revenue to downtown Sacramento’s private parking lots, none of that revenue will go to pay off the new debt for the arena. Since public parking will become more expensive, private lots that charge less than city lots will draw customers. Because this plan makes parking lots much more profitable, property owners in the central city will have more incentive to convert their downtown properties into parking lots or parking structures, vs. new amenities like housing, retail or offices. Parking lots are a poor generator of city revenue, and a dreadfully poor use of premium downtown land, but if they bring the most immediate profit, parking will become the “highest and best use” for many downtown lots.

The term sheet also gives the new arena operators several downtown Sacramento properties for development, including 8th and K Street, the aforementioned Lot X, Lot Y at 2nd and O Street, and part of the 3700 Downtown Plaza spaces (presumably, about 1000 will not be demolished.) The instant profitability of downtown parking means that, rather than developing these lots, the ESC development team could create an instant, untaxed revenue stream by converting these areas into parking lots.

How Will Nighttime Metered Parking Affect Downtown and Midtown Businesses?

Few subjects in Sacramento are as delicate as the issue of parking. Businesses in downtown and midtown Sacramento generally do not have their own parking lots, and consider free street parking in the evenings essential to draw visitors downtown at night. Past plans to extend metered parking hours or restrict parking in residential areas near business districts inevitably meet enormous resistance from the business community, business associations, and downtown visitors used to parking on the street at night without charge. This would all change with an arena. Yes, there would be many more downtown visitors coming to the arena, but many who may have come to downtown or midtown events might choose to visit other neighborhoods if parking downtown (or midtown) at night means paying $20-30 in a parking lot, or even parking at a meter on the street.

How Can The City Limit Its Economic Risk?

The funding plan depends on people using city lots, rather than private lots, to generate revenue, but does nothing to ensure that those city lots will be used. It gives the developers large plots of downtown land but does nothing to ensure that these lots will not become new parking lots, as much a blight on the urban landscape as a vacant lot. There are three simple modifications of the term sheet that can increase city revenue, create a new funding stream, and help ensure that the lots given to the arena team have a higher and better use than parking.

First: Add an event surcharge to private lots within 1 mile of the arena, and place a moratorium on new parking lots. The arena will create massive new numbers of nighttime visitors and an enormous new income stream for private parking lot owners. In addition to the city’s spaces, there are about 30,000 spaces in privately owned lots and structures. Many sit vacant at night, but this new opportunity for evening business will open their doors. A 5% surcharge, like the surcharge proposed for arena events, means that parking operators that benefit from the arena’s presence will also contribute to its financing.

Second: Add a requirement that the ESC investors do not use properties given by the city for new parking lots. If these investors already plan on uses other than parking, adding the requirement that they not use them for parking is no loss to them. The lots closest to the arena site will become prime real estate for adaptive reuse or new construction, and a simple restriction on the site will help ensure that construction there goes vertical instead of remaining horizontal. The exception to this rule could be the three lots (Downtown Plaza lots, Lots X and Y) that are currently in use as parking structures. Charging the same 5% surcharge to the ESC operators mentioned in my first point will contribute to paying off arena debt—under the current agreement, the arena operators are not obligated to pay any new fees for use of these spaces.

Third: To protect Downtown and Midtown businesses and facilitate parking for their customers, create a citywide validation program for city lots and street spaces. This would work similarly to validation programs at Downtown Plaza: buy something at a Downtown or Midtown store or restaurant, and receive hours of validated parking at city lots. A citywide program will create uniformity and simplify a validation program. This will encourage people to use city lots or street parking, allow visitors to avoid some or all parking charges if they patronize central city businesses, and limit displacement of downtown business patrons by arena visitors.

Sacramento Deserves A Better Plan--And More Time For Public Review.

The proposed arena plan has many improvements over the 2012 plan. The arena has a better, more central location with access to highways, public transit and existing downtown amenities. The private investors are better capitalized, and willing to pay a higher proportion of the arena costs. But this plan’s fatal flaw is its dependence on a shrinking supply of parking, with no means to limit competitors for that parking supply. Parking will become more expensive if this arena is built, and free parking downtown will become a memory—this is an unavoidable consequence of the arena plan’s main funding mechanism. A parking surcharge for private lots, a requirement that ESC investors cannot turn their new properties into new parking lots, and a validation program for central city businesses can create a new funding stream, encourage development of vacant properties into something other than parking lots, and protect existing businesses. This reduces the risk to the city’s general fund and makes better use of city assets being given to the arena developers.

Without these three additions, the arena term sheet violates the city’s fundamental rules of engagement. It jeopardizes the city’s general fund, and does not make the best use of city resources. Tight deadlines and high pressure should not ease public scrutiny and detailed review of the term sheet. If such serious flaws can be found in the term sheet in only three days, what other unidentified and unexamined weaknesses does it contain? Sacramento deserves better than this.

Sources:
2006 DKS Associates’ “Sacramento Central City Parking Master Plan”

http://www.cityofsacramento.org/transportation/parking/central_city_parking/

2013 Sacramento arena term sheet
http://sacramento.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?meta_id=396718&view=&showpdf=1

Disclosure: William Burg is a Sacramento resident.

Historical R Street warehouse to become artist lofts

2013-02-15T05:41:58Z

With a Valentine’s Day launch and the motto “show some love,” the Warehouse Artist Lofts project broke ground Thursday with plans to bring 116 new and renovated apartments to the R Street corridor between 11th and 12th Streets.

Citing the goal of creating live-work spaces for artists, the start-up is highly anticipated after 15 years of planning, financial challenges and site clean up.

State, county and city dignitaries gathered to herald the persistence and passion invested in the effort to revamp the century-old warehouse at 1108 R Street into affordable and market-rate apartments. Plans include 13,000 square-feet of ground-floor retail space along R Street and construction of 66 new apartments on the vacant lot next to the warehouse.

The project will bring apartments with estimated rents between $350 and $1,100, according to Ali Youssefi of CFY Development. He said the mixed-income, mixed-use nature of the project will contribute to its success.

“How can I get one of the $350 lofts?” asked an attendee at the groundbreaking.

“Do you know how to paint?” Youssefi replied.

CFY is working with Capital Area Development Authority and Holliday Development on the project previously known as Capitol Lofts and now called WAL.

Start-up of the $41 million WAL project was long delayed by the topsy-turvy housing market and other complexities including excavation of 5,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil from the site. According to state information, the site had a number of occupants from 1895 to present, and uses included wood and coal storage and a paint shop warehouse. The state moved in by 1940 and used the warehouse for storage. CADA received a loan from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields grant program to help pay for the site cleanup.

Last summer the project received more than $18 million in tax credits for low-income housing; a crucial piece of financing needed to finalize the design. Construction is expected to last 2 years.

During an earlier discussion about the project, Youssefi commented on the character of the warehouse. “This is such an iconic building,” he said. “Our idea is to leave as many historical characteristics as possible.” The freight elevator with its high shaft and multi-paned windows will house a modern elevator for residents. The old elevator once hauled Model T cars when the warehouse was used for storage. The concrete columns, exposed ceilings and banks of industrial windows will stay.

“You can’t replicate a building like this, he said. “We will keep as many features and artifacts in tact and on display as possible. They tell the history.”

Editor’s note: The “News Digest” goes out every Tuesday morning and highlights our best stories, photos and videos from the week prior. Sign me up.

Developers break ground for Township Nine's Cannery Place

2013-01-17T01:34:06Z

The River District continues to move forward. California Lottery moved in mid-2011, followed by a Light Rail Green Line station in June of last year. Popular food truck Krush Burger will open its first establishment on the ground floor of the California Lottery building in two weeks, and on Wednesday,Township Nine officially broke ground for its first housing unit, Cannery Place.

Scott Syphax opened the groundbreaking ceremony by pointing out the the tilled earth of the mostly vacant lot which had previously been home to Bercut-Richards cannery, before it was demolished to make way for Township Nine.

“Back in 1999, this place looked like the set of Robocop...at the end of the movie,” said Syphax, President of NCRF Holdings and CEO of The Nehemiah Companies, primary backers of the project. “Cannery Place is the culmination of hopes, dreams, hard work and creativity.”

The apartment complex will include 180 units, all of which will be wheelchair accessible, a community center and interior courtyard. The building is slated for completion by October of 2014. It, as well as all further buildings constructed in Township Nine, will be LEED certified and use state-of-the art technology with a fiber optics system in each unit.

The developers’ vision for Township Nine and The River District as a whole is to create a sustainable community with easy access to all that Sacramento has to offer.

“Imagine 7th Street closed off, and a street fair along the parkway,” said Ron Mellon, the developer for Township Nine.

Township Nine will ultimately also include a playground and a 4,000-person capacity amphitheatre to host outdoor events on the riverfront. Mellon also pointed to connection the American River bike trail leading to Folsom, Discovery Park across the river and easy access to Downtown, Midtown and Old Sacramento.

The next step, though, is more housing. More specifically, a 150 unit market-rate multi-family apartment complex, followed by a 185-car garage for the River District’s first residents in many, many years.

Currently developers are building from the back, with the front portion of Township Nine reserved for a potential office complex. According to Mellon, Township Nine is partnering with a significant office developer, with the hope of bringing in a significant state tenant to the site. If that doesn’t work they’ll look for a smaller business or possibly build more housing.

Mayor Kevin Johnson lauded the project for its contribution to the local economy, pointing out that project will create 200 construction jobs, in addition to the 3,000 jobs Township Nine will create upon its completion.

“The only thing better than a ground breaking is a ribbon cutting,” said Mayor Johnson, “so we’re on the right track.”

The development plan will use the light rail and bike paths as well as pedestrian walkways to connect neighborhoods within the district as well as to the nearby areas of downtown, Midtown and Old Sacramento. The intention is to create a walkable area in which people can work and live.

“This is a model of what we’ve been talking about,” said District 3 Councilman Steve Cohn. “Having people live, work and play in an area where they don’t have to have cars.”

Cohn is eager to see Cannery Place’s first residents pave the way for Township Nine’s future.

“They will be the first people to live in this area in a very long time – the first of many to come.”

Editor’s note: The “News Digest” goes out every Tuesday morning and highlights our best stories, photos and videos from the week prior. Sign me up.

301 Capitol Mall Six Years Later

2013-01-10T21:33:31Z

It’s hard to believe how much has not changed at the former Towers site… it's been six years today since the job to construct two 53-story residential towers at Third Street and Capitol Mall was halted. Even if the two 600-foot towers estimated to cost $750 million project had been built, with the regions record home foreclosure rate over the last 4 years, today I imagine it would sit more than half empty like the L Street Lofts which only sold 22 of the 92-units. My contact at CalPERS says there are no plans to develop the site in the near future.

Just think, if 17 more condominiums would have sold to reach the bank requirement of 400 units, money from CalPERS and Deutsche Bank would have continued to invest in the project.

Where did the downtown population go?

2013-01-03T07:19:19Z

Many who visit downtown Sacramento note that, on evening or weekends, it seems like a ghost town. There is little pedestrian traffic, and most businesses are closed. In some ways, downtown Sacramento became a ghost town when half the central city’s population was forced to leave, and their homes were destroyed. Perhaps the ghosts of 30,000 former residents wander the streets, wondering what happened to their downtown neighborhood?

The drop in Sacramento’s downtown population after 1950 is easy to see using census data. The US Census tracks population down to the “Census Tract” level, neighborhood-sized chunks of about 4,000 people. In 1950, the portion of Sacramento now known as “the grid,“ or “downtown” and “midtown,” the rectangular zone from the Sacramento River to Alhambra Boulevard between the B Street railroad levee and Broadway was often called the “Old City,” the original city limits.

Fourteen census tracts are within this boundary, numbered 4-14 and 19-21. In 2010, three census tracts (9, 10 and 11) combined into Tract 11.01. The information in this article was derived from United States Census reports, and a paper by Prof. Robin Datel and Dennis Dingemans, “Historic Preservation and Social Stability in Sacramento’s Old City,” published in Urban Geography, 1994.

Downtown in 1950 – 58,000 people

In 1950, the Old City held more than 58,000 people, representing almost half of Sacramento’s population of 138,000, and about a quarter of Sacramento County’s population of 277,000. State government was not Sacramento’s largest employer then. Most worked in the massive Southern Pacific locomotive shops and railyards just north of downtown, the Western Pacific main shops in Curtis Park, or one of the enormous canneries, mills and other factories along the Sacramento waterfront, R Street and the city’s north edge.

About 5,000 migrant workers lived along the waterfront, where hiring halls connected laborers with farms throughout the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys; about 15% of California’s agricultural hiring was done there. Sacramento’s streetcar system ended a 75-year operating history, with the last streetcars taken out of service in 1947. Sleek new General Motors buses replaced the streetcars in the same year, but an upsurge in private automobile ownership was already clogging downtown streets.

The most heavily populated tract was Tract 7, the old “West End” that now includes Old Sacramento and Downtown Plaza, with 5,866 residents. Most were the aforementioned migrant workers and the population of Sacramento’s Chinatown, nearly 80 residents per acre. Southside Park (Tract 21) was a close second with 5,832 residents, followed by Mansion Flat and Boulevard Park (Tract 5) with 5,426 and Tract 12 (around Fremont Park, south of Capitol between 12th and 21st) with 5,376. Each of these four residential tracts averaged about 40 residents per acre. Tract 8 (Capitol to R Street, river to 7th), with 4,467 residents, was the home of Sacramento’s Japanese neighborhood, whose residents had recently returned after internment during World War II. This tract also included much of Sacramento’s African American community, tripled in size during World War II, filling jobs, homes and businesses vacated by the Japanese during the war.

The smallest tract was Tract 10, H and Capitol between 7th and 12th, the neighborhood Downtown Sacramento Partnership calls “The Kay,” with only 1,338 people in 25 blocks, or about 21 residents per acre. Tract 10 was the heart of the business district, filled with department stores, movie theaters and office buildings, so those 1,338 residents were crowded into dense apartment buildings and residential hotels.

Overall, there were 19,318 “housing units” in the old city, including single-family homes and apartments, but often not counting boarding houses or residential hotels. 27.8 percent of these housing units, about 5,000 homes, were owner-occupied. The remaining 72 percent were rentals. By comparison, 63 percent of Sacramento County’s households were owner-occupied in 1950.

Major changes were in store for downtown Sacramento. Massive federal highway projects were underway, and millions of returning World War II veterans were eligible for subsidized home loans. These loans were often not usable in downtown neighborhoods, considered “redlined” and thus unsuitable for FHA or VA loans. Redlining discouraged investment and depressed property values because they were considered a higher risk for home loan default. Redlining was the result of several factors, the most important being the race of a neighborhood’s residents. Between 1949 and 1954, a series of federal laws were created to address the problems of downtown districts, commonly called “redevelopment.” The mid-1950s included a unique method of paying for redevelopment, called “Tax Increment Financing,” a means of paying for construction via bonds to be repaid by the increased future property value of redeveloped land. Sacramento pioneered tax-increment financing on an urban scale as a way to pay for redevelopment projects.

Downtown in 1970 – 27,000 People

Redevelopment was originally intended to replace substandard housing in America’s downtown slums, but the policies of redevelopment changed quickly. Few redevelopment projects were executed until 1954, when the requirement that housing within a redevelopment zone be replaced within the same zone was removed — a neighborhood’s families could be relocated elsewhere and the properties converted to commercial use. Instead of focusing strictly on the worst slums, the term “blight” was used to describe neighborhoods that were not slums, but those likely to become slums. Redevelopment zones often became the site of major public landmarks, high-profile business districts and retail areas, like the St. Louis Arch or San Francisco’s “Japan Center,” but these projects generally displaced most or all of the neighborhood’s original residents.

This was the case in Sacramento, where the densely populated West End and Japantown neighborhoods were emptied to make way for Capitol Mall, state office buildings and private commercial buildings, the K Street pedestrian mall, Downtown Plaza, and Old Sacramento. Construction of Interstate Highways 5 and 50 removed entire rows of city blocks, displacing more people and destroying homes. The Southern Pacific and Western Pacific Shops remained open, but required less manpower as the railroads converted from steam to diesel-electric locomotives, and railroad passenger travel slowed dramatically.

As the canneries and other industries along the waterfront docks relocated to the Port of Sacramento in West Sacramento or other sites outside the city, industrial jobs within the city disappeared, and the homes started to disappear too. Between the 1950 and 1970 census, Sacramento’s central city population dropped to 27,205, a loss of over 30,000 people. Hundreds of small apartment buildings replaced older houses, intended for entry-level employees of the expanding state government or Downtown Plaza.

Downtown was not considered a place where any sensible person would want to purchase a home or raise children, so virtually no new single-family homes were built during this era. The number of housing units dropped to 16,522, despite the new apartment buildings, due to the demolition of thousands of single-family homes and older apartments. Owner-occupied housing dropped to 13.3%. Some neighborhoods were replaced with parking lots, offices or garden apartments. One project, Capitol Towers, was constructed as an example of things to come — a “superblock” of low-rise apartments with a mid-rise tower at its center, leaving no trace of the city neighborhood it replaced, and a total capacity of about 25 percent of its previous population.

The most dramatically altered neighborhood was Census Tract 9, between Capitol and R Street from 7th to 12th, where the population of 2,388 dropped to only 120. Tract 10, “The Kay,” dropped to only 120, losing more than 90 percent of its population. The old West End still had 1,131 residents, in part because of Sacramento’s main jail, whose several hundred residents were counted in the census, but the neighborhood lost almost all of its residents not behind bars. Even the neighborhoods least affected by redevelopment like Newton Booth/Poverty Ridge (Trac t 19) dropped by one-third, from 4,353 in 1950 to 2,823 in 1970, due in part to Highway 50 demolishing blocks between W and X Street. Tract 14, now the heart of Midtown (between H and Capitol, 21st to Alhambra) lost half its population, dropping from 4,216 to 2,176.

By contrast, Sacramento’s city and county population exploded during this period. By 1970, Sacramento County’s population had more than doubled to 631,498 and the city grew to 257,105. Downtown went from nearly half the city’s population to less than 10 percent in less than 20 years.

Downtown in 1990 – 31,000 people

Between 1970 and 1990, the tide began to turn. Abundant postwar funding for federal projects like highways and redevelopment dwindled away in the wake of the Vietnam War and economic recession. Efforts to save the Alhambra Theatre from demolition, while unsuccessful, helped ignite interest in restoring and repairing Sacramento’s architecture, including its residential neighborhoods spared the bulldozer and wrecking ball. Young people, including college students, counterculture hippies and a newly empowered gay and lesbian community, moved to the central city seeking inexpensive rent and a more tolerant atmosphere than the suburbs.

A new generation of state workers who wanted to live closer to their workplace began buying up dilapidated homes, sometimes using credit cards as the homes were still redlined, and formed a club to exchange tools and techniques for restoration of older homes, the Sacramento Old City Association. The city’s first preservation regulations slowed the demolition of older homes and promoted incentives to fix them up. Redlining eventually became illegal, and people could once again purchase central city homes using conventional home loans. The newly formed Capitol Area Development Authority (CADA) slowed the demolition of downtown apartments south of the State Capitol and created a limited amount of new housing, and Sacramento’s first clusters of low-rise condominiums popped up on long-vacant parcels along P and Q Streets, in the shadow of downtown office buildings of the previous decades. In 1987, electric railroads returned to Sacramento streets via Sacramento Regional Transit’s first “Light Rail” line.

The gains of this era were modest. Tracts 4 and 5 (Marshall School/New Era, Boulevard Park/Mansion Flat) became the most populous districts with 3,939 and 3,754 people, still well below their 1950 levels, because fewer homes were demolished (except along 29th and 30th Street, where the Capital City Freeway stood.) The central city’s population grew 5 percent during the 1970s and 11 percent during the 1980s. Tract 9 was still the least populated with 275 residents, up from a 1980 low of 69 people. Alkali Flat lost several hundred due to expansion of Crystal Dairy’s industrial facilities and new Sacramento County administration and courts buildings. The rate of ownership housing dropped to 11.1 percent in 1990. Housing units increased to 18,512, an increase of about 2,000, primarily small apartment buildings, public/senior housing, and a few low-rise condominiums like the Stanford Park townhomes at 16th and P Street.
The city of Sacramento’s growth continued at a slower rate, reaching 369,365 by 1990, and Sacramento County’s population rose to over 1 million. Only 3 percent of Sacramento County’s residents called the Old City their home in 1990.

Downtown in 2010 – 30,000 people

Despite the growing interest in Sacramento’s central city and some new infill, the population of the Old City has lost about 2 percent of its population in each of the past two decades, with a population of 30,544 in 2010. Some of this loss may be attributed to gentrification and rising property value, and the loss of hundreds of inexpensive SRO rooms. Sacramento’s central city still has a large quantity of affordable rental housing compared to most other Sacramento neighborhoods, intermixed with more expensive apartments and even more expensive ownership housing. This has created neighborhoods of mixed incomes that preservation economist Donovan Rypkema calls “economic integration.”

Census Tract 7 saw a boost in population when the new Main Jail was completed, holding 2,400 inmates, but adding little residential vitality. In 2010, 2,806 people lived in Tract 7. In addition to the jail, there was new housing constructed in Old Sacramento (the iLofts and Orleans). Despite a few well-publicized efforts to build new residential condominiums (the Saca Towers at 3rd and Capitol) and the Daniel Libeksind designed “Aura” at 6th and Capitol) there was little residential growth in Census Tract 7.

In 2010, census tracts 9, 10 and 11 were combined into a single tract, 11.01, reflecting the permanent loss of residential population. In 1950, 6,530 people lived in these three tracts combined, but in 2010 only 2,047 called Tract 11.01 home. This tract saw an increase of only about 150 residents between 2000 and 2010. Marshall School/New Era Park still led the central city in residents with 3,667 people, but Mansion Flat/Boulevard Park was overtaken by Tract 12 around Fremont Park, from 12th to 21st between Capitol and R Street, with 3,323 residents. New CADA residential projects, and lofts like the 14th & R building, increased the population of this tract. Despite this limited growth, none of the central city census tracts comes close to the population it had in 1950.

The number of owner-occupied units dropped even more, with only 2,015 units (including condominiums) in 2010, of 20,129 residential units — an ownership housing rate of just over 10 percent. Compared to 1950, when ownership housing was 27.8 percent, there were about 5,300 owner-occupied homes — now there are only 2,015 owner-occupied homes. Despite the reputation of neighborhoods like Midtown and Southside Park as districts of single-family historic homes, they are a tiny minority of the housing stock, while 90 percent of the housing is rental.

While the loss of 30,000 downtown residents had a profound effect on downtown, the population of Sacramento always grew decade after decade, primarily due to annexation and new suburban construction. Cities like St. Louis and Detroit lost more than half a million people during the same era, greater than the entire population of Sacramento! Downtown Sacramento has an extremely high jobs/housing balance, with three times as many people working in the central city as it has residents, a figure which is responsible for crowded commutes during the weekdays but a relatively unpopulated downtown at night. Midtown and Downtown are regional destinations for nightlife entertainment.

But while Midtown’s clubs are as well-attended by neighborhood residents as visitors from other parts of the region, Downtown has almost no residential base to support local businesses, and the perception of the central city as a nightlife hub has caused friction between business owners and neighbors. There has also been an increase in crime, including several high-profile homicides.

Downtown in 2030 – ???

Urban planners, civic boosters, business leaders and real estate developers look back at historic photos of K Street at its peak and lament downtown Sacramento’s loss of urban vitality. Some blame the demise of the downtown business district on the 41-year period when K Street was a pedestrian mall, but that was a desperation measure, as downtown Sacramento’s businesses were already suffering by the 1960s. Some claimed that highways would be the savior of downtown, but they made the central city as easy to leave as it was to enter, and easier still to avoid entirely, while the highway’s path destroyed thousands of homes. Some blamed a lack of parking, but the parking demands of 90,000 commuters from other parts of the region already fills tens of thousands of parking spaces, while downtown residents need not own a car at all if they work in the same neighborhood.

The missing factor in the downtown equation is people. Once people were removed from downtown, either willingly or unwillingly, few had any reason to return, and the businesses they supported closed. Until there is sufficient housing for thousands more central city residents, downtown Sacramento has little hope of revival, and even the encouraging signs of recent successes are vulnerable to the next economic downturn or political shift. Residents bring economic stability and political representation to a neighborhood; if Sacramento’s central city still contained 58,000 people, it would have sufficient population to comprise its own City Council district.

Midtown also lost population, but enough remained for restoration by community activists, small businesses and neighborhood residents. Visitors are more comfortable in a neighborhood where people are visible on the street, and are encouraged to join in the neighborhood by friends and coworkers. Today, there are apartments for rent and homes for sale (if limited in number and often high in price) in Midtown, and despite its problems, it is considered a desirable and expensive neighborhood, held up for other cities to emulate. But downtown Sacramento has very little rental housing, and virtually no for-sale housing. Its empty streets are less comfortable for visitors, and there are few downtown residents to encourage their friends to come visit. The sites of boom-era residential condo towers Capitol Towers and Aura sit vacant, while the sites of entitled but still unfunded buildings like the Metropolitan at 10th & J and the Cathedral Lofts at 11th & J prevent use of existing building stock, leaving blocks to sit vacant and unused for untold years. These placeholders for nonexistent buildings present downtown visitors with the impression that these blocks have been simply left to rot.

Could Sacramento’s downtown be back up to 58,000, or even more, by 2030? It is possible, but details of how to do that will require another article. By regaining its lost population, downtown Sacramento could once again become a vibrant, lively central city. There is room downtown for a mixture of entertainment, employment, commercial activity, public transportation, and tens of thousands more downtown residents, who can then join commuters, visitors and friends from the greater Sacramento region in the intricate dance of modern city life. Such a city would be very familiar to the ghosts of those 30,000 missing Sacramentans – a downtown more like the one they called home.

Disclosure: William Burg is President of Sacramento Old City Association, a historic preservation and urban planning nonprofit.

Too much moisture in your rented home? Do you know who to contact?

2012-12-27T17:29:12Z

Wet weather can provide many opportunities for additional moisture to collect indoors and contribute to serious water damage. If you are living in rental housing in unincorporated Sacramento County and believe you are having a problem with structural issues contributing to excess moisture, here are some helpful tips.

Tenant Responsibilities:
If mildew is developing near moisture-rich areas such as the shower, tub or certain kitchen areas, it is up to the tenant to remove it. Mildew can also accumulate in the colder, winter months due to excess condensation near windows. While broken windows must be fixed by landlord, generally, cleaning and drying condensation is the tenant’s responsibility.

“Ventilation is the key to combat this issue, said Tammy Derby with Sacramento County Code Enforcement. “Routinely open your windows, and use mechanical ventilation or fans in the room to dry it out.”

Landlord Responsibilities:
If you are experiencing water intrusion in areas that don’t usually have moisture, such as a closet, bedroom or living room, it is likely that the water is coming from a leaky roof, pipes or improper weatherization of your rental unit. In these cases, it is the responsibility of the landlord to make structural or plumbing repairs to prevent water from leaking into your home.

If you are experiencing structural and plumbing issues, and you haven’t gotten anywhere with your landlord, you can file a complaint with the Sacramento County Information Center at 916-875-5656 to report your problem. Tenants can also contact the Human Rights and Fair Housing if they need assistance dealing with a tenant-landlord dispute. www.hrfh.org. Visit County Code Enforcement on the web for additional information. http://www.code-enforcement.saccounty.net/Pages/default.aspx

Disclosure: Media Officer with Sacramento County

Sacramento County Launches New Community Development Website

2012-12-18T20:10:50Z

Sacramento County’s Community Development Department is pleased to announce the launch of a brand new website focused on building, planning and environmental review, development and code enforcement services.
http://www.development.saccounty.net/Pages/default.aspx

“Though we have more work to do, the new design is a great representation of the changes we have made to improve operations and offer high-quality, customer friendly services,” said Lori Moss, Community Development Department Director.

The website was done in-house and was a great collaboration between all the divisions to deliver well organized content to customers, whether they are planning to develop a commercial property or are looking to replace a water heater, Moss said. “We want people to be able to find the information they are looking for quickly and have a better understanding of our outstanding services and coming improvements,” she added.

The Department reorganized so that all related services were under one director, and recently added Wi-Fi to the public areas so that customers can work on their smart devices while in the building. Construction work has begun on front counter improvements at 827 7th Street to deliver a “one stop shop” environment to customers.

Disclosure: Media Officer with Sacramento County

Cashing out of The Kay: Building holding Pizza Rock, K-Bar and Dive Bar up for sale [Updated]

2012-12-10T17:39:10Z

The area around K Street in downtown Sacramento has done well in recent years, and one group of developers is hoping for a return on their investment. If the price is right, the city could see money headed its way as well.

The building that holds Pizza Rock, K-Bar, and Dive Bar, along with six other establishments, is up for sale. Local developer David S. Taylor, who owns the property along with the CIM Group of Los Angeles, says they are "testing the market" and will only sell with the right offer. They have not listed a price.

The City of Sacramento subsidized the project, called 1000 Kay, with $5.7 million in 2009, and Taylor said the terms of the deal were such that the city would be in line to get the money back if Taylor's company and CIM received an offer that was high enough. The money from any purchase would first go to the investors, and if they made a specified amount of profit, the remaining amount would go to the city. (Taylor wasn't sure what the exact figures were, but we're working to get those from city staff soon.)

They decided to sell because they believed they had "nine high-quality tenants" in the building. The sale shouldn't affect the businesses, Taylor said.

While Taylor said that one of their initial fears when developing the project was that "no one would show up," the area has seen a r esurgence in recent years, with a cluster of restaurants and cafes opening both on K Street and in the surrounding blocks, including K-Bar, Tequila Museo Mayahuel, Blackbird Kitchen & Bar, Estelle’s Patisserie, Plaza Café Lounge and Broadacre Coffee.

The downtown Business Partnership has sought to take advantage of the momentum by rebranding the area between 7th and 13th streets as "The Kay."

In other words, it was a "Field of Dreams" type situation: he built it, and the people did in fact show up.

"It shows that if you provide good entertainment options, people will come," Taylor said. "They will come in droves and they will come consistently."

Editor’s note: The “News Digest” goes out every Tuesday morning and highlights our best stories, photos and videos from the week prior. Sign me up.

Contested development: the struggle over Curtis Park Village

2012-12-06T20:41:39Z

The future can’t come fast enough for Paul Petrovich. The prominent Sacramento developer has spent nine years and more than $25 million to bring the controversial Curtis Park Village project online, and he’s so close now, he must be able to taste it. So at last week’s emergency meeting of the Sierra Curtis Park Neighborhood Association, called to discuss the developer’s latest proposed changes to the project, he did something entirely out of character. He apologized for scaring the bejesus out of the neighborhood and withdrew most of his proposed changes.

“No one has a bigger vested interest in making sure this project turns out the best that it can be than me,” Petrovich told the SCNA board and approximately 40 residents in attendance. It’s a mantra of his, and no doubt he means it, considering he’s paying $5,000 per day in interest on the money borrowed to clean up the former railyard situated between Sacramento City College and the Curtis Park neighborhood.

If you stand at the peak of the Sutterville Road bridge that crosses the railroad tracks just south of City College and gaze north across this 72-acre brownfield, you can imagine Petrovich’s future, or fill in the blanks yourself. The toxic soil from the railroad days has been either removed or encapsulated on the site, which has been bulldozed flat. White signs stick out of the dirt indicating the location of various new streets. A horizontal bulldozer track bifurcates the property; commercial zone to the south, residential zone to the north. The buildings of downtown Sacramento loom in the middle-distance. It looks like a giant cavity waiting to be filled.

Petrovich Develop Company plans to build more than 500 single and multi-family housing units and 200,000 square feet of retail space on the property. The project has been touted as one of the ultimate urban-infill projects on the West Coast.

But if you don’t get up on that bridge, or take the light rail to South Sacramento, you’re likely to never notice the site. It’s not very visible from ground level. I live in Curtis Park, just blocks away, and it’s almost like it’s not there. It’s been going on for so long – efforts to reclaim the land began in the mid-1990s – it’s easy to forget about. Earlier this year, I was jogging down 24th Street, where a chain link fence separates the project’s eastern boundary from Curtis Park, and was literally startled when I noticed several of those white signs sticking up out of the dirt, informing the neighborhood that Fifth Avenue and Donner Way will soon be bisecting 24th Street.

You can’t stop the future. However, as the Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association has shown and continues to demonstrate, you can change it, if you do your homework and remain persistent. The SCNA has been Petrovich’s nemesis since the project began and occasionally it has even gotten its way, as former SCNA president Rosanna Herber recounted in an editorial in the Viewpoint, the association’s monthly newsletter.

“For years, neighbors and the various SCNA boards [have] worked to better shape the project. Early in the process, we insisted on having affordable housing on site when the developer wanted to put it in another location. We strongly objected when all the multifamily units were removed because we believed it was important to have higher density around the two rail light stations. How many neighborhood associations would fight to have more density and affordable housing?”

The end result? After the board voted for and filed a six-point petition with the city, affordable housing and multifamily units became a significant component of the residential mix. Similarly, SCNA pushed for a pedestrian bridge to connect Curtis Park Village with the Sacramento City College light rail station. The bridge is now included in the project. “We got concessions on everything but the commercial square footage,” Herber wrote. “Still, our neighborhood will be changed forever. It wasn’t a unanimous vote. Three board members believed we could have gotten a better deal if we had sued.”

All of this occurred during the runup to the Sacramento City Council’s unanimous approval of the Curtis Park Village draft environmental impact report in 2010. The fact that a suit was contemplated is indicative of how serious many Curtis Park residents take their neighborhood. With its towering oak trees and solidly built Craftsman and Tudor-style homes, it’s easy to see why. Curtis Park is one of the most charming boroughs in Sacramento, and it’s understandable residents want to keep it that way.

Thus the emergency meeting called last week by the SCNA board. In October, Petrovich sought permission from the city to change the project’s housing mix to make room for an additional drainage basin required by the city and increase the project’s commercial footprint by 17,000 square feet to satisfy prospective tenants. The changes were significant enough to require approval from the city council, and SCNA was intent on forcing the issue. It could have significantly delayed the project, now tentatively scheduled to begin in late January. The day before the meeting, Petrovich informed Fifth District City Councilman Jay Schenirer he was withdrawing his request, except for those items directly related to the new drainage basin, which is required to meet 100-year flood protection.

Schenirer attended the meeting at Curtis Hall, stretched out on a folding chair in a slick gray suit. Petrovich sat in the front row, facing the board; I sat next to him. The stocky developer was a loaded spring, grinding his jaw, shoving his hands deep in the pockets of his blue jeans and occasionally trying not to roll his eyes as board president Patrick Soluri painstakingly reviewed the remaining changes, ensuring that each was directly related to the new drainage basin. As Petrovich fielded questions from the board and the audience members sitting behind him, it was not unlike watching a circular firing squad.

He pretty much kept his cool until the dreaded cookie cutter issue came up. There are plenty of people in Curtis Park who support Petrovich, but even they express fears that the project will wind up looking too suburban, with row upon row of bland, identical-looking tract homes. It’s a side issue, and had nothing to do with the subject of the meeting. Soluri broached the subject by mentioning that he’d received a Petrovich Development advertising mailer seeking out major homebuilders. Both he and board vice president Andrea Rosen voiced concern that a single major homebuilder, say, a Del Webb, might get the contract to build the majority of the project’s 155 single-family homes.

“No one has a bigger vested interest in making sure this project turns out the best that it can be than me,” Petrovich intoned his mantra, louder this time, in case he hadn’t been heard earlier. He’d been ticking off his big-ticket expenses most of the meeting: interest on the $25 million loan, $400,000 to remove Heritage Oaks that were on contaminated soil, $600,000 for a fancy water feature in the Curtis Park Village lake. He’s going to plant 2,400 trees on the site. The economy is lousy he noted – many homebuilders have gone bankrupt – and if he doesn’t sign up someone soon he’ll have to do it himself, a prospect he’s not too keen on.

“If this was an issue it should have been brought up three years ago,” Petrovich said with emotion in his voice. “You are impinging on my right to develop my property. I’ve made 44 changes to this project after nine years. Enough is enough. It’s too intrusive.”

While he talked, Soluri and Sacramento architect Phil Harvey, attending the meeting as Petrovich’s much-needed sidekick, reviewed a document that ultimately resolved the issue. The plan stipulates that the single family homes must emulate one of five styles reflective of the Curtis Park Neighborhood – including Tudor, Craftsman and Mission – and that on any particular block, a style may be repeated only every fifth house. So, even if one homebuilder does get the contract, it would have to abide by the plan, not a cookie cutter.

“See Paul?” Soluri said, somewhat hopefully. “We’re collaborating.”

The tension in the room eased somewhat, and Schenirer, like a kindly-yet-firm debate coach, reminded the board they had yet to officially vote on the proposed changes. They’re persistent, the SCNA board, and they reviewed the list of nine items in detail one more time, eventually approving seven of the proposed changes and, after much discussion, issuing no opinion on the remaining two. By that time, two hours had passed and half of the audience had headed home. One senior lady on her way out put her hand on Petrovich’s shoulder and thanked him for apologizing.

At the end of the night, an uneasy truce was reached in a struggle that’s sure to continue as the Curtis Park Village project comes online early next year. One major issue remaining to be decided concerns the site’s so-called flex zone and the amount of square footage that will ultimately be dedicated commercial space. But many of the Curtis Park Village blanks have been filled in. It may not be coming as quickly as Paul Petrovich desires, but the future is almost here.

Sacramento County Community Development Enhances Services

2012-12-04T22:29:25Z

Beginning November 5, the Sacramento County Community Development Department is extending their Permit Center hours on the first floor of 827 7th Street and at 4101 Branch Center Road to 5 days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Department is also installing Wi-Fi on the first and second floor of the 7th Street building so that customers can work on their computers between appointments. Signage will be installed to indicate the locations of the hotspots and how to connect to them.

“These are just a few of the many improvements Community Development will be launching in the next year,” said Director Lori Moss. “We are using this time to retool our services for our customers and gear up for the next wave of development.”

http://www.communityplanning.saccounty.net/default.htm

Disclosure: Media Officer with Sacramento County

JavaOne Speaker Andrey Breslav Coming to Sacramento

2012-10-01T18:47:22Z

Wednesday October 3rd the local Sacramento Groovy Users (sacgru.com) group will be hosting Andrey Breslav, lead language designer working on Project Kotlin at JetBrains. Additional information can be find at sacgru.com or on google+ or the hacklabs meetup group. The talk will be from 6:30 until 9:00-ish at Quilogy/Aspect:1300 National Dr Suite 180 Sacramento, CA 95834.

Kotlin: Making the Java Platform a Better Place - Andrey Breslav

Abstract:

Kotlin is a modern statically typed language targeting JVM and JavaScript and intended for industrial use. The main goal behind this project is to create a language that would be a good tool for developers, i.e. will be safe, concise, flexible, 100% Java-compatible and well-supported by IDE and other tooling.

Kotlin is an open-source project developed by JetBrains, creators of IntelliJ IDEA and ReSharper, with the help of the community.

This talk gives an overview of the language in its present state and a perspective we have for the future.
Among other things, the following features will be covered:
* Static null-safety;
* Extension functions;
* Higher-order functions and type-safe builders;
* Smart casts: Kotlin's lightweight pattern matching;
* Making Java APIs better with Kotlin;
* Developing mixed Kotlin/Java projects.

To find out more about Kotlin, please refer to http://kotlin.jetbrains.org

Bio:
Andrey is the lead language designer working on Project Kotlin at JetBrains (http://kotlin.jetbrains.org/). He also works on making the Java language better, serving as a Java Community Process expert in a group for JSR-335 ("Project Lambda"). In what spare time is left he tries to make sure that his traveling is not all about work and teaches programming to high-school children. Used to teach OOP/Software Design at a university, but currently switched to speaking at software conferences such as JavaOne and Devoxx.

Disclosure: I am the Lead Developer at Adglue and group leader of the Sacramento Groovy Users

East End Gateway 2 & 3 Construction Activity Photos

2012-08-09T19:03:05Z

For the next two weeks at Site 2, the contractor will be laying out and beginning to install plumbing, laying out the mechanical system, laying out and framing the third floor walls, floor joists, and laying out and framing fourth floor walls.

At Site3, the contractor will be laying out walls on the newly-poured concrete deck above the first floor, removing the shoring that supported this floor during concrete pouring, begin framing the second floor, and install the plywood decking for the third floor. Work to lay out the building’s mechanical, plumbing and electrical systems will begin.

Work began on this project at both the SW and NW corners of 16th and O Streets January 12th and is expected to cost $26 million. The project includes 13,000sf retail along 16th street, 84 apartments, and 93 parking spaces. The architect for the project is Stantec, Developer: Ravel Rasmussen Properties and Separovich/Domich Real Estate, General Contractor: West Fork Construction, Inc., and expected to be completed by mid-2013.

Disclosure: Read more about Sacramento building it's urban core at http://livinginurbansac.blogspot.com/ Photography by: Michael Zwahlen of http://zwahlenimages.com/blog/

Seventh & H SRO Construction Activity Photos

2012-08-08T15:44:11Z

With just a few more bricks to lay, “Seventh & H” looks pretty sharp for an affordable housing project. The eight-story, $47.4 million, 150-unit building by Mercy Housing is the first new structure going up in the railyards redevelopment project area. The project expected to be compleated in the Fall of this year.

This project below at 626 I Steet will consist of 108 units for occupancy by extremely low income elderly persons in September 2012. This rehabilitation project project cost $19.4 million and was funded by grants to modernize the vacate building. Most of the funding came from the Federal Government, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). See before photos here.

Disclosure: Read more about Sacramento building it's urban core at http://livinginurbansac.blogspot.com/ Photography by: Michael Zwahlen of http://zwahlenimages.com/blog/

Finished La Valentina Project

2012-08-07T15:36:28Z

The final touches are being taken care of at the new La Valentine apartments and judging by their Facebook page, they have a steady flow of new tenants moving in too. This $27 million project has 81 units of affordable housing adjacent to the Alkali Flat/La Valentina light rail station. La Valentina Apartments - 429 12th Street, Sacramento, California 95814

Disclosure: Read more about Sacramento building it's urban core at http://livinginurbansac.blogspot.com/ Photography by: Michael Zwahlen of http://zwahlenimages.com/blog/

RT: Slow start for Green Line is part of the plan

2012-07-28T02:10:29Z

The Green Line light rail segment's slow start with relatively low ridership, is part of the plan, officials say.

Regional Transit’s newest light rail segment has only seen about 150 riders a day, Tony Bizjak reported in Friday’s Sacramento Bee – a low number for a $44 million project that opened with great pomp and circumstance in June.

However, Regional Transit Executive Director Michael Wiley disputes those numbers, saying the Green Line has actually been averaging closer to 300 riders per day – and it’s a number he said he’s comfortable with.

“Our expectation wasn’t that we were going to achieve really high ridership numbers right off the bat,” Wiley said. “Our plan all along was to start with a somewhat minimal level of service and then add service as demand grows.”

Previous transit projects were built in places with an existing ridership and were additions to an established community, Wiley said. The Green Line started with a different purpose, however: It took more of an “if you build it, they will come” approach.

“The expectation has always been that, if transit is there, development will occur around transit,” Wiley said.

But that doesn’t satisfy some critics who say RT’s “train to nowhere” was a mistake because it doesn’t serve a large enough population to justify the cost – and development isn’t happening that will change that.

“Is there a dense population of people along the route from Richards (Boulevard) to the airport? No, not even close,” wrote Sacramento Press reader Dan Scott. “Is there a chance that there will be development in that area? No, not for a long time, as it was re-designated as a floodplain and no new houses or business can be built unless they are elevated approx 20 feet.”

Township 9 Principal Developer Ron Mellon said Friday that the notion that development at Township 9 is dead is misleading.

“Nothing could be farther from the truth,” Mellon said.

The 64-acre mixed use development project at Township 9 is located between Richards Boulevard, North 5th Street, North 7th Street and the American River, about one mile from downtown. It includes 18 lots that will eventually offer 2,500 housing units and nearly 800,000 square feet of commercial, office and retail space.

“We are trying to double the size of the downtown core,” Mellon said. “When people see what we’re going to do out there, they’ll be blown away.”

But first things first, Mellon said, and that means completing the unseen infrastructure work before breaking ground on the first building.

The infrastructure portion of the first phase – roads, curbs, lighting, and the like – is nearly complete, and construction will begin on a 180-unit apartment complex sometime around November, Mellon said.

Still, Assistant Project Manager Noah Lane said some perspective is needed.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, and Township 9 won’t be, either,” Lane said.

Considering the scope of the project, Lane said it wouldn’t be possible to build it all at once, and at full buildout, the cost would be between $2 billion and $3 billion, which Lane said would be a stretch for even the largest local developers.

Lane said the owners of Township 9 are developing it in phases and will likely partner with other developers on some of the project’s 18 lots to get them all built. The first phase of the project has a five year buildout plan, according to Mellon.

Meanwhile, Wiley said, the Green Line is a valuable investment that is driving development in the River District and Township 9 at a time when there is little development happening in other parts of the city.

“I don’t know how quickly the tide is going to turn and we’ll go back to the pace that was happening six or seven years ago,” Wiley said, “but there’s no question that without the Green Line, many current developments wouldn’t be happening.”

RESULTS FROM YESTERDAY'S POLL:

We asked Sac Press readers if the Green Line was a good investment, and nearly 57 percent responded "Yes – it will eventually be an important part of Sacramento's regional transit infrastructure and be a great way to get to Natomas and the airport."

Another 23.5 percent said "It's too early to tell," and 17.5 percent said "No – it costs too much and it'll be too long before it goes anywhere."

Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

City of Sacramento, Chongqing China formalize partnership

2012-07-24T15:54:03Z

-- Press Release from the City of Sacramento Office of Media & Communications --

Partnership agreement signed focuses on mutual collaboration, shared opportunities to encourage economic development activity and job creation

Sacramento, CA (July 23, 2012) – In an effort to promote international economic development opportunities, officials of City of Sacramento and Chongqing, China today signed a landmark Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) outlining their plans to work together to encourage trade, investment and job creation, as well as explore ways to collaborate and work for mutual economic development.

Councilmember Rob Fong spearheaded this effort and worked diligently the past six months to make this opportunity a reality. The MOU was signed at Sacramento’s Historic City Hall by Sacramento City Manager John F. Shirey and Chongqing Foreign Trade and Economic Relations Commission’s President Wang Yi. The City of Chongqing, with a population of 32 million, is the leading transportation hub of Southwestern China and leads China in gross domestic product growth.

“Sacramento and Chongqing share the common goals of creating vibrant and diversified economies that focus on emerging growth sectors, including the green sector and education,” Mayor Kevin Johnson said. “As the state policy headquarters of California, Sacramento is a leader in sustainability, with a rich history in farming and manufacturing and world-class research and development potential. This is a global collaboration that aligns perfectly.”

“Today, we took a large step forward for the City of Sacramento in forging this relationship with Chongqing, a city located in a country with one of the largest and bustling economies in the world,” said John Shirey, City Manager. “This unprecedented collaboration will bring worldwide recognition to Sacramento, open up dialogue with Chongqing on how we can work together and learn from each other, and create ways to partner on shared initiatives.”

The MOU between Sacramento and Chongqing creates a framework for potential investment opportunities focused on clean energy technology, agriculture and food safety, and education. It will also look at ways to create partnerships between the public, private and educational institutions in both cities.

As part of the MOU, the City of Sacramento will determine the feasibility of opening up a trade and education office in the heart of Chongqing, China. There may also be the creation of an alternating festival between the two cities that would focus on activities aimed at exchanging economic, educational, cultural, and government operational information.

“This cooperation agreement with Chongqing truly represents a win-win for both cities,” said Councilmember Rob Fong. “Creating this relationship will allow the city to use its existing assets, resources and human capital in a way that will ultimately spur direct and reciprocal investment opportunities with our Far East partner.”

Chongqing has a strong presence in the state and throughout the nation already, having partnership agreements with UC Davis and other areas in the nation. Chongqing is a major manufacturing center and transportation hub.

"Chongqing Municipality is looking forward to a long term relationship with the California State Capital City of Sacramento,” said Wang Yi, President of Chongqing Foreign Trade and Economic Relations Commission. "Together, we will work diligently to build a solid foundation that will be mutually beneficial to both cities, its people, its businesses, and its educational institutions.

Disclosure: Carlos Eliason is a designer and photographer working for the City of Sacramento.

Everest Urgent Care Begins New Chapter In Providing Affordable Medical Care To Area Residents

2012-07-23T21:20:44Z

Chronic emergency room overcrowding and costs for non-emergency care in California continue to escalate as consumers battle the economics of affordable living and healthcare during an increasingly difficult economic climate. With emergency room costs approximately 700% more than the cost for the same level of medical care at an urgent care facility, it’s a small wonder that according to the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, 65 California emergency rooms have closed in the last decade alone. Healthcare has become a privilege rather than a right. Into this contentious setting, Everest Urgent Care launches in Sacramento, offering a new day for consumers where the patient’s health is the first priority.

Located in Sacramento, at 3635 Bradshaw Road, Everest Urgent Care just opened its first 2,800 square foot center, providing area residents with non-emergency medical care regardless of their insurance circumstance. The state-of-the-art facility features six exam rooms, with one room specifically dedicated to triage, and digital x-ray equipment that will allow patients to take a copy of their x-rays with them upon departure. An on-site laboratory provides a vast majority of medical tests and the on-site pharmacy can fulfill immediate, prescribed patient needs. In addition to treatment for singular injuries and illnesses, Everest Urgent Care will collaborate with the market’s major health care providers to refer patients, according to their individual ongoing medical needs.

Everest will also provide a host of preventative care features; and occupational health and worker’s comp services for employees and employers. Additionally, Everest’s medical staff will diagnose and treat common sports-related injuries such as sprains, strains, fractures, cuts, bumps and bruises with splints, casts and braces to ensure complete care of injuries. Trauma, open wound care and other more common issues will also be treated by the medical staff of Everest Urgent Care. For individuals bound for domestic or international destinations, Everest Urgent Care can also provide the necessary vaccinations.

Everest Urgent Care CEO, Richard Kerr, has appointed Dr. Jeffrey Moy as lead physician. Moy, who received his MD from University of California, Davis, has extensive medical experience and has served the Sacramento community for over two decades. Center Administrator, Mike Cornelius, will oversee Everest Urgent Care. Cornelius has dedicated the past 20 years to prominent national healthcare companies, focusing on the clinical—accentuating responsive patient needs and developing efficient operational facets.

Kerr envisions the Sacramento center to become the first of many Everest Urgent Care centers throughout the region. Providing non-emergency medical services to a balanced mix of working class residents, businesses, schools, churches as well as public and private agencies, Everest offers compassionate medical care that is both cost-effective and time efficient.

“With only approximately 15% of patients in hospital emergency rooms seen as true emergency cases, 85% of patients that traditionally go to an ER do not have a true medical emergency. There’s a huge gap in service that we can begin to fill, saving people time and money and all of the stress that comes with an unexpected medical occurrence,” said Richard Kerr, CEO.

The community impact of Everest Urgent Care will be dramatic. According to the ACSM American Fitness Index 2012, Sacramento is failing to meet the demand in availability of primary care, with 92.5 primary health care providers per 100,000 persons. The target goal is 105.6. Accessibility to inexpensive healthcare is crucial for the well being of the local residents. This year, The American Fitness Index ranked Sacramento the sixth healthiest city in the nation; the opening of Everest Urgent Care will do its part to move the needle further in favor of the increased well being of Sacramento residents.

Disclosure: Karen Bakula is President of Karen Bakula & Company, Inc., which manages marketing services for Everest Urgent Care.

Next Sac Press Live: William Burg on 'What's Killing Sacramento's Suburbs' and downtown life

2012-07-23T16:53:53Z

Our next Sac Press Live chat will focus on Sacramento's economy and downtown development with local historian William Burg. We'll be diving deeper into the issues Burg raised in his recent post, “What's Killing Sacramento's Suburbs.”

The chat will be streamed live on SacramentoPress.com on Wednesday at 12:15 p.m. Readers can also join us in person at 431 I Street [map].

A few of the questions we'll be exploring: How is Sacramento's central city doing compared to the region's suburbs? Does downtown get a bad rap? What factors are encouraging urban infill development, and what factors are preventing more from happening?

We'll also discuss the benefits and challenges of life downtown with Burg and Emily Gerber, a downtown resident whose ideas for the neighborhood were recently featured by The Sacramento Business Journal.

POLL: What’s next at the downtown railyards? Readers weigh in

2012-07-05T19:47:34Z

Once “Plan B” for a downtown arena failed to materialize, the Think Big Sacramento organization shifted gears and is now taking a broader look at possibilities for developing the more than 200 acre railyards site.

Several suggestions have already come up for the site, including:

Major League Baseball stadium – Several news outlets (including the New York TImes, Bleacher Report and Fox Sports) have reported that the Oakland A’s may be looking for a new home. Why not Sacramento?
Corporate headquarters – Now that the city has received a $15 million grant to fix up the downtown train station, Sacramento is well on its way to being a full intermodal hub, making the railyards a convenient site for commuting corporate workers and executives.
Entertainment district – Revitalizing downtown has long been a topic of interest at City Hall, and some say the railyards could be a big tourist draw as the newest downtown shopping and eating hotspot, despite not having an arena.
Medium-sized entertainment venues – A recent candidate for City Council suggested Sacramento needs more “medium-sized” venues: larger than your average nightclub, but smaller than a basketball arena. Could the railyards be the new home for an amphitheatre or two?
And, of course, an indoor sports arena – The idea hasn’t been completely excluded from the list. Johnson said building an arena doesn’t make economic sense without an anchor sports tenant, but that’s not to say the city and Think Big won’t still pursue one.

Jared Ficker, a spokesman for Inland Inland American Real Estate Trust, the Illinois firm that owns most of the railyards, said in a recent Sacramento Bee article that the company welcomes the help of Think Big.

“Think Big helps build community support for a project of this magnitude; they have an understanding of what the community wants,” Flicker said.

So, what does the community want?

We’ve outlined a few suggestions that were mentioned in the Bee article and that the mayor and others have brought up. What would you add? What do you think could or should be built at the raliyards site?

Take a minute to vote on the ones we’ve listed, or suggest your own ideas in the comment section, and we’ll add them to the poll as we go along.

Once we’ve incorporated all your suggestions and have a list of interesting ideas, we’ll hand-deliver them to the mayor and Think Big Executive Director Kunal Merchant.

Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Del Paso Boulevard is not Del Paso Heights

2012-02-09T03:51:47Z

There are many places in Sacramento city and county where a long roadway travels through numerous neighborhoods: Fair Oaks Boulevard, Watt Avenue and Sunrise Boulevard, for starters.

When the street name is very close to the neighborhood name – such as Del Paso Boulevard and Del Paso Heights – people unfamiliar with the area often confuse the road and the neighborhood.

Sacramentans take pride in their neighborhoods and, since the reputation of one neighborhood is not always carried on the roadway to the next, that confusion can get on a resident’s nerves pretty fast.

For example, a commenter on a recent Sacramento Press article about road improvements along Del Paso Boulevard had this to say after seeing a reference to Del Paso Heights in the article:

“The neighborhood that is affected by these changes is Woodlake, not Del Paso Heights. Why do journalists at Sac Press and the Bee constantly think that anything on Del Paso Blvd = Del Paso Heights? Del Paso Heights does not begin until much farther North,” Natalie Kuffel said Monday.

The ire is understandable – Del Paso Heights isn’t located on or adjacent to Del Paso Boulevard, and the nuances of Woodlake and Del Paso Heights are significantly different.

“It’s very confusing, and a lot of people think that they are the same,” said Jerry Kinglsey, president of the Woodlake Neighborhood Association.

Woodlake, as described by Kingsley, is a “nice, quiet community, secluded with lots of old trees.”

The community was established in 1924, and most of the Woodlake community was built in the early ‘30s, Kingsley said Wednesday. Some of the newer homes were built in the 1950s.

“There are people in Woodlake that were born there and raised their children and grandchildren there,” Kingsley said.

The neighborhood is known for its large, older homes and tree-lined streets, Kingsley said.

Woodlake is bound by Arden Way to the north, Hwy 160 to the south, Royal Oaks Drive to the east and Del Paso Boulevard to the west.

Del Paso Heights, on the other hand, is located about four miles north of Woodlake – and the neighborhood begins well past the point on Del Paso Boulevard where the road splits off to become Marysville Boulevard, Kingsley said.

Del Paso Heights is bound by Interstate 80 to the north, the Arcade Creek levee to the south, Marysville Boulevard to the east and Norwood Avenue to the west.

“It all started as part of the Rancho Del Paso land grant,” said Sondra Betancourt, lifelong resident and president of the Ben Ali Neighborhood Association.

Del Paso Heights is also an older neighborhood, and it was predominately a blue-collar/white-collar neighborhood, that "typified the hopes and desires and values of middle-class America of the 1950’s," added Brent Scott, a former Del Paso Heights resident.

“Over time, with use, the familiarity with the first two words become an all-encompassing term,” Betancourt said. “People have a common misconception that anything near Del Paso Heights is Del Paso Heights, but they don’t have any idea of what the map really looks like.”

Del Paso Boulevard travels through multiple neighborhoods after Woodlake – including Old North Sacramento, South Hagginwood and Hagginwood – before ultimately arriving in East Del Paso Heights.

“What most people think of as Del Paso Boulevard – with the art galleries and the finer restaurants – that is Old North Sacramento, which is close to Woodlake,” Betancourt said.

One of the key landmarks in “true Del Paso Heights,” according to Betancourt, is the Urban League building on Marysville Boulevard.

Del Paso Boulevard – the roadway – has been undergoing some transformations lately with streetscape improvements and business development along the corridor.

Meanwhile, Del Paso Heights – the neighborhood – could use some similar improvements, said Fran Barker, president of the Del Paso Heights Improvement Association Monday.

“The streets need lights for safety,” Barker said. “With crime the way it is, the city needs to consider safety projects first.”

Del Paso Boulevard is not Del Paso Heights – it's much more, and residents in the communities along that roadway would likely agree.

Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Bagatelos may take on McCarty for District 6 council seat

2012-02-03T05:20:22Z

When it comes to talking about how to run a city, local developer and City Council District 6 candidate Jon Bagatelos is all business.

Bagatelos, co-owner of Bagatelos Architectural Glass Systems and Bagatelos Development, LLC, was recruited to join the City Council race by business, community and public safety groups who are “tired of the way things are going with the city,” Bagatelos, 44, said Wednesday.

Bagatelos has not officially filed notice of his candidacy, but said he expects to select a campaign manager within the next couple of weeks. He will be running against incumbent Kevin McCarty for the City Council District 6 seat.

One of the main reasons he decided to consider the council seat, he said, is McCarty’s position on charter reform – more commonly referred to as “strong mayor.”

“I’m disappointed that he won’t vote to put it on the ballot,” Bagatelos said. “I would say he’s wrong on some of his positions, especially the strong mayor issue.”

Bagatelos said he supports a strong mayor system of government – not because of any loyalty to Mayor Kevin Johnson – but because he wants an accountable city council.

“I’m for (strong mayor) because the executive should have his authority, and the council – the legislative body – should have its authority,” Bagatelos said. “The city should not be run by an unelected city manager. That’s not accountability.”

Bagatelos has a self-described “one-track mind” about Sacramento that hinges on creating a business-friendly environment to create jobs and boost the local economy.

“We’ve dug a hole, and we have a lot of city services that we take for granted but we can’t afford,” Bagatelos said. “It’s going to take time to build the revenue to pay for those things. That’s just the truth of it.”

That’s not to say he’s against social services, Bagatelos was quick to point out – but he believes spending decisions need to be made carefully.

“The people on (the City) Council think money grows on trees and – they’re the government – they think they can spend what they don’t have,” Bagatelos said. “I don’t believe in that. If that makes me a radical, well, OK.”

The key to providing services such as transportation and utilities and homeless programs, Bagatelos said, is fostering an environment where companies want to come to Sacramento – and bring employment opportunities with them.

“That creates jobs for people who pay taxes, and taxes provide revenue for those needed services,” he said.

If the key to providing city services is tax-producing businesses, then the key to drawing them to the city, Bagatelos said, is the proposed entertainment and sports complex.

“The arena is a major opportunity. It will create jobs for the city,” Bagatelos said. “To have (the arena) happen would be instrumental to the growth of this city.”

Bagatelos has been criticized in the media and by some in McCarty’s camp for not living in the district – questioning both his eligibility for the race and his commitment to the district.

He and his family currently live in East Sacramento, but they also own a home in Campus Commons which was drawn into council District 6 through the recent redisticting process.

“I own a house in the district, my business is in the district, and over the years we’ve employed hundreds – if not thousands – of people,” Bagatelos said.

“If the biggest complaint against me is where I live, that’s not much of a complaint,” he added.

Mark Friedman, president of Fulcrum Group development company, worked alongside Bagatelos as co-chair of Johnson’s finance committee when Johnson ran for his mayoral seat in 2008.

“(Bagatelos) is deeply engaged in local politics and has been (politically) active for many years,” Friedman said Thursday.

“He’s focused on building the economy and creating jobs,” Friedman said. “If the economy doesn’t improve, then his district doesn’t improve – no district will.”

Friedman said he will be an “enthusiastic” supporter of Bagatelos’ campaign because he feels Bagatelos will bring a “fresh, business-friendly perspective” to the City Council.

The upcoming City Council election will not be Bagatelos’ first foray into the political arena: In 2002, he unsuccessfully ran for the 8th Assembly District seat shortly after starting Bagatelos Development, LLC, with his brothers, Chris and Nick Bagatelos.

When McCarty spoke with The Sacramento Press Sept. 26 about his intention to run for re-election, he said that he welcomes a challenge in the upcoming race.

“Elections are supposed to be about democracy,” McCarty said in the interview, “that means choosing the best candidate in a competitive race.”

McCarty’s campaign consultant, Andrew Acosta, said Wednesday that McCarty has been fighting for his district since he was first elected in 2004 and will continue his work for the people he represents – despite any challengers for his seat.

“If the mayor’s (political) machine intends to run someone against (McCarty),” Acosta said, “then we’ll have a campaign and we’ll discuss the issues.”

Bagatelos said his campaign will be based on asking people, “Do you think things are getting done right in the city? If not, vote for me.”

“It’s really that simple,” he said.

Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Ancient olive trees create the 'heart' of Bridge District park

2012-01-28T04:24:21Z

Four massive Seville olive trees were installed in The Bridge District’s Garden Park earlier this month setting the stage for a welcoming community space in West Sacramento’s newest development area.

Garden Park is a three-quarter-acre public park billed as the “centerpiece” to the first stage of development of The Bridge District, according to Stephen Jaycox, senior vice president of design for The Bridge District’s designer/developer, Fulcrum Property.

Jaycox said the design and planning of The Bridge District is unusual compared to typical new development plans.

“We are starting with the green space and then moving on to building townhomes and apartments around it,” Jaycox said. “This is a different sort of planning from the days when parks were an afterthought.”

The newly-replanted olive trees averaged 21,000 pounds each and are each well over 100 years old, according to Jaycox.

The olive trees were working trees on a farm near Fresno before the move to the park in West Sacramento. They were selected because of their sculptural trunks, character and beauty, Jaycox said.

“Having a fruit-bearing tree is a reminder of the importance of agriculture to our communities,” Jaycox said Thursday.

The trees will frame a seating area in the center of the park featuring a 16-foot-long granite table that Fulcrum Property President Mark Friedman described as “an invitation” to get together with neighbors.

“The trees give the park instant character, creating a sense of age and permanence that you wouldn’t normally get in a new park,” Friedman said.

Jaycox said Garden Park is designed in what is called a “circus plan” – a long oval – similar to South Park in San Francisco.

“It’s long and narrow, and the buildings will go up around it,” he said. “It will feel like being in an outdoor room.”

Garden Park is expected to be the “heart of the neighborhood,” according to Friedman.

“We’ve built it like a jewel box for the district,” he said.

The West Sacramento park will cost nearly $2 million and is being paid for with a variety of public funds including grants and general fund dollars, Katy Jacobson, project manager for the city of West Sacramento, said Friday.

“(The olive trees) give us an instant sense of history as we transform the area from industrial to mixed-use,” Jacobson said.

Additional improvements to The Bridge District will include final construction of an off-ramp at Fifth Street this fall, followed by the start of construction on the first housing units before the end of the year, Jacobson said.

As Garden Park nears completion, the final addition will be a yet-to-be-selected sculpture set in a prominent place as a counterpoint to the ancient trees.

“It will offset something natural – the ancient Seville olive trees – with something manmade,” Friedman said.

Construction on Garden Park began in November and is expected to open in spring, although no specific date has been set.

Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Groundbreaking for new mixed-use development in Midtown

2012-01-13T01:49:29Z

Ground broke on a new mixed-use retail and residential development in Midtown Thursday, and work is set to be complete on two vacant former state lots at 16th and O streets by mid-2013.

“We’re going to get 84 market-rate apartments, 13,000 square feet of retail, and we’re going to have another chunk of Sacramento with a nice infill, pedestrian-friendly development,” said City Councilman Rob Fong, whose district contains most of downtown and Midtown. “It’s the kind of live-work space that really is a nice fit for the city.”

The project – with one four-story and one five-story, mission-style building – is a partnership between the Capitol Area Development Authority – a joint powers group between the state and city formed in 1978 – Ravel Rasmussen Properties and Separovich/Domich Real Estate Development.

The approximately $24 million project includes $1.5 million in funding from CADA, which also provided the two lots. The developers brought in $5 million and financed another $17 million, said Scott Rasmussen of Ravel Rasmussen Properties.

“We’re hoping to get some small public improvement grant money from SMUD as well,” he said.

Across the street from the Fremont Building and a few blocks away from Fremont Park and the popular restaurant Hot Italian, Rasmussen said the location is a prime spot.

“It’s a dynamic location, and it may be kind of the new center for downtown and Midtown,” he said.

The 84 apartments are expected to rent for between $1,200 and $1,500 and will be one- or two-bedroom units. The 13,000 square feet of retail space will likely house between five or six tenants, Rasmussen added.

Rasmussen declined to comment on the nature of the tenants, saying that while some outreach to businesses has been made, it is too early to speculate on which ones will eventually be a part of the project.

“I hear one of the retail users is going to be some sort of restaurant with patio dining,” Fong said, adding that it’s too early in the process for specifics.

Congresswoman Doris Matsui was in attendance at the groundbreaking, saying the project shows progress for the city.

“It shows that we’re doing things in Sacramento, and we know that we’ve had a hard time, but things are getting better slowly,” Matsui said. “It’s going to provide a livability and a sense of community.”

She added that the new plan in urban development – reverting to plans from a century ago – is to make living and working space that is walkable and easily accessible to bicycles.

“I think that by next year, we’ll find real progress,” Matsui said. “People (will be) walking around and enjoying themselves here. That’s the goal.”

Brandon Darnell is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow him on Twitter @Brandon_Darnell.

Hyatt Regency Sacramento Completes Multi-Year, Multi-Million Dollar Renovation

2012-01-10T22:01:36Z

Historically, the travel and tourism industry has proven to be resilient. In good news for hoteliers, strong growth will continue in 2012 proving there’s a method behind the long-forecasted, now completed renovation work at the Hyatt Regency Sacramento, and a reason to celebrate the Hyatt’s achievements as the hotel hosts VIPS at its Renovation Celebration, Thursday, January 12, 1209 L Street, downtown Sacramento, across from the State Capitol.

The Hyatt began the long-awaited $3 million Phase II renovation last summer, finishing the hotel’s “public spaces," including the lobby floor, Amourath lobby lounge, Vines Restaurant, second floor meeting space and the 15th Floor Capitol View Room—featuring the region’s most spectacular 360 views of Sacramento and the State Capitol.

In late 2009, the Hyatt Regency Sacramento completed Phase I of a multi-million dollar renovation of its 503 guestrooms spanning 12 floors. Stately elegance served as the inspiration for the hotel’s design, incorporating a rich color palate and a host of modern, efficient amenities that the 21st Century traveler has come to appreciate.

A creative endeavor of Austin, Texas-based interior design firm Looney & Associates, the Hyatt’s elegant and minimalist lines including wall treatments, furnishings and artwork is designed to enhance the hotel’s public space and provide a comfortable retreat that reflects the appeal of the outdoor environment. The guest check in area has also been redesigned with today’s traveler in mind—gone are the harsh and expansive counters which have been replaced by “guest pods” that allow hotel staff to walk around to greet guests, creating a more personal and friendly relationship.

The 15-story Mediterranean-designed Hyatt Regency Sacramento was built in 1988 amid much civic fanfare; a stunning achievement and important investment in the redevelopment of the central downtown business community and a critical partner in the future of the local convention and tourism industry. It features over 500 guestrooms, 28,000 square feet of meeting space, a roof top banquet room with the most spectacular views of Sacramento, as well as two award-winning restaurants--Dawson's and Vines Cafe.

“This multi-year renovation has long been planned, despite the economic circumstances we faced when we began this process in 2009,” stated Scott Vandenberg, Hyatt Regency Sacramento General Manager. “Now that we’ve finished, we’re well positioned to grow our business and continue to influence the economic development of downtown Sacramento’s core.”

Historically, the travel and tourism industry has proven to be resilient. Hotels will continue to see strong growth in 2012, primarily driven by steady demand for hotel rooms expected to increase through third quarter 2012 (www.TravelClick.com). Occupancy rates across the country are up 3.6 percent with business travel continuing slow but positive gains each quarter. With corporate travel playing a key role in driving overall growth of the travel industry, the hospitality industry is poised to gain brand loyal clientele based on prompt and friendly staff and amenities that enhance business traveler efficiencies (Deloitte business traveler survey, December 2011).

Additionally, guest profiles, preferences and travel history will assure that the hospitality industry continues to provide personalized attention to its guests. (Hospitality Trends) The alluring design and enhanced comforts of the newly renovated Hyatt Regency Sacramento will leave guests well-rested, re-energized and ready for their destination adventure in Sacramento.

To mark the Hyatt’s celebration, officials announced that the Sacramento Hyatt is one of only 27 Hyatt properties worldwide to be awarded a grant for a local non-profit organization aligned with the Hyatt’s philanthropic goals. Hyatt Sacramento officials will present a $15,000 check to their nominated non-profit organization, Stanford Settlement Neighborhood Center, to enhance their community programs.

Disclosure: Karen Bakula is President of Karen Bakula & Company, Inc., which has a consulting relationship with the Hyatt Regency Sacramento.

Downtown Construction Photo Update Fall 2011

2011-12-20T04:33:41Z

“Seventh & H" SRO - 7th & H Street, $47.4 million project.
Expected completion date, Spring 2013

626 I Street Rehabilitation Project - $19.4 million.
Expected completion date, Sept. 2012

La Valentina Station - 12th Street between D and E streets, $27 million project.
Expected completion date, summer 2012.

Sutter Medical Center - L & 29th Street, $600 million project.
Expected completion date, late 2012.

Read more at: http://livinginurbansac.blogspot.com/

Key development and growth in the south area in 2011

2011-12-17T01:37:40Z

This has been a big year for Sacramento and especially for South Sacramento, where development projects flourished and neighborhoods saw improvements on nearly every corner.

“No one hears about South Sacramento unless there’s been a murder or a shooting,” said City Councilwoman Bonnie Pannell, who represents south area neighborhoods in District 8. “We have so much more going on, though.”

Pannell has represented one of the two southern-most districts of the city since 1998, and in those 12 years she has been behind projects ranging from neighborhood beautification to housing to commercial development.

“There was nothing at Freeport and Meadowview when I came on (to council),” Pannell said. “Now there’s the Home Depot, IHOP, Wendy’s and the new Walgreens right there.”

There will soon be a new veterinary hospital, too, Pannell said, and more new retail to come in the next year.

At the beginning of 2011, Pannell’s goals for her district included installing decorative fencing along Mack Road at Center Parkway to increase pedestrian safety, developing a regional sports complex at Luther Burbank High School and work with the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency to build or refurbish housing in the area.

All of that has been accomplished, Pannell said – and always with strong community involvement.

“My communities are excited about all of the work,” Pannell said. “They are involved in all projects, from beginning to end.”

Jesse Reese, president of the Meadowview Neighborhood Association, said Friday that Pannell and her staff have been receptive to the association’s input over the years.

“We try to get things built around the types of design that we want to see,” he said. “If we need a restaurant or a grocery story, we put it out there (to Pannell).”

In addition to regular contact with Pannell, Reese said his and other associations in the district meet once a year with Pannell and developers and show them land and areas for potential development.

“We are looking for anything that will enhance the area,” Reese said.

Two things that the area needs are coming very soon: a grocery store and light rail.

A new Fresh & Easy grocery store will soon be under construction at the corner of Mack Road and Franklin Boulevard, Reese said. The South Line extension of light rail is almost completely funded, and ground has been broken for the garage that will mark the end of the line at Cosumnes River College.

Having light rail access to the south area will be an important improvement for the community, Reese said.

“(Light rail) will allow a way (for people) to get to some of the places that are being developed,” Reese said. “If you want to talk about minimizing your carbon footprint, it helps to get people out of cars.”

For a district that has seen the second-highest growth in the city over the last decade in terms of population – Natomas takes first place – the changes in the area haven’t seen much fanfare outside the district, Pannell said.

But that is going to change in 2012, Pannell said – especially when the 960-acre Delta Shores development gets under way.

This housing, retail and commercial center has been in the works for a few years, and the key to getting the first brick laid, Pannell said, is getting the Cosumnes River Boulevard-to-Interstate 5 interchange approved.

The item is expected to be on the City Council agenda in early January and, once approved, it will be a tremendous step in the right direction for a very large project in the south area, Pannell said.

“If we can get the interchange started,” Pannell said, “the developer will start the construction of 1.4 million square feet of commercial property.”

“And when it’s open for business, that means jobs, jobs, jobs,” Pannell said.

Delta Shores could break ground as early as March, and the South Line RT project is expected to be started early in 2012 as well, Pannell said.

“We’ve gotten things done and we’ve involved the community,” Pannell said, “But there’s always more work to do so we’re just going to keep plugging along.”

Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

County Suspends Annual Building Fee Increases

2011-11-16T01:13:41Z

Sacramento County Supervisors have voted to suspend the automatic annual fee adjustments for several development impact fee programs.

“As part of our ongoing effort to encourage business and job opportunities, and improve the local economy, we have held back automatic fee increases on new building projects. This will help new projects get started, help create jobs and add to the economic recovery of the Sacramento region,” said Roberta MacGlashan, Chair of the Board. “This will be the fourth consecutive year we’ve suspended increases as we continue to develop ways to improve the stability and growth of our region.”

The programs affected are:
• Antelope, North Vineyard Station, Vineyard and Mather Field Plan Area Fee Programs
• Eight local Recreation and Park Districts’ Park Fee Programs
• Sacramento County Water Agency Zone 11A, Zone 11B, Zone 11C and the Supplemental Drainage Fee for the Vineyard Springs area.

Cumulatively, without suspending these fee increases for four years, there would have been a12.1% increase in the fees. In addition, the Board extended the temporary reduction in fee rates for several fee components in the North Vineyard Station Fee program for an additional two years, with a new sunset date of December 31, 2013. This will continue the reductions approved last year. The Roadway fee is reduced by 17.5%, the Frontage Lane Fee is reduced by 38.3% and the Library Fee is reduced by 1.8%.

The County has been working with the North State Building Industry Association (BIA) to comprehensively review all fee programs in an effort to address the systematic change that has occurred in the market place and put systems in place to move the economy forward. The working group has achieved significant fee reductions in some areas without compromising construction standards. Suspending fee increases will contribute to economic recovery by lowering the costs so that it will be more likely for projects to develop in this economic climate.

“As partners, Sacramento County and the BIA are working together to address the ever changing market environment. Through the County’s leadership we are creating an environment which not only improves the stability and growth in Sacramento County, but will also translate into job creation,” John Costa, Senior Legislative Advocate, BIA.

Disclosure: Media Officer with Sacramento County

Newton Booth to Honor SACOG'S McKeever

2011-11-10T10:03:59Z

The Newton Booth Neighborhoods Association (NBNA) is honoring Mike McKeever, Executive Director of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), with the organization’s 2011 Growing Together Award for his role earlier this year as the volunteer mediator in a neighborhood development controversy.

The NBNA represents the Poverty Ridge, Newton Booth, and Alhambra Triangle neighborhoods in Sacramento’s District 4.

The award will be presented to McKeever Thursday, November 10th, at Newton’s Night Out, a neighborhood event to be held at Revolution Wines, 2831 S Street, from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm. McKeever will be in attendance.

The Growing Together Award, established in August 2011, is given to "a company or individual who works to implement and/or promote urban growth through cooperative interaction with neighborhood communities," according to the neighborhood association’s Facebook page for the event.

The award’s presentation writes a positive afterword to an emotional development saga that played out over several public hearings as well as the op-ed page of the Sacramento Bee, but concluded with a negotiated agreement that few expected--an agreement achieved largely due to McKeever’s involvement.

From September 2010 to July 2011, the Newton Booth neighborhood, located on the southern edge of midtown between R and W Streets from 23rd to Alhambra, was embroiled in a contentious battle with local developer and “smart growth” advocate Andrea Rosen over a two-building, six-unit, gated courtyard development she was proposing for a corner lot at 24th and T Streets.

Already angered by the City’s lack of outreach before permitting Rosen to demolish the small 1940‘s era moderne-style home that previously stood on the site, neighborhood residents vehemently fought the project, arguing that it was too massive and too contemporary for an area distinguished by Craftsman era bungalow houses, but scarred by unattractive 1970‘s era apartment buildings.

Equally forceful in her pursuit of the project’s realization was Rosen, who saw her development as precisely the kind of quality “smart growth” Central Central infill envisioned by the Sacramento 2030 General Plan, which was adopted by the City Council in 2009 as a guidebook for future urban growth, including eco-friendly “smart growth” principles of increased density near mass transit.

The controversy pitted residents of a neighborhood struggling to retain its identity against the region’s “smart growth” advocates, who for years had worked to advance their principles and finally saw light at the end of the tunnel with the 2009 adoption of the General Plan,. Both sides saw themselves in the role of David facing a Goliath.

When the Planning Commission mandated at a Spring 2011 hearing that the two sides negotiate, the 24th and T Street project appeared destined for a final acrimonious fight before the City Council, potentially putting at risk the success of a development considered by its advocates to be the first to overtly embrace the principles of the General Plan.

That’s when McKeever, himself a supporter of the project and whose organization, SACOG, was one of the primary drivers behind the General Plan, offered to mediate the negotiation. Already known to Rosen, McKeever met with and won the trust of neighborhood representatives. A few months later, an agreement was reached that incorporated design changes and one fewer units, but allowed the project to move forward with unanimous approval by the Planning Commission in July 2011. It was an agreement the developer herself called “unprecedented.”

As for Newton Booth, McKeever is receiving the neighborhood association’s Growing Together Award “in recognition of his commitment to the advancement and implementation of the General Plan through a spirit of cooperation and mutual respect,” according to the NBNA’s event description.

“The service Mike McKeever performed for our neighborhood makes him truly deserving,” says NBNA board member Heather Scott, who held a key role in the neighborhood group that negotiated the agreement. “I am proud of the compromise that Mr. McKeever helped to negotiate; we could not have reached it without him.”

Scott will present the award to McKeever on behalf of the NBNA.

The official NBNA Facebook page can be reached at www.facebook.com/newtonbooth.

Disclosure: William Robertson is current president of the NBNA, and a neighborhood representative directly involved in the cited controversy.

Bus tour shows off south area development

2011-10-21T02:12:03Z

District 8 City Councilwoman Bonnie Pannell hosted a bus tour Thursday highlighting recent redevelopment efforts and future growth opportunities throughout the district with a group of developers, real estate brokers and city employees – along with a few district residents and neighborhood association representatives.

“This is going to be a tour of opportunities,” said City Manager John Shirey at the start of the tour. “We’ve got a good future for this district.”

The Meadowview and south city areas have seen the second-greatest rate of growth in all of Sacramento, second only to North Natomas in District 1, Pannell said.

“We have had a lot of growth (in District 8),” Pannell said, “and we still have more land to be developed. We’re going to be looking for new projects – so developers on the tour, pay attention.”

Some of the economic development successes highlighted on the tour included a $350 million expansion of Kaiser Permanente, a new 20,000-square-foot Valley Hi/North Laguna public library, new recreational amenities with three new parks and the Phoenix Park development – a project completed in conjunction with the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency.

“One way we can get through our financial difficulties in the city is to grow our way out,” Shirey said. “I see the positives all around now. We’ve got something good started, and we can build on that.”

David Kwong, city planning director, pointed out on the tour more development activity at Meadowview Road and Freeport Boulevard, including a new Walgreens and a 20,000-square-foot veterinary hospital.

Kwong also noted the future site of a Fresh and Easy grocery store – something residents in the south area want and need but have very few of, according to Pannell.

“Meadowview really needs a grocery store,” Pannell said. “They’ve been talking about a grocery store for 13 years, and (the future Fresh and Easy) is the closest we’ve come.”

Pannell said residents often have to drive nearly two miles to the nearest store, and that creates a real challenge for people.

Nehla Buchanan, 46, a caregiver with the state of California, has lived in Pannell’s district for about a year. Buchanan said she moved to the Meadowview area because housing was affordable and there was a good opportunity for home ownership.

Buchanan’s neighborhood is adjacent to the future site of the planned Delta Shores development – an 800-acre mixed-use project that will include retail shops, single-family and multi-family housing, and office and commercial uses.

The project will also include at least one grocery store, according to Jain Wager, a developer with MerloneGeier Partners, the developer of Delta Shores.

“I love the Delta Shores development,” Buchanan said. “I can’t wait until they start building over there.”

Buchanan is part of the Meadowview Neighborhood Association, and the group has held numerous meetings with Pannell and city staff to give input into the many changes happening in the district.

“We’ve worked with Ms. Pannell specifically on improvements in our neighborhood, and it’s been so helpful,” Buchanan said. “We will continue to give our input to new things that are happening here.”

Jesse Reese, president of the Meadowview Neighborhood Association, has been a community activist for more than 35 years in the south city area.

“It’s good to see us grow,” Reese said. “It’s inspiring to see things that we’ve worked toward for a very long time finally happening.”

Reese said that, when the idea for Delta Shores was first discussed nearly 30 years ago, the developers at the time wanted to open “another Mack Road” with nothing but apartment complexes, Reese said.

“We wanted more of a development than that,” Reese said. “We now see (developers) MerloneGeier doing something better and hearing what (neighborhood associations) have been wanting.”

Reese said that, as the area develops more, he and the MNA will continue to reach out to City Council to make sure the issues that concerned neighbors want addressed don’t get lost in the shuffle.

City Economic Development Director Jim Reinhart said that, over the past five years, south area neighborhoods have experienced a real growth spurt – but it’s gone “unnoticed” for the most part.

Pannell said south area development has been largely ignored because downtown and North Natomas have been getting the lion’s share of attention at City Hall.

“We have a ton of land that needs to be developed,” Pannell said. “So, we’ve been quietly developing small plots, plugging along and hoping that one day someone would notice.”

The bus tour was the second one in four years that Pannell has hosted. The next one won’t be planned for another two or three years, she said, to allow time for “even more growth and development to show off later on.”

“Even though we still have a lot of vacant land, we have done a lot,” Pannell said. “And we’ll do even more before the next tour.”

Pannell said she hopes to see a new, 200-plus-unit senior center that is in the planning stages get approval in time to break ground next summer.

“I want the light rail South Line to start next year,” Pannell said, “and the Cosumnes River Boulevard connection (between Interstate 5 and Highway 99) to happen next year, too.”

Gwendolyn Feathers, 67, a resident of the district since 1988, said she has seen a lot of the growth and development projects going up in the district, but this was the first bus tour of the area that she has been on.

“I’ve learned so much today,” Feathers said. “We have really been building up in the area – it’s exciting.”

Although City Council approval is in place, the Delta Shores development does not yet have a planned construction start date, according to Wager.

Melissa Corker is a Staff Reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Sacramento leaders learn from New Orleans tour

2011-10-12T00:52:54Z

A delegation of Sacramento business and political leaders returned from a four-day tour of New Orleans with fresh insight into what it takes for a city to recover and thrive after a disaster, including improving transportation methods, sustainable housing and flood protections.

“New Orleans had a unique opportunity to reinvent itself because of all the investments made there after Katrina,” City Councilman Kevin McCarty said Tuesday. “We need to look at how we can reinvent ourselves here, too.”

On Tuesday, Council Members Angelique Ashby, Steve Cohn and Kevin McCarty and Mayor Kevin Johnson shared the lessons learned from the people in New Orleans about methods of recovery the city has used to rebuild itself after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005.

“(New Orleans) Mayor (Mitch) Landrieu is a vibrant, energetic mayor,” Johnson said, “and he is an excellent example of the focus it takes to turn things around after a disaster. We went (there) to learn from the work they have done in New Orleans.”

Johnson, Ashby, Cohn, McCarty and 85 other delegates joined Maggie Townsley, public policy vice chairwoman for the Sacramento Metro Chamber, for the chamber‘s 13th annual study mission in Louisiana last week.

The study mission is a program the Metro Chamber develops every year to provide a learning experience for delegates about the challenges faced by other regions and how they successfully manage those challenges for long-term regional prosperity, according to the chamber website.

“We represent about 170,000 employees in the Sacramento region,” Townsley said. “One of the key things we do is partner with government and nonprofit organizations to further specific objectives for the region.”

Some of the objectives highlighted on this year’s study mission include improving city transportation, public housing and flood control.

Delegates on the tour had the opportunity to meet with Landrieu and other civic leaders and came away with ideas for improving Sacramento and the region.

“It’s been six years since New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Katrina,” Ashby said Tuesday, “but the devastation from that event was widespread, and you can still see it.”

Ashby said that one thing that struck her was that the flood waters during the hurricane reached nearly 20 feet in height.

“Should our levees break in Natomas,” Ashby said, “we could be as deep as 33 feet. We can’t let that happen.”

Ashby said it is necessary to improving flood protection for the region, including having the levees in her district certified by the federal government for improvement funding.

One thing McCarty said he found fascinating in New Orleans was how they are rebuilding their public housing.

“One in five kids lives in poverty,” McCarty said, “and many times those families are isolated in neighborhoods divided from economic development and grocery stores and other public investments that improve the neighborhood.”

McCarty said one thing that the city of New Orleans has done to “reinvent” the city’s public housing is taking down old units and rebuilding them as mixed-income units.

“They are making sure they have (an economic) blend to bring in development opportunities,” McCarty said. “That is something we are going to look at for some of our neighborhoods here in Sacramento.

McCarty said that neighborhood housing and development, especially for low-income populations, should be a priority for Sacramento.

Representatives from the Sacramento Metro Chamber are preparing a report about the study mission and said they expect it to be completed sometime next week.

Melissa Corker is a Staff Reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Sacramento County's Growth Strategy

2011-09-26T17:49:07Z

Sacramento County has been updating its growth-management plan for the unincorporated area as part of the General Plan. This Plan, which directs future development, is required by law and should be complete by the end of 2011.

There were many issues involved with arriving at a new growth strategy, and careful attention was paid to balancing the requests of community members, environmentalists and developers. The grown strategy underwent several changes as the building boom ceased and the County had to address state laws that required lower carbon emissions (AB 32) and encouraged mass transit (SB 375). Multiple public meetings were held to fully understand all the interests and arrive at the new strategy that would best meet everyone’s needs.

At this time, the new Plan does not call for expanding the urban growth area, which is the area designated for urban development to occur. However, once the General Plan is adopted, landowners may submit applications to expand the area, but only if the proposed new growth meets certain criteria.

Under the proposed Plan, the requirements that projects would have to meet include:
• The property has to be next to existing urban areas
• Development must be near transit and employment or provide new transit and employment as part of the plan
• The proposed project must be high quality and contain a mix of housing types, shops and amenities

Disclosure: Communication and Media Officer with Sacramento County

Drink Wine, Marvel at Art, Dance to Live Music all to Support Orphans in Mexico

2011-09-20T16:45:59Z

On September 30, 2011, at Beatnik Studios, aspects of Sacramento’s finest culture will come together to support a truly inspiring cause. From 5pm to 9pm entrance is free and guests can stroll the studio looking at P.R. Brown’s photography show “The Known and Travel” while noshing on appetizers. Wine lovers can purchase a souvenir glass for wine tasting and entrance into a gourmet gift basket raffle. 100% of the proceeds are directed towards transforming the lives of orphaned and poverty-stricken children. Guests can further show their support by bidding at the silent auction. After 9pm a suggested donation of $5-$10 is appreciated as the stage opens up to live performances from Katie Jane, Alyssa Cox, Step Jane, and Exquisite Corps.

Beatnik studios, located on 17th Street and Broadway, is known for supporting charitable causes. The nonprofit organization 2Build 4Ward International (2x4 International) is no exception. A group of California State Employees initiated the organization to bring attention and solutions to issues in developing countries. Their mission is to partner with community-based projects and disadvantaged groups to support education, health, infrastructure and small business development.

While the organization has already sent and shipped barrels of goods to a hospital in Ghana, this event will further their project to build an orphanage in Tuxpan, Jalisco Mexico. The organization has received a donation of land, a commitment from a Canadian architectural firm to the project, and the partnership of a local Mexican organization. Over half of Mexico’s population lives in poverty and the UN estimates that there are 10 million orphans living in Mexico.

The featured artist, P.R. Brown, is best known as a Grammy nominated music video director. Brown has worked with musicians such as John Mayer, Three Days Grace, The Smashing Pumpkins, Seal, Prince, Alicia Keys, Slipknot, Matisyahu, Goo Goo Dolls, and Death Cab for Cutie. His collection of travel photos and high fashion will be featured at Beatnik for the entire month of October.

For those interested in supporting 2x4 International’s cause, but cannot attend, online bidding for the silent auction photos can be accessed through their website. If you enjoy art, wine, music, and helping others, then come celebrate at 2x4 International’s first annual Wine and Art Event.

2x4 International is a registered 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation dedicated to development projects abroad. For further information please visit http://2x4international.blogspot.com

Disclosure: Chelsea Berg is the Fundraising/Volunteer Administrator with 2build 4ward international.

New Think Big report: strategic use of public land

2011-09-02T04:36:31Z

Take some vacant, unused city-owned land, sell the land to investors for development and reap the benefits of construction jobs, economic growth and money to help finance a new downtown arena.

That’s the latest idea being considered by the Think Big Sacramento committee, according to a report released at a press conference Thursday.

The press conference was held at a city-owned dirt lot at the corner of Front and V streets, which is one of the examples cited in the report of public land that could be sold for profit – and would result in jobs related to the development of the property.

“Properties like this could be put in the mix to draw and generate money from developers,” said Think Big Sacramento Executive Director Chris Lehane.

“That (money) could help with the development and construction costs of building an arena,” Lehane said.

The city of Sacramento owns approximately 2,400 pieces of land that are currently undeveloped, vacant or producing very little revenue to the public, according to the report.

Two other examples in the report included an empty lot at Second Street and Capitol Mall – with an estimated value between $8.5 and $14.8 million – and the Plaza Office Building at 921 Tenth St. – with an estimated value between $480,000 and $1.2 million, despite the presence of hazardous materials that make the building less desirable for buyers.

Selling some of that land to private developers is one potential financing option that the committee is considering to build a new entertainment sports complex downtown.

Lehane and the Think Big Sacramento committee have been working under a self-imposed 100 day deadline to put together a final “menu” of funding options for the arena project.

“Our core focus has been on identifying revenue streams that have a relationship to the actual facility,” Lehane said.

By “relationship,” Lehane said he means revenue that would come from businesses that benefit from being located near the new complex, or from people who use the facility (such as ticket holders or event sponsors).

Lehane also included entities within the public domain that “would not otherwise exist except for the arena or are enhanced because of the arena,” such as hotels that build near the arena for out of town visitors to the arena, or new businesses that are built as part of the development of public land bought from the city.

Jack Reynan, a homebuilder with Artisan Communities and a Think Big Sacramento committee member, said that development of the sold property would do more than bring short-term construction jobs during the development stages.

“The creation of a modern arena and facilities would unquestionably revitalize the surrounding areas,” Reynan said, “creating more jobs which would, in turn, almost certainly increase demand for housing.”

The Think Big committee report said city-owned land located near the proposed arena site could see a high demand and increased value when an arena is built – a demand that will turn into long-term benefits for the city.

“A facility that creates jobs in construction, generates revenue for the city and has people working here day in and day out,” Lehane said, “that’s the sort of thing that leads to a transformation in economic development for the city.”

Think Big committee members are already seeking private developers who might be interested in buying and developing city-owned properties, said David Taylor, a developer and investor with David S. Taylor Interests.

“(Private investors) will be more willing to invest more money into development (in the area),” Taylor said, “as long as the public sector is willing to bring money to create the infrastructure.”

If the public will invest in the private-public partnership of a new arena, Taylor said, the city could “get their money back plus some” over the next 20 to 30 years.

“That’s worth it in my view,” Taylor added.

In total, the Think Big committee has reviewed more than 70 funding options for private-public partnerships to make it possible to build the new sports entertainment complex.

Final funding recommendations from the Think Big committee will be released Sept. 8 at a luncheon hosted by The Sacramento Press Club.

Lehane said the committee pared down the list of possible properties to sell from 2,400 to about 19 or 20. Details of those properties will be released as part of the Sept. 8 report.

Think Big Sacramento committee members will present a follow-up report to the City Council on Sept. 13.

Read the Think Big Sacramento report here.

Melissa Corker is a Staff Reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Summer Construction Rundown

2011-08-29T19:59:57Z

Sutter Medical Center
L & 29th Street, $600 million project.
Expected completion date, late 2012.

La Valentina Station
12th Street between D and E streets.
$27 million project. Expected completion date, summer 2012.

Maydestone Apartments
Corner of J & 15th Street.
$7.2 million renovation.
Expected completion date, February 1, 2012.

“Seventh & H" SRO
7th & H Street.
$47.4 million project.
Expected completion date, Spring 2013.

DMV Headquarters Upgrade
2415 1st Avenue
$127 million renovation, 13-year renovation so far.
Expected completion date, who knows???

626 I Street Rehabilitation Project
$19.4 million. Expected completion date, Sept. 2012

Disclosure: http://livinginurbansac.blogspot.com/

Sacramento Savings comes down

2011-08-18T04:59:22Z

Years after the bank closed its doors roughly 15 years ago, the building that once housed Sacramento Savings at 5th and L streets, is finally falling under the wrecking ball.

The building, built in 1960 according to the foreman of the wrecking crew, wasn't exactly a landmark, but it was a familiar building, known for its river rock aggregate surfaces. It was also directly across the street from Macy's, on one of downtown's busiest streets.

The foreman, who didn't give his name, says that the building apparently featured a substantial bomb shelter, a relic of the Cold War.

After the building is completely demolished, and the lot scraped, it will be turned into that most cherished of downtown commodities: a parking lot.

SacPress on Insight: Redistricting drama, new city manager and Powerhouse

2011-08-16T23:05:52Z

Tuesday morning’s visit with Jeffrey Callison gave us the chance to talk about redistricting (still), the new city manager (again) and a new restaurant opening in the old Hanger 17 space at 17th and S (finally).

The long, dramatic saga of the redistricting of Sacramento’s City Council districts continues with Tuesday’s City Council meeting. But given the twists and turns in this process, there’s no telling. We have an explainer on the topic that shows the process of how we got where we are. But the damage done to the council’s reputation, especially that of a few key members who used the process to consolidate their political power, has been done. And there will likely be a contingent of people from Oak Park protesting the redrawn map that puts the UC Davis Medical Center outside of their neighborhood for the first time in 40 years. The final vote on the new map comes later this month.

Sacramento finally has a new city manager, and if he and the city stick with his contract, he’ll be around at least three years. John Shirey will receive $258,000 a year, a 16 percent raise from the last city manager, but a decrease from his salary at the California Redevelopment Association, where he has been executive director. But there are those who are not happy with Shirey’s contract nor with the process that led to his hiring, which was largely done behind closed doors. Mayor Kevin Johnson and Councilwoman Angelique Ashby voted against the package, saying that it was inappropriate to give Shirey such a huge salary when a city firefighters’ union had just voted to defer a 5 percent pay raise and to contribute 6 percent of their salaries toward their pensions in the same week.

Last week was a dramatic one for fans of redevelopment. First, the city council voted to keep our local redevelopment agency going, but that would mean the city paying the state more than $18 million for the privilege, as well as more than $4 million a year, which proponents said will not affect the general fund. We will be looking into that further. Just to give you an idea of how big this is, the city says that it invested more than $25 million last year in area projects such as the La Valentina and Township 9 affordable housing projects downtown, as well as the 800 block of K Street.

But then the California Supreme Court issued a stay pending its ruling regarding the legality of the state’s discontinuing the redevelopment agencies. It will decide before the January deadline for cities to start sending funds to the state.

Councilmember Ashby and Assemblyman Richard Pan got together last week to host a meeting for residents of Natomas to brainstorm ideas for what might be built in place of Power Balance Pavilion, should an arena downtown move forward. Among the ideas discussed were a children’s hospital and a high-tech business center, though no one is known to be chomping at the bit to build such things at this point.

And ground was broken, at least metaphorically, on the Powerhouse Science Center, which has been getting a lot less press from news outlets compared to the possible arena across I-5, but which is well under way and could be completed by 2013. More significant than a chance to see shovels in the ground was the chance to see a check for $7 million handed over to start the project, which will include a domed planetarium and a surrounding park.

This weekend will see the inaugural version of Sacramento Hempfest out on the Sacramento River, with performances by Warren G., Flesh-N-Bone from Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and others. It’s designed to showcase the benefits of medical cannabis, but it also sounds like quite a party. That’s at Rio Ramaza Marina RV and Event Park on the Sacramento River in Sutter County.

The long-postponed project to better connect downtown Sacramento with Old Sacramento is going to get a new hearing on Wednesday evening from 5-7 p.m. at the downtown library. Representatives of the city’s Department of Transportation will be on hand to answer questions and field suggestions. The public comment period ends at the end of the month, and if financing comes through for the $38 million project – a big IF – construction could start in 2014.

Fans of The Golden Bear on K Street will be thrilled to know that that kitchen’s master, Kimio Bazett, will be opening a “grown-up” version of his award-winning bar/restaurant in the space recently vacated by Hangar 17 at 17th and S Streets. The new place, which has not yet been named, should be open by February of next year and will offer an expanded menu of The Golden Bear, which was featured on “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” on the Food Network.

College makes EPIC leap to new, expanded campus

2011-08-10T21:00:28Z

On the heels of another record-setting year of increased enrollment, EPIC Bible College (formerly Trinity Life Bible College), has located to a new campus. EPIC will host a VIP and Media “Hard Hat” Tour and Reception on its new campus, 4330 Auburn Blvd., Thursday, August 11, 2011, 5:30-7:30 p.m. The new college campus is located just off of the Interstate 80 corridor and includes over 30,000 square feet of space—nearly four times the size of its former home off of Madison Avenue at Hillsdale Blvd.—with plenty of on site parking and “front door” access to public transportation.

EPIC’s early relocation came about as a result of the economic “perfect storm”—a withering local commercial real estate market, a wealth of reasonably priced property, and EPIC’s initial new campus grassroots fundraising campaign that exceeded all expectations. Ultimately, EPIC’s officials settled on the Auburn Boulevard location, previously owned by a local LLC.

The $2.3 million new campus project began January 1 earlier this year, with the launch of a 45 day fundraising campaign to raise nearly $390,000 for Phase I: the new campus down payment. Following the overwhelming success of Phase I, Phase II is currently underway and includes a $350,000 fundraising effort for additional building improvements—construction and expansion of new classroom and administrative facilities, installation of communication services and a new university-specific technology platform—the same system currently utilized by the University of Michigan.

EPIC Bible College begins construction inside its new campus this week, with plans for completion of both building improvements and Phase II fundraising within several weeks. In the meantime, donations of goods and services—including new furniture, computer systems, video monitors and equipment for the music labs and college library and resource center, continue to pour in—valued at over $250,000 and growing.

“The generosity of our students, alumni and community never ceases to amaze me,” stated Dr. Ronald Harden, DD, President, EPIC Bible College. “As a result, we are now putting together a group of contractors to produce a version of an ‘Extreme Makeover’ of our new college campus so that we can accelerate Phase II of our campaign that much quicker.”

EPIC’s new building improvements include: state-of-the-art classrooms designed to accommodate up to 35 students in each, music labs, computer labs, an expanded college library and resource center, student and faculty lounges, a new 1,800 square foot Chapel, EPIC Hall—special purpose space for community gatherings and graduations, wings of offices for college administration and faculty, and the EPIC Courtyard overlooking Arcade Creek, offering the entire campus community a peaceful place for meditation, study, meal and class breaks.

As EPIC Bible College settles into its new home, the administration will begin long range development and implementation of new programs—including online, graduate and doctoral degrees—a much desired addition to its current offering of two and four year degree programs.

Disclosure: Karen Bakula is President of Karen Bakula & Company, Inc., which manages public relations services for EPIC Bible College

SacPress on Insight: Redistricting drama and Brew It Up goes down

2011-08-03T00:13:09Z

Tuesday morning on Capital Public Radio's Insight, Sacramento Press and Jeffrey Callison caught up on last week's crazy City Council meeting, the end of Brew It Up! brewpub and the potential hire of a new city manager.

There were fireworks at City Council over redistricting last week, with two members of the council introducing their own plans to compete with the four chosen by the citizen's committee out of the 37 that were submitted. Politics re-entered the picture as members tried to protect incumbents' districts.

The arena financing discussion took an interesting turn this last week, when the Think Big Sacramento committee introduced the idea of selling some of the nearly 2,000 properties owned by the city to raise money to fund an arena. It's the first good idea I've heard in some time regarding the arena, but it's still very sketchy. In any case, even optimists say it would still only come up with an estimated 10 percent of the cost of building the arena, and the devil is in the details. Still, it's movement.

Speculation about a new city manager is at a high right now as the City Council meets Tuesday in closed session to discuss final details with John Shirey, who is the current executive director of the California Redevelopment Association and likely the next city manager. It will also be the end of Bill Edgar's return to the position he held a few years ago, for which he was paid nearly $50,000 for three months of a three-day work week, and is currently being paid $15,600 a month. Nice work if you can get it.

Councilwoman Angelique Ashby posted on our site about new hearings on Natomas Regional Park, which is a huge area in Natomas that could and should be developed into a regional amenity. Financing it is another matter.

The long-lived brewpub Brew It Up! closed Sunday. The restaurant/pub, which has been in business for 15 years, and in the parking garage building across from Music Circus and Sacramento Theatre Company for eight years, took a hit in the 2008-9 recession and never recovered. That's 50-60 jobs gone from the local economy. There were a number of customers who were unhappy that they wouldn't be able to use their Groupon coupons, but there was also a nice note in the story, that the wait staff asked the owners to give kitchen staff first consideration in pay since they don't receive tips.

When I first heard that some entrepreneurs were going to open a bar on J Street called MMA Fight Bar, I thought, "Boy, try getting THAT past the neighbors." And no surprise, plans for the space adjacent to and owned by Luck's BBQ on J Street is not going to be called that. After neighbors complained, the owners withdrew their permit application and no new permit has yet been filed, and it may be that the owners will simply expand Luck's BBQ into the larger space.

Melissa Corker did a fine job covering a five-unit infill development at 24th and T streets in Midtown, and the conversation on the topic after she published it was a fine example of how The Sacramento Press gives a forum to extend an intelligent discussion of a subject. It seems that most involved were pretty happy with the results of the long, complicated negotiations around the development.

Those trying to boycott Israeli goods at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op were handed a setback on Friday in Superior Court when the judge ruled that those desiring a boycott would not suffer harm by having their lawsuit heard later in the year, after the co-op holds contested board elections.

Even in these tight times, shopping is a crucial pastime – economically speaking, it's what we do as a nation – and there's yet another new boutique in Midtown. Forum Boutique is the brainchild of two high school friends who've been talking about doing this for years. It is on J Street at 23rd and features clothes as well as organic handmade soaps by one of the owners, and her artwork and jewelry. They're having their grand opening during the Second Saturday Art Walk Aug. 13.

Neighbors, developer reach agreement on contentious project

2011-07-30T04:57:08Z

City Planning commissioners gave the go-ahead Thursday to a residential building project at 24th and T streets that has been a source of contention between the developer and residents for months.

The proposed two-building, five-unit residential apartment complex met opposition from neighbors almost as soon as it was proposed by developer Andrea Rosen last September, and the project has since undergone numerous changes in both concept and design.

“It’s been over 10 months and staff put up with a lot of twists and turns on the route and destination,” Rosen said. “But I think this is an exciting, well-designed project, and it will add value to the neighborhood for decades to come.”

Initially, the project was designed to be a six-unit condominium plan, but neighbors didn’t want a site that previously held a single-family home to become the site of a multi-unit building.

In a October 2010 letter to Councilman Rob Fong, which was forwarded to the planning commission, more than 20 nearby residents expressed their opposition to Rosen’s plans.

“We value the quiet neighborhood, single family homes from a specific era and feel there is no need to add additional multi-unit housing in these areas,” the letter stated. “We strongly oppose this multi-unit project.”

According to a survey submitted to the planning commission, there are 156 multi-family units and 13 single-family homes in the four blocks surrounding the project site.

A group of neighborhood representatives from the Newton Booth-Poverty Ridge area where the project is proposed to be built expressed their concerns in a Jan. 9 letter to Rosen.

The group said it hoped Rosen would make adjustments to her development plan, including reducing the project from six to three housing units, creating a pitched-roof structure instead of the flat-roof style originally designed, adding front porches and providing off-street parking for all units.

“Our neighborhood wanted to discuss and negotiate the number of units, which we felt had a direct relationship on the scale and design,” said William Robertson, one of the neighborhood representatives, in an email to the planning commission.

Another contentious aspect of the project revolved around the specific design of the building.

The original design was a three-story, flat-roofed, courtyard-style design. Neighbors said in opposition letters to the commission that such a design would not “fit” with the architectural styles of other homes in the area, calling it an “eyesore.”

“Many residents have misgivings regarding poorly conceived developments from decades past,” said Alan LoFaso, a 24th Street resident, in a Feb. 9 letter to the planning commission. “Many place great weight on the value of preserving period homes to the greatest extent possible.”

Neighborhood representatives said they wanted the finished project to be in an architectural style “of good faith integrity that is appropriate to the immediate surrounding neighborhood” – an area that includes Tudor cottages, Craftsman bungalows and Depression-era brick duplexes.

Planning commission members disagreed.

“While design is subjective,” said commission chairman Joseph Yee, “I feel there is a concept of compatibility, and not necessarily mimicking what’s all around.”

Yee said that compatibility adds to the diversity and the vibrancy of a neighborhood.

“I do not believe that every structure in the neighborhood needs to be a replication of what preceded it.”

Yee said that he hopes the final message is not that, in order to get consensus and approval, applicants are limited to a design palette “appropriate” for any one community.

“I think it would make our city a less vibrant and interesting place if it becomes cookie-cutter,” Yee said.

Commissioner Michael Mendez agreed, adding, “Diversity and compatibility are both appropriate.”

After months of discussions – at times amicable and at others tense – Rosen and the neighborhood representatives came to an agreement for a revised plan.

The new plan included two structures with a total of five housing units, pitched roofs on both buildings, porches with craftsman-style railings for each unit and additional elements to make the structures more aesthetically compatible with others in the area.

The agreement also outlined opportunities for continuing discussion between concerned residents and Rosen to maintain “good faith” between all parties.

Final decisions regarding construction and purchase of all items, however, remain with Rosen, according to the agreement.

“What you don’t see in the neighborhood agreement is how tough it was to achieve,” said Rosen. “The result is a complete redesign in concert with the neighborhood’s wishes.”

Robertson agreed, telling commissioners that one of the “remarkable” things to come out of the lengthy and contentious negotiations between residents and the developer is that it fostered a feeling of “respect as a neighborhood” for the residents.

“This has really been kind of a triumph of community action,” Robertson said. “Yeah, nerves were frayed along the way, but I think we have a project that everyone is happy with.”

After reviewing the project plans and hearing from the public, planning commission members unanimously voted to approve moving the project forward.

Rosen will now continue to the next stage of the development process when the 24th and T street project is considered by the city Design Review Commission. A date has not yet been set for that meeting.

Read the staff report and design plans here.

Melissa Corker is a Staff Reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follw her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

SacPress on Insight: Redistricting, bridges and yoga

2011-07-26T23:01:40Z

My weekly Tuesday morning visit with Jeffrey Callison on Capital Public Radio’s “Insight” was full of news about changes in city leadership, plans for new bridges and changes at Midtown’s oldest yoga studio.

The most important thing at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting will be the decision on a redistricting plan. We have taken several looks at this issue over the last few months, but tonight is the beginning of the end game. The final choice is Aug. 22, but now is the time to be heard. There were four or five finalists, with different complications – including potentially pitting council members against each other for reelection – and a couple of sure things, such as the consolidation of the central city into one district.

After five different city managers in less than six years, with two or three “interim” city managers since Ray Kerridge resigned in March of last year, a front-runner emerged in the search for a new city manager to replace two recent interim city managers. California Redevelopment Association Executive Director John Shirey is the name that is agreed to be the front-runner, though no decision has been made, and will be made “soon.” The mayor himself blogged that he is unhappy with the choices the council has, and even went so far as to write, “The small number of applicants for the job demonstrates our city’s diminished status.” All of this could set up an interesting dynamic with Shirey, should he be chosen.

And if there’s anything even more controversial than a city manager, it’s bridges. The City Council last week heard the results of nine months of study about potential Sacramento River crossings between West Sacramento and Sacramento. There are a number of possibilities, but the council got hung up on the phrase “neighborhood-friendly” and told the staff to spend another three weeks deciding what that means. However, there seemed to be a clear understanding that the good folks in Land Park will probably block ANY bridge that feeds traffic into their neighborhood, even though that’s probably the area where a bridge is most needed.

Christine Collins is closing Deep Art and Yoga, which was one of the first, if not the first yoga studio in Midtown when she opened it back in 2005. She has handed the place off to Tyler Langdale, who is also a terrific yoga teacher. He has moved his recently opened studio, Yoga Shala, out of the YWCA and into Deep’s beautiful space at 21st and H streets.

Minds are changing, but some of my buddies in old media were skeptical, to say the least, about “citizen journalism,” or whatever you want to call it when “civilians” dare to try their hands at reporting on their city. The nerve! But we had a terrific example of such writing from a cab driver named Angelo Howland, who published a story about his experiences driving a cab in Sacramento, and it was eye-opening.

More arena news, kinda-sorta: Mayor Johnson assembled the representatives of 14 area Chambers of Commerce to back the current arena plan, which is still not really a plan at all until we get some suggestions for how it might be funded. This drew quite a few comments on the story’s Conversation, and several of them added quite a bit to the story. People are extremely skeptical about this whole process, and the “where’s the money?” question is more pertinent than ever. We shall see in September, or so we are told.

Some good news for residents of the Pocket area in South Sacramento: The bike trail that runs along the Sacramento River south of the Pocket area has been closed for four years for the expansion of the intake there at Freeport Boulevard, but now it’s open again, with new public artwork and other amenities. We’ve got some great photos of it, including an aerial shot that really placed it well for me.

Lastly, Jeffrey Callison will be coming to The Sacramento Press office to teach a workshop on the art and craft of interviewing, and anyone interested would do well to come get the wit and wisdom of one of our local masters of the form.

SacPress on Insight: New airport terminal coming, Greyhound open!

2011-07-19T19:01:56Z

My regular Tuesday morning visit with Jeffrey Callison on KXJZ's "Insight" was full of transportation news, from the new airport terminal to the new Greyhound station to bikes, bikes, bikes!

The new Greyhound station opens today, nearly a year ahead of schedule. This is a long-awaited change that should help both the revitalizing of the River District around Richards Boulevard north of downtown, and downtown itself, where the existing station has been a magnet for loitering, drug dealing and other crime. The building is also one of the "greenest" in the region. It will also be more convenient for people outside of the downtown area, since Richards is easily accessible by freeway to large areas of the city. And it is right across the street from a police substation.

We discussed the new Terminal B at the airport last week, but last Friday we found out that the first flights will begin on October 6, months ahead of when it was originally planned, due to the cutting of a hotel and parking garage that were part of the original plan. The new terminal will have 19 new gates and is expandable to 27 gates and will be able to handle 10 million passengers a year. You can talk about a new arena's benefits all you want, but the airport will deliver benefits right away: According to the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau, every 3 percent increase in available airplane seats increases local hotel occupancy by 1 percent.

An independent working group will be asking Sacramento County Board of Supervisors tonight to consider forming a larger parks district that is independent of the board itself in order to help save our area parks, which are enormously underfunded and are in some cases falling apart. The proposal is that the regional parks district be run with existing resources, a county contribution and a one-tenth of one percent sales tax. The local Sacramento County Taxpayers League has already said that it will not support even a one-tenth of one percent tax.

The Ride Your Own Way bike rental program, similar to Zipcars, where you can rent them for 30 minutes or more at a time, has hit a bump in the road: Someone stole three of the 12 original bikes. They were insured and will be replaced, but it's a bummer that someone did that, though not shocking in an area where bikes are stolen with terrible frequency. But the program will continue, and we'll see. Here's hoping.

Downtown Sacramento also saw Sunday's Cyclefest, which took place in Fremont Park at 16th and Q, and featured a display of some 300 custom and vintage bikes. Intern Ilian Cervantes-Branum covered it and took lots of pictures of these amazing bikes from as long ago as 1935.

A big reason why The Sacramento Press exists is to help citizens get their issues before the public in a way that they may not have before. Case in point: Monday's story by a citizen who pointed out that hundreds of homes in the North Sacramento neighborhood of Hagginwood lacks storm drainage to the point that property, including houses, floods during bad rainstorms. And yet, these homeowners pay taxes for such storm drainage. This just came in yesterday, but we will take a deeper look into it and find out why this has not been addressed.

In a far more affluent neighborhood, McKinley Park in the central city, the 83-year-old rose garden will be getting a nearly quarter-million-dollar facelift starting in September. It will be funded by a combination of parks funds, cell tower revenues from the city and private funds.

Spin Burger closed earlier this month after only about eight months in business. We're not sure why, since we didn't get calls back from the owners. We're assuming slow sales, as the place never really seemed to take off, though it sold more than 4,000 Groupons this spring. They can be redeemed at any of the company’s restaurants, which include Riverside Clubhouse, 33rd Street Bistro and Suzie Burger. Other investors are looking at the space, located at the prime spot of 16th and K.

Capital Stage Company, which has been putting on shows in the small theatre on the Delta King in Old Sacramento for six years, will be moving at the end of the month to new digs on J Street, in the old gun shop at 2215 J St. They still need to raise the last $65,000 of the $300,000 construction and moving costs, but it is impressive that they are doing that well in this economy. Part of that may be because of high-quality productions such as the recent "Or," which closed a critically-acclaimed run on Saturday.

Sacramento had its first attempt at a Mermaid Parade Sunday, modeled on the 29-year-old parade of the same name on Coney Island in Brooklyn. I went to that parade a couple of years ago, and it was hot, muggy and impossibly crowded. Sacramento’s was not that, with only about 100 participants showing up, but it was a good start and another example of Sacramento's burgeoning home-grown cultural surge.

"The Greenest Building" Film Showing at Crest Theatre July 25

2011-07-18T06:55:43Z

What: The Greenest Building Documentary Film, followed by a panel discussion on the connections between historic preservation, green building and economic sustainability.
When: Monday, July 25 at 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM (Movie 7:00 PM, discussion panel 8:00 PM)
Where: The Crest Theatre, 1013 K Street, Sacramento
How Much: Free!

Over the next 20 years, Americans will demolish one third of our existing building stock (over 82 billion square feet) in order to replace seemingly inefficient buildings with energy efficient “green” structures. Is demolition in the name of sustainability really the best use of natural, social, and economic resources? Or, like the urban renewal programs of the 1960’s, is this well-intentioned planning with devastating environmental and cultural consequences?

On Monday, July 25th, “The Greenest Building,” a new hour-long documentary by Eugene, Oregon film producer Jane Turville, will be screened at the Crest Theatre, 1013 K Street, Sacramento. The film presents a compelling overview of the important role building reuse plays in creating sustainable communities. Narrated by David Ogden Stiers, “The Greenest Building” explores the myth that a “green building” is a new building and demonstrates how renovation and adaptive reuse of existing structures fully achieves the sustainability movement’s “triple bottom line” - economic, social, and ecological balance. The film reveals: (a) how reuse and reinvestment in the existing built environment leads to stronger local economies that can compete on a global scale, (b) that sense of place and collective memory, while intangible, are critical components of strong sustainable communities, and (c) the direct correlation between reuse of existing buildings and a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, degradation of the natural environment and overuse of precious natural resources.

If you are interested in buildings, community development, sustainable communities or just plain want to find out if existing buildings really are worth keeping, plan to attend this special event. “The Greenest Building” starts at 7:00 pm. The panel discussion starts at 8:00 PM, and will feature Matt Piner of Pinerworks Architecture, Roberta Deering, LEED AP BD+C, Senior Planner for Historic Preservation, City of Sacramento Community Development Department, Bay Miry of D&S Development, Ray Nalangan of SMUD, Susan Rainier, AIA, LEED AP, of USGBC and UC Davis, and Craig Hausman, AIA, Hausman Architecture. This panel will help relate the ideas presented in the film the film to recently completed and upcoming preservation projects in Sacramento.

From the film's website:

"At the start of “The Greenest Building” narrator David Ogden-Stiers poses the question “Might it be that the greenest building is the one that is already there?” The answer at the end of the film is true for buildings, as well as all consumer products – “Reuse is key to triple-bottom-line sustainability.” Why? When we reuse any consumer product, whether it be a plastic milk jug or a ten story building, we automatically reduce our consumption of natural resources as well as recycle that item either for its original purpose or for a new purpose. An item doesn’t necessarily have to change physically (as in plastic bottles into carpet) in order to be recycled. In fact, synonyms for “recycle” include “reprocess”, “salvage”, “recover”, and “reuse”. In building reuse, it’s often called “adaptive reuse.”"--Jane Turville, producer

This film is presented by the Sacramento Old City Association (SOCA) in conjunction with Wagging Tale Productions and the assistance of the Crest Theatre.

For more information, visit http://www.sacoldcity.org or www.thegreenestbuildingmovie.com.

The Sacramento Old City Association promotes actions that preserve and enhance a high quality of life for Central City residents, businesses, working people and visitors. The organization works to achieve balanced and harmonious relationships among residential, commercial and employment uses in the Central City.

Disclosure: William Burg is a board member of the Sacramento Old City Association.

New airport terminal to open Oct. 6

2011-07-18T04:34:39Z

The first flights will take off Oct. 6 from Sacramento International Airport's nearly $1.1 billion Central Terminal B complex, officials announced Friday at the California State Fair.

The airport expansion, dubbed “The Big Build,” was initially budgeted at $1.27 billion. It will replace a 44-year-old, far smaller terminal and will be completed seven months ahead of the originally scheduled opening. The complex was expected to start operating in March of 2012 when construction began in 2008.

Hard economic times led Sacramento County Airport System officials to scrap plans for an airport hotel and a new parking garage.

Airport officials chose an early October opening date so the new terminal can begin operation before the 2011 holiday season.

"Sacramento International Airport is the gateway to Northern California for the world, offering convenient access to our community, the Capitol and world-class destinations such as Napa and Tahoe," airport system Director Hardy Acree said at a press conference Friday afternoon. "We're here today to announce the first flight date, which is rapidly approaching."

To make the announcement, Acree was joined by Sacramento County Board of Supervisors Chair Roberta MacGlashan, County Supervisor Phil Serna and state Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, a former county supervisor.

One of the project's architects, John Mares of Dallas-based Corgan Associates, and Sacramento Convention & Visitors Bureau Chief Executive Officer Steve Hammond were among those who attended the event in the fairgrounds' counties building.

The project has been "critical" for the county, providing thousands of jobs for more than three years at a time when those jobs were most needed, Serna said.

The 675,000-square-foot, energy-efficient complex is being built for $1.08 billion and will be three times the size of the current Terminal B. Electric train cars will be used to move passengers between a landside terminal to an airside concourse.

The Central Terminal B complex will open with 19 gates that can handle 10 million passengers annually and has the potential to expand to 27 gates. The original Terminal B has 10 operational gates. The airport’s total passenger capacity will be 16 million a year, compared to nearly 9 million last year, airport spokeswoman Gina Swankie said.

The airport's increased capacity provides an opportunity to bring more travelers and money to the region. Every 3 percent increase in available airline seats increases local hotel occupancy by 1 percent, Hammond said.

Remaining construction will be completed in the next few months.

"Central Terminal B will offer a beautiful first impression for guests, and a forward-thinking design that will serve our community for many more generations to come," MacGlashan said.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Spin Burger's closure opens Midtown location

2011-07-15T22:30:24Z

Retail space on a prime Midtown corner is getting a lot of attention from restaurateurs after Spin Burger Bar suddenly closed there earlier this month.

On Thursday, Rocklin resident Paul Singh toured the 2,800-square-foot store, where he and partners in Monsoon Indian Bar & Grill of Toronto are considering opening an Indian restaurant and bar by the same name.

Many other restaurant owners have already checked out the space at 1020 16th St. Spin Burger's owner, SRO Inc., closed the restaurant's doors July 5, said commercial real estate broker Bobby Rich with Retail West.

The Haines brothers, who own 33rd Street Bistro and several other area restaurants under SRO, converted a Bistro 33 at that location into Spin Burger about eight months ago. They had been trying to sell the Spin Burger business for four months, Rich said.

Rich said he doesn't know why the restaurant closed.

"I wish we had more answers," he said. "It's unfortunate it didn't work out. They're really good operators."

The Haines family didn't return phone calls seeking comment this week.

Residents, local business owners and Yelp readers have been wondering why the place closed. Nerdy Dogs co-owner MDavid Low said the restaurant seemed to be doing well whenever he ate there. He and fiancée Caitlyn Shortt operate the specialty pet store a few blocks away.

"That's crazy! They were so busy," Low said.

Spin Burger sold more than 4,000 Groupon deals in April. Signs on the restaurant's windows said the Groupon deals would be honored at any other SRO restaurant.

Mark Friedman and his company, Fulcrum Property, built the mixed-use O1 Lofts at 16th and K streets in 2005. Friedman also converted the historic Elliott Building next door into mixed-use retail and lofts. Gov. Jerry Brown now lives in one of the lofts.

The space is getting the most attention from people who already own restaurants in Sacramento's central city. Two restaurateurs from San Francisco have also visited. One proposed a deep-dish pizza restaurant.

Singh visited the property on behalf of partners including his cousin, Chan Singh, and the Amaya Group of Restaurants, which owns the Amaya Indian Room and spin-off eateries in Toronto. They are interested in opening a restaurant in Midtown and will consider other locations as well, Paul Singh said.

An Indian bar and grill may be a good fit because the area could use more Indian cuisine, Rich said.

Local restaurant owners are proposing different ideas for the space, which is listed at $2.50 per square foot or $7,000 a month.

Fulcrum Property management wants to fill the spot with a business that fits well in Midtown, an arts and entertainment district with a growing night-life scene, he said.

"We hope to get another cool concept," Rich said. "We can let this sit for as long as it takes to find the right concept."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Arena bus tour rolls out to region

2011-07-15T01:15:02Z

The arena campaign committee, Think BIG Sacramento, hosted a four-county bus tour Thursday to spread the message that a new sports and entertainment facility will benefit not just the city of Sacramento but the entire region.

The group released a "Capitol Corridor Impact Report" showing 55 percent of the people going to basketball games and other events at the Sacramento Kings' current facility come from outside Sacramento County. And almost 75 percent live outside the city, committee Executive Director Chris Lehane said Thursday at a press conference in El Dorado Hills.

The report was compiled using three years' statistics from the National Basketball Association. Actual numbers of arena customers weren't provided, Lehane said.

In addition, new funding concepts are being considered by the group’s finance committee. One might tie agreements for corporate sponsorships, ads and luxury seats with contracts for those businesses to sell regional products such as wine, fruit or nuts at the facility, committee member Kevin Nagle said.

"Remember to 'Think BIG,' buy regional and fight on so we can make this a reality," said Nagle, president of Ohio-based Envision Pharmaceutical Services, which has a location in El Dorado Hills.

The press conference was held in front of the tour bus, pulled up outside the El Dorado Hills Chamber of Commerce in the El Dorado Hills Town Center. Thursday morning, about 30 people took the black limo bus from the Kings arena, Power Balance Pavilion, in Natomas to El Dorado Hills.

The group was made up of Lehane and one other Think BIG member, Kings sponsors, community and business leaders, Mayor Kevin Johnson's staff, a Maloof Sports and Entertainment employee, Kings dance team members and two new members of the committee's citizens' initiative, dubbed "citizen architects."

The figures provided in the report show many people who live outside Sacramento would benefit from a new arena. People living outside the city are also expected to get a large share of the 3,700 construction jobs that would be created, because local construction companies will be used, Lehane said.

Power Balance Pavilion draws about 55 percent of its customers from 15 counties outside Sacramento County.

About 29 percent live in the other five counties in the six-county region. However, a large number come from elsewhere in Northern California. Residents of San Joaquin, Solano, Stanislaus and Contra Costa counties make up 22 percent of the people at games and other events, according to the report.

Johnson and other elected officials, as well as arena campaign committee members, believe more people will be drawn from outside the region if a new arena with more plush facilities is built, Lehane said.

A ticket fee is being considered as one of many options to help fund the arena through a combination of public and private investment, Nagle and Lehane said.

One of the newest ideas is to showcase products and services from businesses located throughout the region at the new arena in exchange for financial support. That financial support might be given by businesses that advertise or become corporate sponsors at the new arena, or that buy club seats or luxury suites, Nagle said.

Arena contracts for products and services could lead to more jobs throughout the area, he said.

Lehane described Nagle as a "key" member of the arena campaign committee – someone who stepped up to offer financial support to keep the Kings in Sacramento at the start of the effort last winter, when Johnson went before the NBA. Nagle was one of the first to view a new arena as a regional asset, and he has encouraged community support at arena meetings, Lehane said.

“Not only has he talked the talk. He has walked the walk,” Lehane added. “This is someone who, in and of himself, has helped make a huge difference in this effort. (He) and the mayor have run a pretty good two-man game over the course of this process."

Two people on the bus were "citizen architect" Troy Bedal and his 8-year-old daughter, Saraya. The Roseville residents were celebrating birthdays Thursday.

A Sports Authority store manager, Bedal said he's been a Kings fan since birth 30 years ago. His parents were Kings fans who watched games on TV and took him to his first game at Arco Arena when he was just 6 or 7. He talks about the need for a new arena to friends and coworkers all the time, he said.

City officials have initiated an effort to integrate plans for a new arena with an adjacent future regional transit center.

The bus later stopped at a construction site at UC Davis, the Fountains at Roseville shopping center and Vision Service Providers in Rancho Cordova. A town hall meeting was held there late Thursday afternoon.

The arena campaign committee will hold more meetings, a design contest and a town hall meeting in Natomas later this summer to continue reaching out to people about the impact an arena could have throughout the area, Lehane said.

“At the end of the day, it’s obviously critical to keep the Kings in Sacramento because they are a lynchpin to hopefully being able to develop this facility,” he said. “But this has always been much more than just about a single professional basketball team or a single professional sports franchise. This has been about an economic opportunity to transform the region.”

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

City officials merging plans for arena, transit center

2011-07-14T01:22:16Z

Sacramento officials believe a new arena can be integrated with a future regional transit center in the historic downtown railyards – making this one of the country's most eco-friendly sports and entertainment facilities, Assistant City Manager John Dangberg said Tuesday.

At Tuesday night's City Council meeting, Dangberg gave council members a status report nearly halfway into a 100-day technical review of a proposed arena. The $387 million project is on an expedited schedule to be in operation by May 2015.

One of the most critical issues being reviewed is the need to coordinate construction of an arena with the previously planned transit center. Both structures would be built on a site constrained by railroad tracks to the north, the freeway to the west, I Street to the south and downtown buildings to the east.

Building two "very intense pieces of infrastructure" on the 33-acre site poses challenges, partly because they are both so big, Dangberg said.

"We believe we can integrate these two," he said. "If and when we successfully do that, we have the opportunity to create one of the most sustainable, green, interesting entertainment and sports facilities in the country, if we can successfully integrate these uses and have transit right there at the facility and many modes of transit right there," Dangberg said.

The city has set up technical review teams that are focused on the site itself. The teams are looking at transportation and transit issues, community development issues, economic development and how to reuse the Power Balance Pavilion site.

A town hall meeting on the future of the Natomas site is scheduled for Aug. 11, at a time and place to be announced.

Mayor Kevin Johnson's office and his arena committee, Think BIG Sacramento, are working on financing options with support from a consultant, Barrett Sports Group, and a finance team made up of staff from the city treasurer's office and Goldman Sachs.

The city is also looking at urban design issues with the goal of preserving and playing up historic assets at the site, such as the Sacramento Valley Station historic train depot, the Railway Express Agency Building and the historic Southern Pacific Railroad central shops.

City staff wants to create a legacy project that uses urban design elements to connect to those assets and new opportunities for downtown revitalization, he said.

"We have a very, very rich history on the site as the terminus of the Transcontinental (Railroad). And we need to treat it in a very special way that creates a development that is uniquely Sacramento and distinctly Sacramento," Dangberg said.

"It is not another disposable arena that we see in so many cities, but something that will be here for many, many decades or a hundred years as our central shops have remained in place and really a permanent part of our urban fabric and history,” he added.

For example, city staff wants to keep key site lines between the central shops and the depot and take other steps to ensure historical compatibility throughout the project, he added.

A downtown location without a large addition of surface parking on-site will allow the city and businesses to create a "street-to-seat" experience. By using existing parking located away from the site, people will see restaurants, bars, shops and establishments with entertainment on their way to the facility. This would provide more opportunities to stay downtown before and after games and other events. This is expected to help revitalize and activate downtown, a key element of the project, he said.

"If we don't achieve that with the amount of investment that we're putting into this, we might as well not bother putting it in the downtown," Dangberg said.

City staff will present the 100-day technical review on Sept. 13, rather than Sept. 6, because of the Labor Day holiday.

At that time, staff will discuss predevelopment costs the city will incur and provide a critical path and preliminary schedule to the City Council. Dangberg also has been talking with the city attorney about the process to select a development team. Think BIG Sacramento will provide a list of financing options.

Johnson's chief of staff, Kunal Merchant, gave a presentation on the mayor's arena committee, Think BIG Sacramento, and an update on the group's work.

Think BIG Sacramento is a 72-person committee brought together to facilitate arena development before the National Basketball Association's March 1, 2012, deadline for teams to file for relocation next year, he said.

An estimated 3,700 temporary construction jobs and 400 jobs for facility operation are expected to be created by the project, he said.

However, Sacramento resident Mac Worthy, one of two people who provided public comments on the issue at City Hall Tuesday, called into question the number of jobs the project would bring and predicted civil unrest if more people don't get jobs and improve their living conditions soon.

"We need jobs here. This thing ain't going to give us no jobs," he said. "The next two years (are) going to be the critical part, here…. Wake up, people. People (are) tired of being down, without a roof over their head, without enough money to go to the grocery store and buy food, can't even buy gas."

Think BIG Sacramento will host a four-county bus tour and town hall meeting Thursday to tell regional residents about the possible benefits of a new arena. A "Capitol Corridor Impact Report" will also be released.

The tour will start at 10 a.m. at the California Welcome Center, 2085 Vine St. in El Dorado Hills, then make stops in Davis and Roseville. A town hall meeting at 3:30 p.m. at Vision Service Plan, 3333 Quality Drive in Rancho Cordova, will be the last stop, according to a press advisory sent out Wednesday afternoon.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Sacramento Press on Insight: Terminal B, cars on K, garlic galore!

2011-07-12T23:20:54Z

Tuesday morning's visit with Jeffrey Callison on KXJZ's "Insight" was full of some pretty good news, from the airport's new Terminal B being nearly ready to open, cars back on K Street and news of a proposed Firestone Public House to replace California Pizza Kitchen at 15th and L streets.

The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors voted down an ordinance to close all the cannabis dispensaries in the county. Now a group of cannabis dispensary owners and stakeholders are proposing working with the county to create an ordinance similar to the city's, which allows dispensaries but regulates them. There are estimated to be as many as 65 dispensaries operating in the county, in addition to the 40 or so operating within the city limits. One advocate said that regulating the county dispensaries could raise as much as $4 million a year for the county. City dispensaries pay the city $40,000 for a license and then $12,000 a year.

There's some good news at the airport, with the construction of the new Terminal B, which wasn't set to open until next spring, opening this fall. That's months ahead of schedule and about $200 million less than originally projected. When construction began in 2008, the terminal project was expected to cost $1.27 billion and was scheduled to open in spring of 2012, but now it's expected to come in just over $1 billion and open in the fall. The reason is that a parking garage and hotel that were originally to be built have been postponed because of the recession.

After what seems like years – because it has been – cars may be back on K Street as early as November, with construction starting next month to convert four blocks of what has been a pedestrian mall back into a multi-use street. The City Council will vote on one of the final steps tonight, which involves taking away the street's designation as pedestrian-only. That means they'll be able to move forward on the project next month.

A lot of people objected when California Pizza Kitchen opened in the remodeled Firestone building at 15th and L in 2009, because they didn't want a chain in downtown. Turns out they were right, and California Pizza Kitchen will be replaced by a "public house" run by two local families with big successes in the area: The Wongs of The Park and the de Vere-Whites of de Vere's Irish Pub. They should be reopening the place early next year.

The Garlic Shack at 19th and J opened a couple of weeks ago, taking the place of Plum Blossom, which closed about six months ago. The garlic fries and rice bowls, made with gluten-free brown rice, are apparently popular. We have some pictures of the new place on the site.

If you were on K Street on Saturday night, you might have been a bit taken aback by all the undead walking around. They had arisen from their graves specially for the launch of the 10th year of the Trash Film Orgy, which opened its six-week run at the Crest Theatre with all sorts of gory and raunchy shenanigans and the first film in the series, "Return of the Living Dead." We have a review and lots of pictures.

And after 52 years in business, Capitol Aquarium at 29th and T has had to close its doors due to slowing business. The Koi pond is now gone. SMUD the electric eel and other fish known as Moby Dick and Sherbet are also gone – as are seven jobs.

And in GOOD business news, longtime vintage clothing store Cheap Thrills, which closed in May after more than 40 years in business, is reopening in a new location just a couple of blocks away, at 17th and L streets. And it's being reopened by its original owner, Linda McNally, with help from her family.

To listen to the audio for this show, click here.

No longer a ‘pedestrian mall,’ K Street prepares for cars

2011-07-12T02:39:31Z

On Tuesday evening, the City Council will consider revising a local ordinance that will bring the city one step closer to seeing cars on K Street for the first time in more than 45 years.

The revised ordinance will change a city code that has been in place since the early 1960s that defined the five blocks of K Street between Eighth to 12th streets as a “pedestrian mall,” closing it to vehicular traffic.

“It was something that was happening in a lot of places back then,” said Denise Malvetti, department manager at the city’s Economic Development Department. “Cities were trying to replicate the suburban experience, and they created a lot of these pedestrian malls. It was a failed experiment, though.”

Roughly 150 cities in the U.S. installed pedestrian malls in the 1960s, Malvetti said, and now about half of those have converted back to allow street traffic.

“We’ve been working on getting cars back on K Street since late 2008,” Malvetti said. “We’ve put a lot of consideration into this project, and we did a lot of outreach to the community.”

Business owners were outspoken in saying that returning cars to K Street is vital to increasing retail activity in the area, Malvetti said, but they won’t see an instant change.

“It will likely be an incremental increase over time,” Malvetti said.

City Council recently approved numerous projects intended to revitalize the J-K-L corridor, and K Street in particular, in order to stimulate economic activity in the area and bring people back to what was once a hub of activity in the city, Malvetti said.

The “Cars on K Street” project was part of a $2.7 million construction and design project approved by City Council in April 2010.

The purpose of the project, according to a staff report, is to “increase access and visibility to businesses, promote a safe environment, stimulate additional economic activity, and improve (traffic) circulation.”

“Sacramento needs to be more pedestrian-friendly,” said Councilman Steve Cohn, “but the way that part of K Street is laid out, it wasn’t working as a pedestrian-only street.”

Cohn said returning cars to K Street makes sense because it will help with traffic flow and make it easier for people to get to the businesses along that part of K Street.

In order to allow for the reintroduction of cars on K Street from Eighth to 12th streets, the city code must be amended to remove the definition of “pedestrian mall” currently applied to those five street blocks.

According to provisions in the city charter, the council must first pass the revised ordinance for publication, and then it can finalize the approval at the following City Council meeting.

This is one of the last steps before construction can begin, Malvetti said. The Department of Transportation will bring a construction contract to City Council next week for approval, and then groundbreaking can begin within the first week of August.

Design plans for the “Cars on K Street” project include creating new crossing signals at 11th and K streets, wheelchair access at intersections and the addition of edge treatments (possibly planters or street furniture) to provide a buffer between the roadway and sidewalks to increase pedestrian safety and make the blocks more visually appealing.

“Our goal is to have cars back on K Street in early November,” Malvetti said. “It’s one more step in the revitalization of K Street.”

Melissa Corker is a Staff Reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Sacramento airport's Terminal B complex to open early

2011-07-12T01:24:21Z

Sacramento International Airport's nearly $1.1 billion Central Terminal B complex is expected to open this fall – months earlier than originally scheduled.

When construction began in 2008, the terminal project was expected to cost $1.27 billion and was scheduled to open in spring of 2012.

The project will open months ahead of that because of changes in construction plans due to the recession. Plans for a hotel and new parking garage were dropped to save money. A new garage will be built once there is enough need. Other cost savings were found during a simultaneous design and construction phase, , airport spokeswoman Gina Swankie said.

The construction schedule was later revised to reflect those changes. However, Sacramento County Airport System officials don't consider the complex to be under-budget or ahead of schedule, Swankie said.

"The project is on-time and on-budget," Swankie said. " 'Ahead of schedule' is a bit of a fallacy given the changes to the construction program."

Airport officials will hold a press conference at the California State Fair at 5 p.m. Friday to announce the terminal's opening date. The project has been dubbed "The Big Build" because it's the county's largest capital improvement program to date.

"We are expecting a fall opening," Swankie said.

The terminal and concourse that make up the 675,000-square-foot complex will replace the 44-year-old Terminal B and an interim international arrivals building used to accommodate U.S. customs. The complex is being built for $1.08 billion.

Electric train cars will be used to transport passengers from the landside terminal to the airside concourse, which is a separate building 1,200 feet away.

The new complex was designed to fit air travel needs after the Sept. 11 airplane attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Airports are being designed differently because security screening processes have changed and use more equipment. Travelers now spend longer periods in airport security processing and must get to the airport earlier than before, which has led to increased demands for restaurants and other retail operations, according to Swankie.

The complex will feature local restaurants including Jack's Urban Eats, Burgers and Brew, Esquire Grill and Cafeteria 15L, Davis-based Dos Coyotes and coffee from Old Soul Co. A 56-foot leaping red rabbit sculpture by Denver artist Lawrence Argent will be located in the baggage claim area as part of an $8 million public art program.

The new complex uses sustainable building practices such as natural lighting, drought-resistant landscaping, storm-water management, recycled materials, low-energy lights and low-flow plumbing fixtures. Old-growth redwood posts that were once part of the Franklin-Thornton Bridge over the Mokelumne River have been used in the terminal's ceiling.

The original Terminal B is 216,000 square feet and currently has 10 operational gates, for a combined total of 23 gates with Terminal A.

The Central Terminal B complex will open with 19 gates that can handle 10 million passengers annually and has the potential to expand to 27 gates.

The airport’s total passenger capacity will be 16 million a year. In 2010, the airport had nearly 9 million passengers, Swankie said.

The airport is currently served by 11 airlines, after Aloha Airlines and Mexicana Airlines ceased operation. Aeromexico will join the airport Saturday, bringing the total to 12.

The new international arrivals facility, which will be located on the concourse's ground level, will have two airplane parking positions and be able to handle 400 passengers an hour. If the complex is expanded, space for more planes can be added and the facility could handle up to 800 people an hour, Swankie said.

The original Terminal B and the international arrivals building will be demolished.

A 2011 time capsule will be installed at the site soon after opening. The exact location will be determined later, Swankie said.

The opening had been set for November but was changed to an earlier date to give people enough time to become familiar with the new facility before the busy holiday season.

"You don't open it during the holiday when your most inexperienced travelers are coming into the airport," Swankie said. "You don't want to add another element of uncertainty into their travel. It's confusing enough."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Immense railyards project gets manager

2011-07-09T00:56:46Z

New Sacramento Railyards Project Manager Fran Lee Halbakken said she became a civil engineer because she loves solving problems.

Halbakken is now tackling challenges with one of the city's and country's largest redevelopment projects after starting in her new role June 27. At nearly 240 acres of combined private and city land, the railyards project is so big it will virtually double the size of the central business district.

The key position was created at a critical stage of the massive undertaking. The private portion of the site has a new owner and the projects’ housing plan must be revised in light of the recession. Also, plans for a new regional transit center must be coordinated with efforts to make serious headway on financing an adjacent arena by next spring.

Halbakken got her civil engineering degree at Sacramento State. After college, she went to work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and found working in the public sector suited her.

"I always knew I was going to be a public servant," said Halbakken, sitting in her City Hall office. "That was a huge appeal, knowing you could make the world better."

She’s worked for the city for 25 years.

Since 2004, she'd worked as operations manager for the city's Department of Transportation. In that post, Halbakken oversaw transportation policy development and planning. Key projects included co-managing development of a strategic plan for Sacramento River crossings and managing development of the central city parking plan.

She also played a key role in obtaining $225 million in local, state and federal funding for railyards infrastructure such as bridges, roads and railroad track relocation. The funding was gathered after the city and private railyards developer Thomas Enterprises developed the project's land use plan in 2006 and 2007. The money will finance work that will continue into 2015.

After Inland American Real Estate Trust took possession of most of the railyards site last fall, Halbakken led the transfer of ownership and agreements of the property, according to transportation department spokeswoman Linda Tucker.

In her new position, Halbakken has been loaned out to the City Manager's office to work on the railyards project full-time. She now oversees all aspects of the city's end in the enterprise, including planning, funding efforts and coordination with private developers.

Urban development experts recommended smaller-scale, market-driven development of the railyards in January.

The city needed to create the new post at this time because city staff must now work with Inland to revise plans for housing that must be built as a requirement of some of the funding already acquired.

Much has changed in the housing market since the land use plan was approved by the Sacramento City Council in December 2007. The start of housing construction hasn't been scheduled, but should be within five years, Halbakken said.

The new post was also created as an attempt to build a new sports and entertainment complex downtown is kicking into high gear at the mayor's office. Halbakken is overseeing coordination of plans for a future transit center with the developing plans for a Sacramento Kings arena.

The two facilities are expected to sit adjacent to each other on 33 acres of railyards land the city bought from Thomas Enterprises. She's working with a city-wide team to answer questions about how to ensure both facilities are high-quality, she added.

They're also looking at how to promote secondary development around the site, from downtown to the historic Southern Pacific Railroad central shops and the area to the east.

Halbakken is already working to keep current railyards infrastructure projects on schedule. Those include track relocation, which is phase 1 of transit center construction, and construction of bridges to extend Fifth and Sixth streets over the tracks north of H Street.

She's not directly involved, but the city is now gearing up for infrastructure work that will improve highway access to the site and nearby Township 9: a $10 million off-ramp and road expansion and improvement project at the Richards Boulevard interchange at Interstate 5 slated to start next week.

Off ramps will each gain another lane. Richards Boulevard will be expanded with two more lanes in the interchange. Other improvements will be made to Richards Boulevard, Jibboom Street and Bercut Drive, which will be extended into the railyards site.

Bike lanes, sidewalks and planter strips will be added to Jibboom Street and Bercut Drive. The work on the I-5/Richards to Railyards Access Improvements project is expected to be done in the fall of 2012 and will prepare the area for the first phase or two of railyards and Township 9 development.

Tucker said in 10 to 20 years, the intersection will be redesigned to accommodate more traffic.

Halbakken is also starting preliminary planning for other aspects of the railyards project that are at least five years away, such as the transit center's second phase – improvements to the adjacent historic Sacramento Valley Station train depot.

City officials are still trying to determine the impact California's new state budget may have on the railyards finance plan, Tucker added.

The budget may cause an $80 million funding gap for the railyards' planned $745 million in infrastructure if redevelopment agencies are no longer allowed to keep tax increments – the extra property tax revenue generated by development of the site, Halbakken said.

The Sacramento native worked as an engineer managing and designing facilities and high-level engineering projects with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers until joining the city’s Department of Public Works in 1986.

She said she feels lucky to work on a legacy project that will lay the groundwork for the growth of her hometown's central business district in years to come.

"I think this is really important to the city," she said. "One of the reasons I left the federal government was to work for the city where I was born and raised – and to give back."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Arena committee kicks off community rallying effort

2011-07-08T01:18:21Z

Think BIG Sacramento launched an effort Thursday to recruit 1,000 people from Merced to Redding to rally support for a new arena.

The arena campaign committee also announced plans to hold a public design contest for a space adjacent to the new facility as part of that effort.

The committee is asking regional residents and community leaders to help spread information and gather supporters for the drive to build a new sports and entertainment complex, state Senate staffer Greg Hayes, a member of the arena committee, said in a Thursday morning press conference outside the MARRS Building at 1050 20th St.

Later this month, the committee will announce full details of a contest that could enable the winner to design something for an open, public space adjacent to the new arena.

Those who volunteer to rally support will be dubbed "citizen architects" for their role in helping to construct a new arena to replace Power Balance Pavilion, Hayes added.

"It is their support and momentum that has been built that will make this new sports and entertainment complex a reality," he said. "Ultimately, this sports and entertainment complex is, in effect, the civic center for this region – a gathering place for events, meetings and conventions."

During the press conference, Sports 1140 KHTK host "Carmichael Dave" Weiglein, also an arena committee member, applauded the mayor, his staff and the committee for listening to Kings fans' "grassroots efforts" to support an arena and allowing input from the community.

"These promises are being fulfilled, and the trust that is so difficult sometimes to have between citizens and city leaders that was given out in the last few months – that trust is absolutely being backed up by the actions and also the listening to the counsel of the grassroots efforts," Weiglein said.

The committee created by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson wants to attract a diverse group from throughout the six-county region to be part of the citizens' initiative. The deadline to apply online is 5 p.m. July 18. People began signing up on the Think BIG Sacramento website before the announcement, said Hayes, communications director for state Sen. Kevin de León.

Kings fans and others have approached Weiglein to ask how they can support a new facility for National Basketball Association games, concerts, ice skating shows and other events. The citizens' group will be a "fantastic conduit" for people to get involved in a project that will make the area a better place to live, Weiglein said.

"It's something that just expands on the quality of life in this lovely city, (and) it's very difficult to put a dollar amount on," he said.

The NBA and the Maloofs, who own a majority share of the Kings, have given the region until March 1 to undertake a serious effort to build a new arena.

Hayes said residents' most important contribution would be to take part in a design competition, which the committee believes has never been used at another sports or entertainment facility in the country.

Details haven't been fully worked out. However, the contest will be open to everyone, including residents, architects and artists, when it’s officially announced near the end of July.

The committee will ask participants to design some type of feature in an open space set aside next to the arena. Residents will then vote on three design ideas.

Just what that component will be – public art or something else – will be up to participants, Hayes said.

"This truly must be reflective of what the people in this region decide, because this movement was really born out of the grassroots, and as Dave said, it got the leaders' attention," he said.

County executives, arena benefits and skateboard history

2011-07-06T00:22:25Z

Jeffrey Callison and I discussed a number of local news stories on Capital Public Radio's Insight on Tuesday morning, including the transition between Sacramento county executives, a report on the possible benefits to the region of a new arena, new restaurants opening and a new exhibit at the California Museum.

Friday was the last day of work for more than 200 city employees, including 42 sworn police officers and other police department employees. We spoke with the three city council members who voted against the cuts. We spoke with the three council members who voted against the cuts and asked them why.

The recently renamed Think Big Sacramento (formerly Here We Build) arena committee put out a report last week that suggested that a new downtown arena could bring in 7 billion dollars in the next 30 years. That scenario was roundly dismissed by many of our commentors, who thought that this was a too-rosy scenario meant to sell the arena. We shall see when the regional group tasked with figuring out financing for the arena releases its report in September.

Melissa Corker did profiles of both outgoing County Executive Steve Szalay and his replacement, Brad Hudson, in the last week. Szalay had some good advice for his successor (“Don’t screw up!”) and Hudson seemed to have a pretty good grip on what he’s taking on. He said that the thing that he’s most proud of in Riverside County was that he and his staff saw the recession coming in 2007 and used attrition to right-size the government there. He also oversaw a big increase in the use of technology. He’s a Lakers fan, though...

The drama at the Coop continues over bath salts and kosher wine. A small group of determined anti-Israel activists are taking the Coop board to court to get them to put a boycott of Israeli products to a vote of the entire membership. The Coop’s board members have twice voted, unanimously, against doing that, but the protesters are adamant and are willing to take the cooperative to court over this.

Old Ironsides is not doing live music at the moment, though the future of that is in question. We reported that Jerry Perry, who has booked shows at Old I for the last 10 years as well as at other venues, has stopped booking shows there in frustration after the owners of the venue had a rented PA removed and wanted Perry or the bands that play at the club to rent a PA for their gigs. Perry rejected that as impractical and moved his shows. We’re still waiting to see how this is resolved, but it has caused some consternation in the local music community.

There’s going to be a new restaurant bar on J Street at 24th, when Tex Mex Bar and Grill becomes the River Rock Tap House this Saturday. The place is being opened by two guys who have experience in local restaurants, including Tex Mex next door on J Street, and will replace Keolanui’s restaurant. The Tap House will feature as many as 40 West Coast brews on tap and is being opened by the same duo that opened a River Rock Tap House in Citrus Heights 17 years ago. They intend to move into the old Cornerstone Restaurant space in about a month, where they will serve coffee and breakfast.

Speaking of restaurants, all food service employees will be required to take a course in food safety, after which they will receive a certification card. There’s been some unhappiness among food service workers, since they will be required to pay for the $15 certification, but generally people seem OK with the new requirements.

Finally, there is a new exhibit at the California Museum downtown, which just started on Friday and runs through next March. The exhibit looks at one of California’s home grown sports, skateboarding, which has a 50 year history and is now an international phenomenon. The exhibit was curated by the legendary skateboarder and surfer Nathan Pratt, who was in the “Dogtown and Z-Boys” documentary of nearly 10 years ago. There are a lot of skate decks being displayed, as well as multimedia exhibits showcasing the sport. The show first opened in Santa Monica, this is its second exhibition.

To listen to the audio for this show, click here.

Report: Arena could bring $7 billion

2011-07-01T00:43:32Z

A new downtown arena could draw 3.1 million visitors to the central city each year and bring the region more than $7 billion over 30 years, according to a report released Thursday by an arena campaign committee.

The 37-page report on an arena’s expected impact to the region was released to reporters at a press conference at the Sheraton Grand Sacramento Hotel.

"In downtown Sacramento, there's a considerable economic boost, just by the fact that there really isn't a facility like that," said Cathleen Dominico, author of "The Economic Engine Report: An Economic Analysis on the Regional Impact of an Entertainment and Sports Complex," during the press conference.

"If you can create a downtown core that is a destination, it boosts not only the downtown itself but trickles out to the outlying regions," she added.

Dominico, managing partner at Capitol Public Finance Group, was joined at the press conference by arena committee Chairman Chris Lehane, who also chaired the mayor's arena task force; committee members who included City Councilman Rob Fong, City Councilwoman Angelique Ashby, state assemblymen Roger Dickinson and Richard Pan, Downtown Sacramento Partnership Executive Director Michael Ault; and past DSP Chairman Kipp Blewett of Rubicon Partners.

The press conference was held after a report summary was first presented to members of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson's arena campaign committee in a closed-door meeting at the hotel. The meeting was announced two weeks ago as one of seven public meetings set this summer for the committee.

The number of visitors was estimated with an average 17,300 people attending 45 Sacramento Kings events and an average 15,000 people at more than 155 other events annually.

Visitors would be expected to spend an average of $20 each, before and after events, on food, drinks, travel and other retail. About 10 percent of them could spend another $102 to stay overnight.

Total spending outside the sports facility, before and after games and other events, was estimated at $93.6 million annually, according to the economic impact report called for by Johnson.

However, after subtracting spending by existing residents and annual spending at the Kings' current arena, net annual spending in the six-county Sacramento region is expected to total only about $24.6 million, according to Dominico and the report.

The arena's operating costs would be covered by revenue generated inside the arena, according to the report, which did not look at arena revenue.

ICON Venue Group President Tim Romani and Sacramento developer David Taylor estimate an arena facility would cost $241 million, with a total project cost of $387 million.

The cost of arena construction will be financed by a combination of public and private investment, which is expected to include Sacramento Kings annual tenant fees.

The ICON-Taylor group is developing an arena financing plan with input from Johnson's 70-member regional arena campaign committe e. The group was introduced a month ago as the Here We Build coalition. The committee's name was changed this week to Think BIG Sacramento.

The ICON-Taylor group was given a late-May deadline to present an arena financing plan to the Sacramento City Council. But that didn’t happen after the Kings’ owners didn’t provide revenue information in time.

The arena campaign committee was then given until Sept. 8 to provide the council with a plan.

The Maloof family, which owns a majority share of the Kings, agreed on May 2 not to move the team if the region would undertake a serious effort to replace Power Balance Pavilion, which was constructed in outlying Natomas in 1988. The National Basketball Association and the Maloofs gave the region until March 1, 2012, to do so.

The drive to build a new arena also creates an opportunity to redevelop the existing arena, Ault said.

"We feel very strongly that this is not about a downtown versus Natomas issue," Ault said. "This is about an opportunity to activate and engage the central city. It's an opportunity to make sure that we're doing everything we can to develop something that is a replacement in Natomas that keeps them whole.

"This is something I think the region will look back on as we finally are having the right discussions and the right opportunity to really engage in a facility that's going to make a difference in this region," he said.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Sacramento Press on Insight: Good news for a change!

2011-06-28T21:10:14Z

When I visited with Jeffrey Callison on Capital Public Radio's Insight Tuesday morning, the news was better than usual: topics included the improved financial picture for the city regarding the redevelopment of K Street’s 700 block, a new Goodwill for downtown and news of Jackie Greene’s new band.

After its unanimous approval by the City Council last week, Sacramento Press reporter Melissa Corker detailed the improved financial outlook for the development of the 700 block of K Street. With some new federal money secured, the city’s investment shrank from $16 million to $14.7 million, which means the city will now get about 40 percent of the return the block will stimulate, through taxes on sales and incomes. The developers also say that if the property is sold, the city will get 20 percent of the profits after loans are repaid.
All of this led Councilman Rob Fong to call it “a great investment for the city.”

There was also a surprising new concept for developing Cal Expo unveiled on Friday, which would add 120,000 square feet to the exhibition space and build a new 10,000-seat amphitheatre.

Public input was requested for library cuts after the county announced that it will be cutting about $800,000 from the Sacramento County library system’s 28 libraries. Forums will be held at three different locations in July, at which library users will be able to tell library staffers which programs and library functions they want to see survive the cuts. We published a list of the dates and times of those meetings.

There’s a new Goodwill store in Midtown, but this one’s a bit different: It features vintage clothing culled from other standard Goodwill stores and is aimed at discriminating Midtown shoppers who are looking for more stylish items than one might find in a regular Goodwill store. It’s at 16th and L streets.

And credit where it’s due: Last week The Sacramento Bee reported that Regional Transit may restore late night-service after four years of nothing but cuts. RT is dependent on sales tax revenues for half of its budget (fares pay only a quarter), and sales tax is up this year after shoppers started returning to stores. RT will wait another month to make sure that the trend is solid, then will resume late-night (after midnight) service. Currently, most trains stop rolling at 9:30 p.m.

The state Senate approved a bill that will help local fire departments get more in federal funds for providing ambulance transport for MediCal recipients. It will be paid for through the federal MediCare program and will reimburse local fire departments as much as 50 percent. Fire departments are mandated to transport MediCal patients and as many as two thirds of their calls are for medical emergencies. Only 4 percent are for actual fires. This could mean as much as $90 million for state fire departments this year, and $50 million each for subsequent years.

Old Sacramento is going to be expanding its tourist offerings starting next year, including the extension of the excursion trains south as far as Hood and with the further development of underground tours and perhaps even the addition of a 19th century clipper ship at the riverfront. Public hearings have already been held, and now the proposals, by the Department of Parks and Recreation, will be going through one more public review and then on to the City Council for a vote. It is expected to be finalized next year.

More than 1,000 Sacramento-area nonprofits had their nonprofit status revoked by the IRS as part of a clean up of their books after a 2006 pension reform act. Most of those 1,000 or so organizations have ceased to exist, but two local organizations we contacted have some work to do: One, the California-Nevada Soft Drink Association, didn’t know its status had been revoked until we called them about it, and the other, ironically, is the Sacramento City Taxpayers’ Rights League!

We reported last week that local favorite son Jackie Greene has formed a new band, Trigger Hippy, that includes three former members of the Black Crowes, as well as singer Joan Osborne, who, like Greene, has performed with former members or versions of Grateful Dead. Jackie will reportedly also be performing as a trio with former Dead member Bob Weir and former Black Crowe lead singer Chris Robinson.

The mobile food movement is moving outside of the central city. Thursday, a group of local food trucks composed of the Mini Burger Truck, Mama Kim on the Go and Drewski’s Hot Rod Kitchen gathered in the parking lot of Tognotti’s Auto World at Fulton and El Camino for the first event held by the fledgling Sacramento Food Truck Alliance. This was just outside the city limits, beyond the reach of the food truck ordinance that the Alliance is aiming to overturn. And it will happen again this Thursday from 5-8 p.m. at Tognotti’s.

To listen to the audio for this show, click here.

Insight on fees, cops, and the 700 block

2011-06-21T17:04:07Z

Final approval of the 700 block of K Street, a new executive for Sacramento County, local entertainment and building fees going up and a new park proposed for Midtown are among the topics discussed Tuesday by David Watts Barton and Jeffrey Callison on Capital Public Radio's Insight.

Tonight's City Council meeting will include a vote on the final approval on the 700 block of K Street. It's gone through every level of approval and this means that they will be able, as Bay Miry told me, to do what we know how to do, which is build stuff. They're talking about 14 businesses on that block, including a tapas bar, a nightclub, restaurants and bars. This has the potential to transform K Street and downtown even more than the George Karpaty Dive Bar development three blocks east.

Also tonight, the council will vote on layoffs at the Sacramento Police Department. Things got a little better on the budget front last week, after the federal government gave the city a $3 million waiver, which means that instead of laying off 81 sworn officers, they will be voting on laying off 46 officers. It's not great, but it's better than it might have been. An additional 68 people will still be laid off at the department.
But in advance of tonight's vote, the police union isn't giving an inch in negotiations, as we reported this morning. New council member Darryl Fong, a retired cop, showed fierce independence in refusing to give what little remains of the city's reserve funds to the police.

Sacramento County got a new executive officer last week. His name is Brad Hudson, and he comes from the city of Riverside in the Inland Empire, and he inherits a terrible budget situation at the county. He starts work on Aug. 14.

Last week's city council meeting saw the council approve 18 different fee changes, raising 12 existing fees and creating six new ones, including for various building department fees and for entertainment permits, which went up about $300 each. That prompted some protests from the Midtown Business Association and various entertainment venues such as Faces. As much as those are, the fees barely put a dent in the city's costs of doing the permits. And especially given the city's current financial woes, those aren't really many changes compared to the 2009-2010 budget, in which there were a whopping 237 fee adjustments.

A new park proposed for Midtown moved ahead a bit last week. Two plans for the empty space at the corner of 19th and Q streets, just north of the Safeway store on 19th, were presented at a meeting, along with environmental reports regarding the "brownfields" remediation plans, since the space was contaminated by the nearby railroad. The two different proposals are detailed in our article by SacPress intern Amy Wong.

The just-assembled arena financing coalition held its first meeting last Thursday, and our reporter Suzanne Hurt was there to cover it. The Here We Build coalition of 70 local politicians and others has been given until Sept. 8 to come up with a financing plan that appeals to the community and the Maloof family. The team told Suzanne that they will be holding meetings about every two weeks until the deadline. The next one will be next Thursday, June 30.

Sacramento's landmark Elks Tower, built in the 1920s, is finally going to have something going into the space where FedEx used to have an office. It will be a cafe, bar and chocolate place in the lower space that also holds a big old empty pool that used to be quite notorious in the 1970s. Steve Ayers and his family, who own Railbridge Winery on 16th Street, are going to be opening a 14th floor Elks Tower Penthouse Lounge in a couple of weeks. This used to be the home of Sactown magazine and before that, KZAP radio.

Redistricting maps were turned in a few weeks ago and have been narrowed down by the Citizens Advisory Committee on Redistricting, from 37 to 15. They will be further whittled down to about five choices that the city council will then reference as they go about the final decisions in advance of the July deadline. The committee meets every Monday night and the public is encouraged to attend.

The 10th Annual French Film Festival had its first weekend at the Crest Theatre downtown, and will conclude this coming weekend with a film about the legendary pop music auteur Serge Gainsbourg on Sunday night. We have a review of the first weekend and a schedule for the rest of the festival up at Sacramento Press.

And finally, a bit further afield, the first Davis Music Festival is this weekend, and our newest staff member Aaron Davis wrote a piece about the Truth and Salvage Company, which has played in Sacramento four times in the last year and has really fired up some of our music writers. Local bands playing the festival include Miss Lonely Hearts and Musical Charis.

To listen to audio for this show, click here.

Arena coalition studies financing options

2011-06-17T02:06:56Z

The Sacramento region will have to get creative to come up with a public-private financing plan that might work to build a new arena – possibly coming up with funding sources never tried in other cities before, a prominent sports financing expert said Thursday.

Sacramento will need a unique financing model, partly due to the community's "limitations" in size and past efforts to gain voter support for public arena funding, Barrett Sports Group owner Dan Barrett told a crowd gathered for a town hall meeting at the Central Library.

The media market is relatively small, which makes it less lucrative, and there aren't a lot of potential corporate sponsors here. Other challenges come from difficulties getting sports facilities built in California and the lack of more than one sports team tenant for the building, he added.

A regional Here We Build arena coalition has been given until Sept. 8 to come up with a funding plan that appeals to the public and the Maloofs, the Sacramento Kings’ majority owners. The coalition held its first public meeting Thursday.

City Councilman Steve Cohn, a member of the arena coalition, asked whether any successful financing models have been used to build new sports facilities since the recession began.

"There's no cookie-cutter model, unfortunately. You've got to be real creative, particularly in California," Barrett said.

Barrett did not share what new options are being considered. It's "too early in the process" to say what even some of those might be, he said.

The coalition will be working with sports facility gurus, city staff, Mayor Kevin Johnson's arena task force finance subcommittee, the ICON-Taylor Group, the Maloofs and others. At least 65 coalition members and others from the community turned out for the presentation.

Their work follows on the heels of the ICON-Taylor Group, which was given until late May to present financing options as part of a feasibility study. The group told the Sacramento City Council May 26 that it had not been able to include financing in the analysis after the Maloofs didn't turn over financial information soon enough.

Barrett and coalition chair Chris Lehane led a meeting on public-private partnerships to fund arena construction downtown. Barrett explored a range of options that have been used to build facilities in other cities.

Public funding options that have been used include sales tax, hotel tax, rental car tax, food and beverage tax, tax increment financing, land sales, and parking revenues and surcharges.

Private funding options have included equity and cash or facility-related revenue streams such as naming rights, club seats, advertising, sponsorships and corporate investment, he said.

The Maloofs announced earlier this week they have given up controlling interest in the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas to private investment firms, Texas-based TPG Capital and Leonard Green & Partners. The Maloofs agreed to turn a $400 million debt into equity by giving up a controlling share in the resort, according to various sources.

The Maloofs did not respond to requests for comment.

On the East Coast, some have used EB-5 money, which trades temporary visas for the financing of American ventures by foreign investors.

Barrett said they don't know if any of those options will be viable in this region.

Broad-based tax increases haven't been used in California. Public financing for sports facilities in this state tend to be targeted taxes, such as hotel or rental car taxes, he said.

The coalition is now trying to identify public funding options that wouldn't require a vote, said former city Treasurer Tom Friery, a member of the coalition's executive committee who helped lead the town hall presentation.

Arenas and stadiums in bigger markets – the Giants' AT&T Park in San Francisco and the Lakers' Staples Center in Los Angeles – have been paid for entirely by sports team owners. That hasn't worked for smaller markets, because the teams don't see as much revenue coming in from media deals and corporate supporters once the facilities are built, Barrett said.

"It's critical to structure a deal that makes sense financially for both parties," Barrett said. "Both parties need to come away with a deal that works."

The Here We Build Coalition and Mayor Kevin Johnson's office will hold public meetings roughly every two weeks throughout the summer. Most meetings will be held at the Central Library, 828 I St., probably at 11 a.m. But exact times and locations are still being determined, according to the arena coalition and the mayor's office.

Economic Impact on Downtown : Thursday, June 30, Time and Location TBD

Regional Impact Event : Thursday, July 14, Time and Location TBD

Leveraging Existing Assets To Create Jobs : Thursday, July 28, Time and Location TBD

Town Hall: The Future of Natomas : Thursday, Aug. 11, Time and Location TBD

Job Opportunities Directly Related to the Project : Thursday, Aug. 25, Time and Location TBD

Release 100 Day Report : Thursday, Sept. 8, Time and Location TBD

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Developer dads teach sons about hard work and ethics

2011-06-17T00:02:27Z

Dads teach their kids all kinds of things – sometimes even skills that allow them to build shopping centers and redevelop historic properties as big as Globe Mills and Sacramento’s K Street Mall.

When kids go into the family business, a father's ability to impart lessons gets taken to a whole new level.

Sons who've followed their dads into development in three families say there are pros and cons to doing so – with the biggest benefits being the valuable instruction they've gotten from their fathers.

Ali Youssefi was doing investment banking in San Francisco when he decided to return to Sacramento to join his father, Cyrus Youssefi, at his community development firm, CFY Development, Inc. The ability to learn from his father as they worked on the adaptive reuse of the historic Globe Mills in Alkali Flat lured him back to Sacramento and into development in 2006.

The younger Youssefi said he's grateful for the opportunities he's had working in the family business – opportunities he might not have had otherwise. His first job, which he got in high school, was working as a lifeguard and assistant manager for one of his dad's affordable housing projects in Rancho Cordova.

The best lesson his dad has taught him is to work hard and always be honest, he said.

"I'm lucky to be able to see my dad's professional side and witness the characteristics that have made him successful firsthand," Youssefi said. "It's a dimension of him that I never saw while growing up."

Jim Taylor started Potter-Taylor and Co. in 1957 with his father-in-law, Sheldon Potter. Taylor has also taught his own son, Tim, by example how important it is to have a strong work ethic.

"It started at home. It was work in the yard. It was work around the house. And when it got to working at the office, we worked pretty much side by side," said Tim Taylor, who got his real estate license in 1976 right after high school. He later got his broker's license.

He's worked with his father on acquiring and developing land and commercial property for retail and self-storage projects throughout Northern California. Retail projects range from drugstores to supermarket shopping centers. One of the biggest benefits of working with his dad is all the support he's gotten at work, he said.

Bay Miry, who joined father David Miry at D & S Development, Inc., said going into the family business has allowed him to grow closer to his dad than he might have in a typical father-son relationship. Their projects together include the Maydestone Apartments, 2020 H St. Lofts and the Sterling Hotel & Ballroom.

He and Taylor both said the biggest con to working with their dads is that business comes up at every family gathering.

"Sometimes business talk tends to dominate the family dinner conversation," Miry said.

Youssefi said a downside for him is that mom sometimes gets a bit jealous about the time the two men spend together.

Miry and Youssefi are taking the lead on redeveloping a vacant block of K Street Mall, with their fathers and D & S partner Steve Lebastchi available for feedback and support. Father and son couldn't do the development without each other's help, Youssefi said.

"The 700 block of K Street is a special project for us because I have the opportunity to exercise my own vision as a developer with his complete support and encouragement," Youssefi said. "He's there to 'clean up my shit,' as he likes to say."

The most important lesson Bay Miry said he learned from his father was to treat everyone equally.

"All walks of life are the same," Miry said. "It doesn't matter if you're talking to the governor or a laborer at a construction site."

Taylor's father also taught him that strong ethics were just as important as working hard.

"The thing I took away was you really have three things: You have your time, you have your knowledge and you have your reputation," Taylor said. "And no matter how much time you have or how smart you are, if you screw up your reputation, you'll never succeed."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Elks Tower cafe, bar and chocolates with a view

2011-06-15T02:20:15Z

A dusty corner of the historic Elks Tower containing a pool hidden for decades will soon get a second life when a Euro-style cafe, bar and chocolatier open next year.

The Ayers family has begun renovating a bi-level corner of the 1926 building designed by architect Leonard J. Starks to incorporate a pool where club members swam for 50 years. The pool hasn't been used since about the early 1980s.

Building owner Steve Ayers, his daughter Katharine (Ayers) Gelber and her husband, Michael Gelber, are partnering to open Rail Bridge Wine and Spirits in the front corner of the building at 921 11th St. The other corner is anchored by McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurant.

The bar, small cafe and chocolatier will share a ground-floor, L-shaped space that overlooks the empty basement pool after walls blocking the view were removed in mid-2010, Michael Gelber said.

"When it opened, this building and The Citizen Hotel were considered the jewels on J Street," he said, referring to the Cal Western Life building that also opened in 1926. "You won't find anything (else) like this."

The space will hold a chocolatier called Hanzel & Pretzel and a small, attached kitchen serving desserts, small plates, specialty coffees and hot chocolate. Fed Ex operated an office there until December 2009.

Most of the chocolates will be imported from Switzerland, France and other countries. Chocolate-covered pretzels, chocolates, desserts and other fare will be made on-site. The family is searching for a chef and a chocolatier for its new Hanzel & Pretzel concept. The menu has not been planned, but may include stuffed potatoes.

The anchor business will be a full bar featuring wines from Sacramento's first urban winery – Rail Bridge Cellars at 400 N. 16th St., which the Gelbers own under Alexis Ventures. The company also owns Strings Express, at 431 I St., where Gelber is the managing partner.

The bar will also carry spirits and wines from other wineries.

A custom-made rack with port wines from around the world will hold a prominent spot tying the chocolatier and bar together.

"You've got to make money on the bar," he said. "You're not going to make it on the chocolate."

But the visual focus will be the cavernous basement pool room, with its pale blue walls and vaulted ceiling at least 32 feet high. A row of tables and couches will overlook the pool behind a glass partition. Silent films reminiscent of the building’s era may play on the back wall behind the pool.

The renovation will leave most of the historic building's character intact. Exposed brick walls, the original concrete floor and peeling paint will be left to express the building's venerable history, Gelber said.

The renovation is expected to cost about $200,000. The family is also opening the Elks Tower Penthouse Lounge on the 14th floor, which can be rented for wine tastings, private parties and meetings, in two weeks. Windows on three sides offer views of the Capitol, City Hall, the railyards and the Sierra Nevada mountains.

That 1,000-square-foot space was recently outfitted with $10,000 in new furnishings such as couches, a long table and a big-screen TV. The penthouse will also serve as an off-site tasting room for Rail Bridge Cellars, Gelber said.

Plans will be submitted to the Sacramento Community Development Department’s Planning Division in one to two weeks, he said.

Michael Chandler, who handles brand development for the winery, is expected to oversee retail sales. Gelber will oversee daily operations.

The business is being built in phases because of the economy. If the concept proves successful, the family expects to open a full restaurant and second bar in the basement. Customers would sit at tables on Plexiglas over the pool, possibly in three years.

"This would have to go really well – the economy would have to turn for that to happen," he said.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Arena coalition members named

2011-06-14T01:35:04Z

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson released the names of his regional arena coalition Monday, amid hopes the Here We Build campaign will be able to figure out financing options.

But the absence of a representative of Natomas, where Power Balance Pavilion sits, raised protests from the Natomas Chamber of Commerce.

Johnson announced the members of a bipartisan, 15-member executive committee Monday morning. The remaining 45 members of the community coalition were expected to be announced Monday evening, according to the mayor’s office.

No one from the Natomas Chamber of Commerce, which has led a campaign to keep the arena there, had been asked to be part of the coalition as of 5:30 p.m. No Natomas representatives are expected to be in the coalition, Johnson spokesman Joaquin McPeek said.

Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna was named to the executive committee. He lives in Natomas and represents the area in his supervisor role. But he hasn’t represented Natomas economic interests in the arena process, Natomas Chamber President Ed Koop said.

"He's never been the voice of anything we've been trying to do here, as far as the economic impact,” Koop said. "In my opinion, that's not a good representation of what we've got going on here."

Frustrated chamber members are refusing to provide a letter of support for the arena effort after Johnson recently asked for one. To be asked for support is "absurd," because building a new arena downtown will "cannibalize" Natomas, said Koop, adding chamber members feel their community has been ignored throughout the arena process.

"Natomas seems to be constantly put in the back seat. We're not asked to participate in any of these things going forward," he said.

Chamber officials want the city to set up a task force to focus on reuse of the Natomas site. But no one from the mayor's office has reached out to talk about the site's future, Koop said.

"I don't believe anyone's seriously looking at what's going to happen to Natomas if this arena leaves," he said.

Johnson asked for letters of support at a regional chamber coalition meeting at Sacramento Metro Chamber headquarters on June 3 – a few days after officially announcing the coalition's formation. Representatives of all six counties were there, Koop said.

The mayor and the mayor's office followed up last week with emails asking to get the letters, which were to be addressed to the city, by June 17.

The Here We Build executive committee will be chaired by state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento, and State Sen. Ted Gaines, a Republican from Roseville.

Other members of the committee include state Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon and Sacramento City Councilman Rob Fong.

Also on the committee is San Francisco investor Darius Anderson. He told Johnson at the National Basketball Association team owners' meeting in April he and billionaire Pittsburgh Penguins co-owner Ron Burkle wanted to buy the Sacramento Kings or bring another team here if the Kings left.

The full coalition will consist of stakeholders from around the region: elected officials, labor leaders, corporate and small business owners, grassroots organization leaders, developers and religious leaders.

Johnson said in a press conference Monday that the coalition was put together to equitably represent the metropolitan area.

“We knew if we had 22 cities and six counties, we knew we had to have about 30 electeds and maybe 30 non-electeds,” he said. “So, when it came down to the executive committee, we knew we wanted 12 to 15 members – half elected, half non-elected.”

The mayor's office cast "a wider net" to involve a broad base of the community, McPeek said.

"We want to make sure we have a nice cross section, across the board," he said.

The mayor's office is setting up the arena coalition's first public meeting for Thursday. The time and location are still being determined.

The group will be meeting to explore arena funding options and determine the "critical pathway" to financing a new arena, McPeek said.

McPeek could not say what work the ICON-Taylor group is doing to come up with arena funding options, which were due at their presentation to the City Council in late May. It's not clear how the arena experts will work with regional Here We Build coalition members to answer the funding question.

The Roseville Chamber of Commerce has sent in a letter of support commending the mayor for reaching beyond his borders to promote a regional discussion on a new arena, Roseville Chamber Chief Executive Officer Wendy Gerig said.

"It's not just about the Kings and basketball. It's about economic development and the jobs that will not only go to businesses in Sacramento, but to El Dorado, Placer, Yolo, Yuba and Sutter counties," she said. "Our region is deserving of such a facility."

A link to the other coalition member names will be added in the comment section below.

Sacramento Press staff reporter Kathleen Haley contributed to this report. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Microbrewery on track for Curtis Park

2011-06-11T01:07:17Z

A Curtis Park microbrewery that plays up Sacramento's railroad history is one step closer to opening after winning approval from the city Planning Commission.

Two craft beer fans expect to open Track 7 Brewing Company, a microbrewery and tasting room, in mid-September if other necessary permits and licensing are granted.

Southern California transit analyst Ryan Graham and Sacramento mortgage underwriter Geoff Scott said they hope to start working on an adaptive reuse of a ~~380-square-foot space~~ 2,100-square-foot space inside a warehouse at 3747 W. Pacific Ave., near Sutterville Road and 24th Street, within a month.

The Sacramento Planning Commission voted 8-1 Thursday night to grant a special permit for alcohol sales in the tap room and a special permit to waive a parking space.

After the vote, Graham, Scott and Scott's wife, Water Education Foundation Events/Tour Director Rebecca Scott, headed over to the warehouse and celebrated the victory with their home-brewed Big Four Strong Ale. The beer is named for the four railroad barons who built the Central Pacific Railroad.

"We're both home brewers, but we decided to take our passion and our hobby to a different scale," said Graham, who lives in the Southern California town of Beaumont.

Graham, 32, has been brewing beer at home for eight years. He's also volunteered at Inland Empire Brewing Company in nearby Riverside. For six or seven years, Scott has been making small batches of beer to share with family and friends.

They plan to feature “artisanal” beers made in the "firmly hopped" tradition of the Pacific Northwest and the West Coast. The hops impart more aroma and bitterness. Other parts of the country are now following the West Coast style by expanding hop usage in beer, said Scott, a 33-year-old Curtis Park resident.

The beers will be inspired by American, Belgian, English and German brewers. Scott and Ryan will combine influences and recipes for beers such as porters, stouts, strong ales and IPAs.

His family has lived in Sacramento since the early 1920s. Scott's great-grandfather was a farmer who used trains and the rail lines to transport produce to other parts of California.

He and Graham became friends while attending the University of California, Davis. Graham now works on railroad projects, which is partly why they chose Track 7's name and the location in a warehouse near old Western Pacific railroad tracks.

"We wanted to tie in Sacramento's history with the railroad," Scott said.

The Sacramento Planning Commission's support was needed to get a small beer manufacturer's license from the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. That support also allows the microbrewery's owners to apply for city building and engineering permits.

The area is zoned as heavy commercial, but there are residences nearby. One resident, Dee Schaffer, wrote to the city to oppose the microbrewery. Schaffer, who lives across the alley, said she's concerned because there were problems with noise, crime, traffic and other nuisances when a punk rock bar called Club Minimal operated there in 1983 and 1984.

"I most adamantly protest this place going in," she wrote in an email included in a city staff report to the planning commission.

Three other residents, a neighborhood association and a business owner sent emails to the city in support of Track 7.

“This appears to be a good example of light industrial mixed use. It would appear to be
a potentially energizing community asset. Kindly accept this note as one of support," wrote Don Lockhart of the College Green Neighborhood Association

No supporters or opponents spoke at the Planning Commission's public hearing Thursday night, city planner Evan Compton said.

Planning Commissioner William Wong voted against granting the permits. Most of the commissioners' discussion involved the hours of operation.

There was a motion to limit the hours, but the commission granted the owners' request to be able to operate from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. They will initially be open Thursdays through Sundays, then expand to more weekdays once business builds, Graham said.

The commissioners also decided to allow live music and limited on-site parking requirement to two spaces. The tasting room is small. There are 18 parking spaces on the street in front, and about 15 other parking lot spaces belonging to the building's other tenants would likely be free in the evenings, Compton said.

"I don't really see that (parking is) going to be an issue," he said.

The microbrewery will be located near the future Curtis Park Village development. Brewery equipment is on site but hasn’t been installed. The brewery’s open layout will allow visitors to see the equipment, such as stainless steel tanks, platforms and a control panel.

Graham and Scott plan to serve nuts, chips or other snacks. They also hope to have a food truck serving gourmet fare in the future. But Track 7 won't have a restaurant, Scott said.

"We're just going to focus on beer, because that's what's important to us," he said. "The food is not really important at all."

Editorial Note: A correction has been made to this story after it was published. The incorrect information has been struck out and the correct information has been added.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Midtown Squeeze Inn to open this fall

2011-06-09T01:15:51Z

This fall, Midtown Sacramento will finally get its own Squeeze Inn – home of the famous Squeeze Burger and Squeeze with Cheese.

Squeeze Inn employee Sabrina Nicola will open her first restaurant under the guidance of Squeeze Inn owners Travis and Vicki Hausauer. The Hausauers will be silent partners in the new restaurant expected to open in October on K Street.

Nicola, 25, will be the sole operator and will work under a licensing agreement with the couple, who bought the original Squeeze Inn on Fruitridge Road in 2001.

Both she and Travis Hausauer said she has learned a lot working behind the counter, starting out at the little old shack that first housed the Squeeze when she was 18 and working now at its Power Inn Road location.

"I think she'll do great. She's full of energy. She's great with people," he said. "She's been there for a long time. She's actually cooked at some point. So she really knows almost every aspect of the business."

The Hausauers operate the Power Inn Road restaurant. Their son, Brandon Hausauer, and his wife, Katie, operate the one in Galt. Other people run Squeeze Inns in West Sacramento, Napa and Roseville under a licensing agreement allowing them to use the restaurant’s name, menu and orange and red colors.

Nicola still works at the Squeeze Inn on Power Inn Road. She's been with the company for five and a half years, taking a year and a half off to travel around Europe. She worked at Squeeze Inn throughout college and also did a one-year stint at Table 260 in Elk Grove.

"Squeeze Inn used to be Sacramento's best-kept secret," she said Tuesday on a break at Squeeze Inn, 5301 Power Inn Road. "It's a very good business. It's been very good for Travis. He thinks it will be very good for me."

Hausauer became Nicola's mentor over the years. She graduated from Sacramento State three years ago. He taught her the only way to get ahead in life was to work for herself.

"He's like a second father to me," Nicola said.

She joked for years that she wanted to open her own Squeeze Inn. Hausauer encouraged her. She said she recently decided she was ready.

She found a spot at 1630 K St. in Pensione K. Infusion Cafe formerly operated there. A renovation may start in four to six weeks if plans are approved by the Planning Commission, she said.

Nicola wants to create the Squeeze Inn vibe there. She'll use the original menu, build a big counter that can seat at least a dozen people and decorate the interior in orange and red. There will be additional seating inside and patio seating on the sidewalk.

She'll add a few new menu items, such as an albacore tuna melt, chicken bites for kids and a Midtown Squeezesteak sandwich, a version of a Philadelphia cheesesteak. The restaurant will not serve beer or wine.

The Midtown location will be the only Squeeze Inn open on Sundays, but is likely to be closed Mondays. Tentative hours will be 11 a.m. - 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. - 11 p.m. Friday through Saturday and 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Sunday.

Hausauer said he's excited Nicola is making her dream happen.

"She had her eye on the goal. It's finally coming to fruition for her," he said. "It's all about taking chances. If you don't take any chances, you don't go anywhere."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Contemporary Dance Conservatory opens in hidden corner of Midtown

2011-06-08T01:50:17Z

Local dance instructor Lena Logan has opened her first studio, the Contemporary Dance Conservatory, in a warehouse once used for raves.

The studio opened May 2 at 213 26th St., in a renovated 6,300-square-foot warehouse whose neighbors include a community garden, bicycle repair shop, an independent building contractor's shop area and homes.

From 4 - 10 p.m. Saturday, the studio will hold a grand opening that mixes dance performance and live art. Her students will give short dance performances each hour, while muralists and graffiti artists will create paintings on the front of the building.

Logan's focus is to train teens and pre-teens who want to move on to professional dance companies. She prepares them by teaching classical ballet as the base of their dance education and training.

Logan also teaches contemporary ballet and contemporary dance, as well as other classes. Performances, which she plans to hold in professional theaters, concentrate only on contemporary dance and contemporary ballet.

"What is unique about the dance environment Lena is setting up is that at the foundation is ballet training," said Michelle Miranda, whose 13-year-old daughter, Caitlin, has studied with Logan for five years.

"At the core, kids are practicing ballet,” she said. “But when they hit the stage with a showpiece, it's very cutting-edge, very relevant and very cool."

Logan trained to be a ballerina while growing up in the Bay Area. She also modeled and acted, appearing in a national Miracle Whip commercial eating a sandwich in the 1980s when she was about 5.

She said she turned to contemporary and jazz dance to make more money. She danced in Broadway shows, a traveling performance called “Ballet Magique” and on Royal Caribbean cruises. She began teaching and doing choreography 10 years ago.

She left a post as artistic director at a West Sacramento studio to open this studio with her husband, James Bahn, who handles the business end of the studio.

Kids aged 6 to 18 can take beginning, intermediate and advanced classes in classical and contemporary ballet and contemporary dance, which may include modern, jazz, lyrical, African, new wave, hip hop and other types of dance or movement. Logan also offers classes that teach turns and leaps, and acting classes that teach stage presence.

She currently has 30 students. Half of them are in her dance troupe called the Contemporary Dance Conservatory Company. They take a dance company-level class, compete, perform and volunteer.

She also has a "ballet babies" class for children who are potty-trained and have good attention spans, up to age 5. The couple’s 2-year-old, John Michael Bahn, is in the class.

Logan is starting an adult contemporary class from 8 - 9 p.m. on Fridays. The class will be a mix of Pilates, ballet and contemporary dance moves, she said.

Logan looked at about 150 other buildings before finding the warehouse on Craigslist. But she said she wanted the studio to be in Midtown.

She learned from talking to neighbors and stepping inside that the warehouse had had a wild life. It was once used for rave dance parties. Local graffiti artists and muralists had painted on its interior walls.

“It was kind of like an art house, with people doing art in a free, open space,” she said. “I want to keep that feel.”

Windows were blacked-out, the walls had holes, the concrete floor had a thick layer of dirt and the space smelled of mold.

Despite its condition, she immediately fell in love with the warehouse, which sits behind a chain-link fence on a cul-de-sac that dead-ends at a levee near 26th and B streets.

"I just walked in and said it was perfect. I knew I could turn it into an urban chic studio," she said.

She and her husband spent $10,000 to renovate the space and another $10,000 on a 3,500-square-foot "sprung" dance floor that can be used in traveling shows. The two-layer floor has a shock-absorbing bottom layer covered by a slip-resistant vinyl floor.

Local muralist Sean Turner created a fresh new mural on a repainted dance studio wall. Other artists will be asked to paint on walls, too.

She plans to soon open a dance store. Sacramento has only one, Capezio Dance Theatre Shop in East Sacramento.

One of her students, 16-year-old Bradly Palmer, said he loves the studio because it's modern and huge and fits the dance company's mission.

"It speaks to what our studio's philosophy is and what we try to chase as dancers," he said. "It's about being fresh and innovative and finding a way to portray life in a way that's abstract and thoughtful, but simple."

Logan said her goal is to open a true conservatory in 10 years in Sacramento. She added that she wants to open the area's first private conservatory, where students can take classes in dance, acting, music and other art.

They would meet with math, history, English and science tutors during the day but do most regular school study independently at home at night, she said.

Television talent shows like “Dancing with the Stars” and “America’s Best Dance Crew” have created a surge of interest in dance classes among kids and adults. That's helped dance studios thrive in recent years, even during the recession, Logan said.

Palmer is a sophomore at West Sacramento Early College Prep Charter School. He grew up dancing hip hop but has only been studying ballet for one and a half years. Logan describes him as "on his way to being famous."

"He can act. He can sing. You'll see his name in bright lights one day," she said.

He takes classes five days a week at the studio. He said he's in training to be on the TV show "So You Think You Can Dance." But he has to wait until he's 18 before he can audition. Until then, he's one of a handful of boys studying with Logan. Palmer said he likes her teaching style.

"She knows how to teach dancers as individuals, which is important because everyone’s bodies are not the same," he said. "Because she's been there as a dancer, she knows how to teach us how to go out and become professionals."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Bows & Arrows moves, adds Fat Face cafe

2011-06-03T01:27:00Z

Sacramento shopkeepers Olivia Coelho and Trisha Rhomberg will open a new take on their vintage clothing store Bows & Arrows this Saturday. And this time, they will not be alone.

The new Bows & Arrows, opening across from Safeway on 19th Street, will also sell the gourmet popsicles, panini sandwiches and other fare made by Jaymes Luu of Davis-based Fat Face cafe.

The new store, located in a former recording studio, will continue to sell clothes from the 1960s through the early 1990s. Coelho and Rhomberg will also sell refashioned clothing under their own label, Miss Chief of California.

The new store will also contain an art gallery, the cafe, and a beer and wine bar run by Coelho and Rhomberg.

Luu operated the Fat Face popsicle and sandwich shop in Davis. She's also sold popsicles in flavors such as Kaffir Limeade, Thai Tea & Sweet Potato or Melon Horchata at local farmers markets and at the recent mobile food vendor festival, SactoMoFo. She'll now operate Fat Face cafe from within Bows & Arrows.

From the entrance toward the back, the new store moves from a retail shop to an art gallery with cafe tables and then to the cafe. A courtyard patio was added in back.

"It is a multi-use building," Coelho said. "We wanted the spaces to feel distinctly their own, but also have an open flow so you could move throughout the space."

They closed their first store at 1712 L St. on April 30 to focus on furnishing the new space, which had been gutted and completely rebuilt. A kitchen, dressing rooms and new bathrooms were added. More light was let in with new front windows and double glass doors in back.

The recycling ethic and aesthetic has been carried throughout the space. While new lights hang in the art gallery and over the redwood bar, the rest of the lighting is supplied by vintage swag lamps.

Friend Matt Hummel made tables from salvaged wood and various bases, including a pair of antique cast iron Singer sewing machine bases. Salvaged doors and windows add privacy to dressing rooms and partially block a view of the train tracks from the 875-square-foot back patio.

The idea was to recreate the feel of being in someone's home while also being friendly to the environment, Rhomberg said.

"Why put a larger demand on the earth when we can use what's already here?" she said.

Much of what's inside will be either vintage or handmade, such as new art from emerging and established artists. Mixed-media artist Hilary Pecis, recently featured in Juxtapoz Magazine, will show her work at Bows & Arrows' opening-day reception.

Bows & Arrows will be open from 6 - 9 p.m. Saturday. The cafe will serve lunch and dinner five days a week. Regular hours will be 11 a.m. - 11 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

They're working to get an entertainment permit so they can showcase local musicians, filmmakers and other artists.

"Sacramento and Midtown, especially, are really flooded with a ton of talent – visually and musically," Rhomberg said. "There's so much to show to people. I love having a space to do that in – to show people what we're growing here."

Building Sacramento’s art scene by spotlighting local artists and giving them space to collaborate and feed off each other’s energy will help the city's economy grow, she added.

"It's going to be what puts us on the map," Rhomberg said.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Opinion: What we still don't know

2011-06-02T06:34:54Z

Miss a week, miss … well, not as much as I'd hoped.

I took last week off from The Sacramento Press and treated myself to a nice little media fast. When I got back, I took a good look at the results of the long-awaited ICON-Taylor feasibility study of the arena.

This is it?

My expectations were that this report was going to tell us how Sacramento could build a new arena. What we got instead were more of what we've had before: pretty pictures, big plans and media-ready optimism. But no how. (Read the report here.)

I've been as optimistic as anyone about the possibility of making a downtown arena a reality. I think it makes a lot of sense for this city, and I think it's doable. But the ICON-Taylor analysis doesn't tell us what we waited five months to hear.

The missing piece is, of course, financing. That is the piece that has been missing since Measures R and Q went down in flames in 2006. It is the piece that was missing when the arena task force did its months-long study last year. It was missing in most of the proposals delivered in December.

And it is still missing.

Now, I understand that the Maloofs, in their hesitation to be much help on this whole process, didn't hand over their financial information until about 10 days before the ICON-Taylor group's deadline.

But surely, someone along the line in this group of "world-class" pros could have entered some POSSIBLE numbers concerning what the Maloofs might contribute (were they not too busy trying to move the team to Anaheim) and make some estimate of how the rest of this might be put together. Until we have some numbers, even rough estimates, no one – not the City Council, nor local contractors, nor the NBA, nor, surely, the increasingly distrustful citizens of Sacramento – is going to have anything to work with.

As Sacramento Press reporter Suzanne Hurt wrote in her Jan. 21 story on the choice of ICON-Taylor, "City staff members have outlined a set of submission requirements they'd like the team or teams to turn into the city within 90 days. A preliminary financial plan and a signed concurrence agreement with the Kings are among the requirements."

Instead, what we have is yet another in a long line of partially baked fantasies that is not much closer to realization than we were five months ago, when Taylor proposed this before the arena task force.

There are many other missing, or fairly vague, aspects, from parking to highway and road improvements and details about how the promised intermodal transportation facility will fit with the arena on what is a very small piece of the railyards.

But all of those things are contingent on knowing how this is going to be financed. That's the great disappointment in the ICON-Taylor report. What was supposed to answer questions neglected the most important and most contentious one: cost. (Never mind that the suggested price tag of $387 million may be many dollars less than the actual cost, when all the missing factors are added in.)

And don't hold your breath for this information anytime soon: The mayor's just-announced commission of 60 – that's right, SIXTY – people is going to spend the rest of this year trying to do what ICON-Taylor failed to do: Figure out the financing. Anyone who’s watched our City Council of only nine people take for ages to decide most anything is not going to be encouraged by this enormous committee.

Of course, the absence of a solid plan may just be political cover for a plan the mayor and the Maloofs are hatching. Who knows?

But assuming the 60 regional wise people come up with something by November or December, we don’t have much time. The Maloofs' next opportunity to leave Sacramento for greener pastures looms March 1, which doesn't leave much time, if any, for negotiation. Beyond that, the soonest a new arena would be Kings-ready is four, or even five, seasons hence.

It is at this point in an editorial when I usually wax optimistic. After all, optimism is the only way to keep things moving forward. But I'm not feeling optimistic. The flimsiness of the ICON-Taylor report, which I was sure was going to tackle this, has left me feeling quite the opposite.

I thought that this would bring us more concrete information with which we could work, even if the upshot was to say, "OK, it's just not doable. Let's work on getting our devastated city and city government back on a solid footing."

Instead, what we have is an increasingly desperate-seeming optimism, 1,100 more seats, the promise of some no-doubt-lovely corporate skyboxes and, of course, dazzlingly gorgeous (if overwrought) artists' conceptions.

At the rate we're going, it’s starting to seem that that may be all Sacramento ever gets.

'Here We Build' arena campaign announced

2011-06-01T00:35:54Z

A regional campaign to finance a new arena officially launched Tuesday.

A coalition called "Here We Build" will work within a tight, 100-day deadline to evaluate what kind of financing mechanisms, fees or taxes might be used. While the list of 60 leaders is still being finalized this week, the coalition is expected to meet for the first time within about two weeks.

The group will be co-chaired by state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento, and State Sen. Ted Gaines, a Republican from Roseville. Steinberg called on the region to unite behind the campaign to boost jobs, economic development and pride in the greater Sacramento area.

"It's time for everyone to get on board," he said in a press conference Tuesday. "It's time after a decade of talk and of work to finally get this done for the future of our great region."

Steinberg, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and nearly 20 supporters – including Gaines and many others who will serve in the coalition – gathered at the California State Railroad Museum to make the announcement.

The event was held in a cavernous exhibit hall with huge locomotives serving as a backdrop to symbolize the same attitude that built the first transcontinental railroad with Sacramento as the western terminus, Johnson and other speakers said.

Participants will be recruited from throughout the six-county region and represent a range of political, government and business interests on what Steinberg described as a nonpartisan issue.

"This is an issue that brings Democrats and Republicans together. That connects organized labor and business. That brings together the city of Sacramento and the six-county region – because it means something to all of us: Jobs, civic needs and sports, which brings us all together," Steinberg said.

San Francisco political strategist Chris Lehane, who co-chaired a mayoral arena task force, will serve as the entity's executive director. He'll oversee public outreach and organize community forums on the issue.

Regional supporters first gathered on the issue in April during Sacramento's effort to keep the Kings from moving to Anaheim. Those at Tuesday's press conference included Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna, Yolo County Supervisor Jimmie Yee, West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon, Downtown Sacramento Partnership Executive Director Michael Ault, Pat Fong Kushida from the Sacramento Asian Chamber of Commerce, Willie Pelote of AFSCME International, arena task force co-chair Lina Fat, Sacramento City Councilman Steve Cohn and Sacramento City Councilwoman Angelique Ashby.

On May 2, the Kings' co-owners, the Maloofs, announced they would give Sacramento until next March to make real headway on an effort to build a new arena.

The coalition's task will be to determine within about three months how to fund a new arena in order to keep construction on track for a 2015 completion date presented to the City Council last week.

The coalition will need to identify revenue streams and how much of a public contribution would need to be made, while staying away from any type of general tax increase, Steinberg added later.

Its members will work with an arena development team headed by ICON Venue Group and David Taylor, the National Basketball Association and the Maloofs, Johnson said.

"The clock is ticking," he said. "We know there is a deadline looming of March 1, 2012."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Kings owners, NBA await arena next steps

2011-05-27T02:03:57Z

The Sacramento Kings' majority owners reacted positively to a new plan for a proposed $387 million arena project unveiled Thursday, but admitted they're anxious to see whether the plan can be turned into reality.

Developers told the Sacramento City Council a $241 million arena, with a total project cost of $387 million, could be built by early 2015 if a mix of public and private funding can be pulled together.

During a two-and-a-half-hour presentation, ICON Venue Group President Tim Romani, Sacramento developer David Taylor and others on an arena development team provided the public with many details of the plan.

Afterward, team co-owners Gavin and Joe Maloof told reporters they have a "very positive reaction" to the current prospects for building a new home for the Sacramento Kings.

"We have a lot better feeling now than we have in the past," Joe Maloof said in a press conference in the lobby of City Hall.

Acknowledging the plan as "a great first step," Gavin Maloof said the family is "anxiously looking forward to the next steps." He called on the region to help see the project get financed and built, rather than leaving an arena-building campaign to the city and Sacramento County as in earlier efforts.

"Hopefully we can get it done," Maloof said. "We need everyone's help. We need every single county to come forward to help in this effort. We need every city in this region to help out and come forward for this effort. It can't be done by one city and one county alone.

A 675,000-square-foot arena with 18,594 seats, 74 luxury suites, 2,080 premium and club seats and other amenities could be constructed, Romani said when the arena team presented an arena feasibility report at a special council meeting Thursday afternoon.

"We designed a building that we believe is right-sized for the market," Taylor told the City Council.

Power Balance Pavilion in Natomas, the current home of the Sacramento Kings, can seat up to 17,317 and has 30 luxury suites and 712 club seats.

The team also recommends that the public own the facility, Taylor said.

“We've got to make sure we protect our interests as a community,” he said.

The arena's construction is estimated to cost $241 million. Total project costs are estimated at nearly $387 million to include start-up expenses, sales and marketing, land acquisition and site development, design and other professional services, project administration, and more than $16 million in fees and permits applied by the city and other entities, Romani said.

Most arena projects around the country see permit costs of 1 percent, said Romani, adding the team was surprised to discover that.

The cost per square foot in 2013 would be $358, compared to an average of $362 per square foot for 12 other NBA arenas built recently, said Dale Koger, vice president and general manager of Turner Construction Sports.

“This building is exciting, it's efficient and it's very cost-effective," he said.

The developers couldn't provide the council with a list of financing options developed specifically for the Sacramento region Thursday after the Maloofs didn't turn over financial information until recently.

A location on city land in the downtown railyards is preferred. But city land in Natomas could also hold a new entertainment and sports complex where the National Basketball Association team would be the anchor tenant. About $3.4 million in site work costs could be saved if the facility is built in Natomas, Romani said.

Only three out of 30 NBA teams play in arenas that aren't located in downtowns.

"Every other team in the NBA does, in fact, play in a downtown-located facility. Clearly, the trend is there," Romani said.

The NBA-compliant arena has been designed to be compact and intimate and to comply with National Hockey League guidelines. The facility would also be integrated with plans for a regional transit center the city plans to build on adjacent railyards land, according to the team.

The arena's size, amenities and on-site practice facilities could change following dialogue with the Kings' owners, the Maloof family, and other stakeholders.

The owner of the arena would be a public entity, most likely a joint powers authority. Officials, developers and the Maloofs still need to discuss whether the Maloofs, the city or someone else would be the arena developer and/or operator. By including a third-party developer or operator, the possible sources of private funding would be bigger, according to the report.

Developers proposed Power Balance Pavilion be turned into an office complex. An appraiser hired by the team determined the 185 acres of city land there is worth between $8.5 million to $11.6 million today, but may double in value within three years, Taylor said.

Council members also reacted positively to the plan. Councilman Rob Fong noted he and others on the council have worked "long and hard" to get a new facility built.

"This is a great day for the city of Sacramento," Fong said. "We have never been (nearly) this far down the road."

The developers have put together a list of possible financing sources. They used information from five similar NBA markets to create the arena's design and programming.

In order for the arena to be completed by early 2015, the environmental review of the project must begin this summer and be completed by the summer of 2012, design must begin in September and construction must begin by January 2013.

The focus will now shift to how the facility will be paid for, Mayor Kevin Johnson said.

Under a 100-day plan, developers and government officials must come up with the financing model and funding options by August. Funding must be secured by the March 2012 deadline set by the NBA and the Maloofs, who agreed to keep the Kings in Sacramento until then to give the city time to work on the arena effort.

Several people applauded Johnson, the city and developers for their work on the feasibility study during the public hearing portion of the meeting. Downtown Sacramento Partnership Executive Director Michael Ault, Sacramento Convention & Visitors Bureau President Steve Hammond and Sacramento Metro Chamber President Matt Mahood were among a handful of people who made comments.

The NBA also reacted positively to the feasibility report. League officials are "encouraged" by the process that's been undertaken and the support for a new arena that's come from Johnson, business leaders and fans, NBA Commissioner David Stern later said.

"The focus now is moving forward in developing a public-private partnership financing model that will bring a new arena to fruition," Stern said in a prepared statement. "That is priority No. 1 in Sacramento for all of us.”

The facility could be finished in time for the 2014 NBA season if enough funding becomes available to speed up the process, Romani said.

"I'm here to tell you that all the key ingredients are here in Sacramento," Romani said. "Power Balance Pavilion has served the city well for the last 26 years. But clearly, its best days have come and gone."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter at The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Developers present arena plan details

2011-05-26T20:34:24Z

Developers say Sacramento could build a $241 million arena, with a total project cost of $387 million, by early 2015 if a mix of public and private funding can be pulled together, according to a feasibility report presented to the city Thursday.

The ICON-Taylor team says a 675,000-square-foot arena with 18,594 seats, 74 luxury suites, 2,080 premium and club seats and other amenities could be constructed.

Power Balance Pavilion in Natomas, the current home of the Sacramento Kings, can seat up to 17,317 and has 30 luxury suites and 712 club seats.

A location on city land in the downtown railyards is preferred, but city land in Natomas could also hold a new entertainment and sports complex where the National Basketball Association team would be the anchor tenant.

About $3.4 million in sitework costs could be saved if the facility were built in Natomas, according to the report being presented at a special City Council meeting Thursday afternoon.

The railyards site would present the most potential to "create jobs, activate downtown and enhance transit connectivity," the developers wrote in an executive summary. The "Natomas site (is) also feasible, but would mean Sacramento remains one of only three NBA cities with arenas not based in downtown areas."

The development team, which began making a presentation to the council at 1 p.m. Thursday, includes ICON Venue Group President Tim Romani, Sacramento developer David Taylor and representatives from the design firm Populous and Turner Construction. The group arrived at City Hall Thursday morning to do a dry run of the presentation.

The arena's size, amenities and on-site practice facilities could change following dialogue with the Kings' owners, the Maloof family, and other stakeholders.

The developers have put together a list of possible financing sources. They used information from five similar NBA markets to create the arena's design and programming.

The facility could be finished in time for the 2014 NBA season if enough funding becomes available to speed up the process, according to the report.

Plan for $386m arena lacks financing details

2011-05-26T01:28:58Z

Arena developers are expected to unveil plans to build a new Sacramento arena, reportedly at a cost of $386 million, at a special City Council meeting Thursday – but they're not sure how to finance it just yet.

The ICON-Taylor team will discuss the possible design, amenities, location and cost to construct an arena in a 1 p.m. presentation at City Hall.

The team's feasibility analysis determined that both public and private financing will be required for the project. Without either, the project wouldn't be feasible, according to a staff report released Wednesday.

Sacramento County voters rejected a plan to build a $600 million, 1 million-square-foot arena in 2006. The city also chose not to work with developers who proposed $600 million projects at a February 8 City Council meeting. The Icon-Taylor team is expected to reveal plans for an arena that is less than 700,000 square feet in size.

Arena supporters, including the Sacramento Kings' owners, are likely to have an easier time getting support for public financing because the new plan will be scaled down in cost and size, Sacramento City Councilman Rob Fong said Wednesday.

"If we're starting with a smaller number to begin with, the task is not as great," Fong said. "Anything we can do to make sure we're being efficient, I think, is a plus."

Despite repeated requests from the city, the Maloofs – who control a majority share of the team – didn't turn over revenue information until after announcing May 2 they would keep the team in Sacramento another year. The Maloofs reportedly turned over financial statements just last week.

The developers were given 90 days to study the viability of building a new arena in Sacramento. The deadline was later extended to May 26.

The team won't be able to provide the council with a list of financing options developed specifically for the Sacramento region as expected, according to the staff report.

"Given that the proprietary financial data of the Sacramento Kings was not made available to the ICON-Taylor team until 80 days into the analysis, coupled with the city's focus on addressing its fiscal year budget and the need to integrate regional components beyond the scope of the work plan, the feasibility study is confined to identifying an appropriate financing model and not providing a specific financing plan," staff wrote in the report.

The analysis is expected to include cost comparisons based on whether a new arena is built on city land at the downtown railyards or on land in Natomas adjacent to or on the site of the Kings' current home, Power Balance Pavilion.

City staff posted a graphic rendering of a swank new arena located in the railyards from global design firm Populous' graphic on the city website Wednesday afternoon. (Link to city website)

The council is being asked to give city staff 100 days to review the developers' study and then report back to the council.

The city manager will set up a technical review team of at least nine people, including the heads of several city departments, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, Sacramento Regional Transit, Sacramento County and sports facility consultants the city may hire to assist with the evaluation.

In February, at least two teams vying to develop a new arena estimated the cost to build an arena and surrounding infrastructure and supporting development such as hotels, restaurants and retail to be at least $600 million. The ICON-Taylor team was chosen to conduct a feasibility study after its leaders said they expected an arena wouldn't cost much more than $300 million.

Once the report has been presented to the city, staff will work with other government agencies in the area to develop financing options.

City Treasurer Russ Fehr said Wednesday he couldn't comment until the council directs staff to work on the project.

Former Kings star Chris Webber said early this month he's putting together a team of investors to fund a new arena. On Tuesday, a story surfaced saying Webber met recently in Sacramento with potential investors including Manny Pangilinan, chairman of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company and owner of two Philippine Basketball Association teams.

A tour of Power Balance Pavilion reportedly took place. Pangilinan was quoted by an English-language daily in the Phillipines, Cebu Daily News, saying he would want to own a majority stake in the Kings if he invests in the team.

The Maloofs could not be reached for comment. Representatives of Maloof Sports and Entertainment said they weren't aware of such a tour.

"I wouldn't comment on that," said Darrin May, executive director of media relations for the Kings.

Council members are eager to learn more about what an arena might cost and how it will be paid for, Councilman Kevin McCarty said.

"The overarching question ... is, what's the path to paying for that?" McCarty said. "I'm still waiting, and I think the rest of the city is waiting, too, to see what that looks like."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Arena report set for Thursday

2011-05-25T01:26:23Z

A new arena for Sacramento is likely to cost nearly $400 million and will likely have the Kings as tenants but not operators, the mayor said Tuesday.

The cost of the entire project, which would build a new arena from the ground up, is expected to be far lower than the $600 million proposed to build an arena in 2006 – partly because the recession has lowered construction costs and partly because the plans will call for a "smaller but yet world-class venue" of less than 700,000 square feet that fits the region's needs, according to Mayor Kevin Johnson.

Power Balance Pavilion, the Kings’ current home, is 442,000 square feet.

"The viability of this project happening in Sacramento is real," Johnson said in a press conference at City Hall. "We have the best in the business right now looking at it."

In a special City Council meeting set for Thursday afternoon, arena developers will present a report on a feasibility study that will outline the options that exist for building a new facility. The presentation will give council members and the public a first look at the study’s results.

The cost is still being finalized before the meeting, but the price will be under $400 million – somewhere between $350 million to $395 million, said Johnson, who dispelled recent reports the arena price tag will be $370 million.

"I don't think 370 is accurate. I actually haven't seen the final number. I've been told that's not an accurate number," he said. "I do think it will be under $400 million, which is important."

The ICON-Taylor development team will reveal the expected cost, possible revenue streams, financing options, location analysis, design, facility programming and timelines at 2 p.m. Thursday at City Hall. The developers have been working on the study since early February.

Johnson reiterated that a public-private partnership will be needed to pay for a new arena. Developers are putting together a variety of public financing options and types of partnerships to be considered.

After the feasibility study is presented to the council Thursday, developers and officials must start work to determine how much private money will be available to help pay for an arena and how much of a gap remains that may be filled by public financing.

Maloof Sports and Entertainment, which co-owns and controls the Kings, is likely to make a contribution to that partnership by being just the major tenant – and not the arena's year-round operator. If so, the city will need to find an arena operator, Johnson said.

Johnson said he's been talking with everyone who may be interested in playing a role in the arena effort, including Tim Leiweke, president of AEG, which owns and operates the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the Sprint Center in Kansas City and many other sports facilities.

City officials will be asked to decide whether to contribute land the city owns – most likely a site at the downtown railyards.

Next week, the mayor will announce a regional commission being pulled together to spearhead a campaign to build the arena. Johnson said it is too early to talk about what kind of contribution might be made from cities and counties in outlying areas.

The Maloofs announced May 2 that the Kings will remain in Sacramento another year. At that time, the Maloofs and the National Basketball Association set a March 1 deadline for the region to make a substantial effort to provide the team with a new home.

City officials hope to have arena financing and other issues solved by November or December, Johnson said.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Power Balance arena pros and cons

2011-05-20T23:50:37Z

Power Balance Pavilion isn't being passed by on concert tours or by the National Collegiate Athletic Association because of anything wrong with it physically.

The facility is good enough for Lady Gaga and Britney Spears to play there this spring and summer. The arena which has been the long-time home to the Sacramento Kings has many good points, according to people who've spent a lot of time there.

However, some big conventions and events, primarily religious conventions, have skipped Sacramento altogether because the arena isn't close to enough hotels.

Its money-making capacity is hindered by the smaller number of seats and luxury suites, compared to newer arenas.

Other problems exist because it is an aging arena that lacks opulence and more comfort, and it may not have been as well maintained as it could.

NCAA has no problems with Sacramento’s arena

City officials and business leaders have pointed to the fact that the NCAA basketball tournament hasn't played here since 2007 as proof the arena must not be good enough for the Kings.

NCAA basketball tournament rounds staged here in 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2007 sold out the arena. But the last time the Sacramento Sports Commission put in a bid to bring the tournament back – believed to be 2009 – Sacramento wasn't chosen.

City officials got no details about how that decision was made from the person who gave them the news, commission Executive Director John McCasey said.

"His comment was the city has to work on its arena issues," McCasey said. "They never ever had the courtesy to tell us why."

But the NCAA executive overseeing all championships said the basketball tournament has not returned simply because the honor of hosting the games must be rotated among cities. Sixty to 70 cities put in bids to host 12 basketball slots each year, said Greg Shaheen, the NCAA's interim executive vice president of championships and alliances.

Power Balance Pavilion has no physical or size limitations to the NCAA tournament playing there. In fact, the tournament doesn't even use NBA buildings for all the slots. Campus buildings and other sports facilities like the Honda Center in Anaheim have been used, said Shaheen, who visited what was then Arco Arena in 2002 and 2007.

When it comes to arenas, the needs of the tournament are not the same as the needs of the Kings, its permanent tenant, he added.

"It's not an apples to apples comparison," said Shaheen, adding the person who informed Sacramento about the lost NCAA bid was likely referring to the fact the NCAA was monitoring discussions about a new arena in Sacramento.

Seat capacity may be biggest challenge to concerts and shows

Concerts and other shows face challenges there because there's only one loading dock and extra riggers must be used to hang sound and lighting equipment from steel beams hanging from the ceiling at an angle to the stage.

Arenas are notoriously difficult places for sound reproduction. The sound at Power Balance is not as good as other facilities, but it's unclear whether that's because of the arena, the production company or people coming through on tour.

Bette Midler got fantastic sound there after sending an advanced sound specialist and Neil Diamond has played the arena many times, said Susie Owens, a stagehand who's helped set up and take down shows at the arena since it opened in November 1988.

Shows face bigger problems at other venues, primarily theaters. Many old vaudeville theaters are still being used for productions.

"I've worked in so many places that are so much worse than that and have so many ridiculous things that are still in operation," Owens said. "I just walk in and go, 'Oh mother of god – what are we doing here?' You literally have to put your show in with a shoehorn. At Arco, you just don't have to worry about that sort of stuff."

Dressing rooms are nothing special but that doesn’t stop people from touring there. The biggest obstacle to shows and possibly concerts is the arena only seats up to 17,317 people, said Owens, who helped load Cirque du Soleil in and out of the arena last weekend

Smaller shows usually go to bigger facilities to make enough money to cover tour costs, then extend tours and go to smaller venues only if they can.

Owens said she would like a new arena to be built out of self-interest – that's where she works – and so a wider variety of shows can be put on in a more comfortable environment with better sound. Power Balance has been a good investment that has served the region well, she said.

"I certainly understand why people don't want to spend the money that way – that people want to spend it on education, and when police and firefighters are showing up at the city council wanting to keep their jobs, you want to support them," she said.

Despite any problems, the arena is popular for concerts. Shows don't skip the arena because of any production issues, according to Live Nation Entertainment, whose subsidiaries include Ticket Master, Live Nation Concerts and an artist management company.

"The Power Balance arena is very widely used and continues to be a successful venue in the market," said Jodi Goodman, senior vice president of Northern California for Live Nation.

"Little stands in the way of shows playing Power Balance Pavilion if a tour has enough dates on their routing schedule for secondary markets. Sacramento is always at the top of the list."

More arena pros and cons

Representatives from Maloof Sports & Entertainment and the National Basketball Association were not available to comment on why they believe a new arena is needed in Sacramento or to provide a tour of Power Balance Pavilion.

Interviews with others touched on pros and cons of the existing facility.

The arena hasn't been well maintained over the years. Problems include smelly bathrooms; an outdated kitchen; uncomfortable, small plastic seats; and a small, broken-down visitor's locker room considered one of the worst in the league, said sports reporter Marty McNeal, who covered the Kings for The Sacramento Bee, where he worked from 1990-2009. He currently blogs on Marty Mac's World.

The Kings' locker room, however, was renovated six or seven years ago and is quite nice, he said.

Most modern arenas now have twice as many as luxury boxes as Power Balance Pavilion, which has 30.

Some people are fairly happy with the luxury suites, which come in two sizes. Some hold 26 people and some hold half that.

They have an intimate setting because they're small, close to other fans and each comes with a set of regular seats outside right in front of the box.

Suites have their own bathrooms, TVs and really good service – sometimes from just one person assigned to that box. They're not as isolated as luxury boxes at other arenas, said Doug Elmets, spokesman for Thunder Valley Casino Resort and its owner, the United Auburn Indian Community.

The tribe sponsors a luxury box at the arena and recently pledged $1 million toward the effort to stop the Kings from moving to Anaheim. Elmets previously worked for Arco and the oil company's arena suite was managed through his office.

"One of the real hidden benefits of the suites at Arco is it's much more intimate than I've experienced at other arenas," Elmets said. "It's rarified air but not too snobby."

He described the suites as beautiful but a little outdated. New arenas have more cushy and luxurious suites.

"They could certainly be more opulent," he said. "They're sufficient, but they are not opulent."

McNeal agreed, saying, "There's not a bit of opulence around that joint."

However, others said luxury boxes are "a bit tired" and small luxury boxes are cramped and awkward, making entertaining difficult. They're not laid out as well for viewing and acoustics could be better, said Tom Kandris, chief executive officer and managing director of American River Packaging, another of the 30 companies whose financial commitments to the Kings kept the team in town.

The first three rows of premium seats are right on the floor. That arrangement means other premium seats are close to the floor rather than set back like at other arenas, said Kandris, whose company has both premium seats and a luxury box.

Business executives like Kandris want to keep the Kings in Sacramento and see a new arena built because basketball games are good places to bring people together and build relationships with employees and customers. They also think having an NBA team and a new arena is a vital boost to the community's image, he said.

"A lot of business owners are not trying to save basketball per se. They're trying to create and enhance civic pride.... and show the community has spirit," Kandris said. "My love for the community is larger than my love of basketball."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

K Street Mall projects closer to groundbreaking

2011-05-20T04:48:53Z

Redevelopment projects for the 700 and 800 blocks of K Street cleared a final hurdle on their way to the Sacramento City Council when the city's Preservation Commission approved both Thursday night.

The commission called a special meeting to consider the final major design components after both projects were approved by the Planning Commission last week. A City Council vote of approval, which will be set for sometime in June, would mean groundbreaking could finally begin on two key blocks of K Street Mall that have long been eyesores.

The projects will add 337 mixed-income apartments in the downtown core, rehab the landmark Bel-Vue Apartments and restore all but one of the building façades on the south side of the 700 block of K Street. The projects were both approved unanimously by the five commissioners present.

Activists in the city's preservation and housing communities have worked long and hard for housing and historic preservation there. The community raised an outcry over a previous project that proposed tearing down the Bel-Vue, recalled Preservation Commission Chair Karen Jacques.

"Finally, we are going to see some really nice development on both the 700 and the 800 blocks of K Street. That's a huge boost for this city," she said. "Those two blocks have been a disaster for so long. With these projects, the historic buildings are getting saved."

The special meeting was held Thursday, rather than waiting for the commission's next scheduled meeting in June, to get the projects to the council as soon as possible. The projects may qualify for redevelopment funding that is at risk of being lost if Gov. Jerry Brown abolishes redevelopment agencies to help solve the state's budget woes.

No one is certain when that might happen. Some officials and developers fear it could be as soon as June 30.

In addition, developers want to get the projects under way to get lower bids during an economic downturn when little construction is taking place, said YHLA Architects principal Bob Lindley, who represented developers of the 800 block before the commission.

Commissioners also approved establishing a Preservation Commission subcommittee to meet with the developers of the 800 block: David Taylor Interests, Domus Development and the city's Redevelopment Agency, which is the property owner. The subcommittee will work with the developers on minor changes and was set up Thursday night to help expedite the project.

Plans for the 800 block are to rehab the landmark Bel-Vue Apartments at 1123 Eighth St. and integrate the historic property with a new addition and an adjacent new building at 800 K St., bringing 200 new or renovated apartments to the block. The entire project will contain 23,000 square feet of retail space.

The four-story 801 L St. building will be constructed as an addition to the three-story Bel-Vue. The combined structure will be nearly 82,000 square feet with 56 residential units and 11,000 square feet of retail and 10,000 square feet of ground-level parking.

The Bel-Vue building's ground-floor retail storefronts will be renovated and wrapped around the alley corner so that it faces the alley. The Bel-Vue's 26 apartments will be modernized, brought up to code and outfitted with bigger kitchens and bathrooms. Non-historic buildings will be demolished to make way for the new addition, which will feature a landscaped internal courtyard.

The corner of Eighth and K streets, which has long sat empty, will hold a nearly 193,000-square-foot, six-story building with 12,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, 144 apartments, a landscaped, internal courtyard and basement parking. The exterior of the 800 K St. building will be a modern interpretation of the Art Deco style.

For the 700 block, developers D & S Development, Inc., and CFY Development Inc. – led by David Miry, son Bay Miry and partner Steve Lebastchi, and Cyrus Youssefi and his son, Ali Youssefi – will build a six-story apartment building with 137 units and a parking garage that's nearly 28,000 square feet.

The backs of six buildings will be demolished to make way for construction of the apartment building. The number of apartments was decreased from 153 to incorporate the commission's earlier suggestions to make the rooftop and alley-facing exterior less flat, Ali Youssefi told the commission.

The project also would involve restoring all storefronts except one and turn 64,881 square feet of retail into a live music club, four restaurants with bars and shops. The block would feature sidewalk patio seating in front of nearly every ground-floor space, open-air mezzanines and rooftop decks for dining, bars or residential use.

Groundbreaking for work in the 700 block is expected to happen by the end of 2011 or early 2012. The project should be completed within two years, Youssefi said.

Groundbreaking for the 800 block project is expected to begin in early spring of 2012. The project should be completed by late 2013, said Ellen Warner, a partner at David S. Taylor Interests.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Chamber leader's legacy may be collaborative region

2011-05-18T00:41:20Z

Sacramento Metro Chamber President and CEO Matt Mahood leaves behind a more unified business community as he moves on to take over the helm of the San Jose chamber this summer, colleagues and associates said Tuesday.

Mahood, 45, has a reputation for being upbeat and optimistic, even as he's guided the chamber through the recession. He served as a dynamic leader for the organization and a spokesman for the region on local, state and national level s.

At 6 feet 7 inches, he towers over many of those he works with in business and politics. He's known for being thoughtful and having an even-handed way for approaching issues in the job he's held for nine years.

His most lasting legacy in Sacramento may be his work as a collaboration builder garnering support for crucial policy decisions and economic development efforts.

Mahood became a prominent leader in the effort to stop the Sacramento Kings from leaving and to rally regional support for a new arena. He led a push that gathered more than $10 million in financial support for the Kings from regional businesses if the team stayed another year.

"Matt was a force of nature," said PRIDE Industries President Mike Ziegler, who chaired the chamber's board when they hired Mahood in 2002. "He became a driving force to make this region a better place to live, work and play."

The San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce board voted Friday to hire Mahood as president and CEO of that organization. He will remain with the Sacramento Metro Chamber until at least the Fourth of July weekend.

An interim CEO will be chosen to guide the Sacramento Metro Chamber during the search for a new top executive.

As a 36-year-old hired by the chamber in 2002, Mahood didn't have any experience working at a chamber of commerce. But that was seen as an advantage by the chamber's search committee, Ziegler said.

Mahood had worked previously as vice president and general manager of grocery business Webvan.com and district manager at the shipping company BAX Global, as well as with UPS and FedEx.

He lived in Carmichael for four years as a child but mostly grew up in Pleasanton in the East Bay. Mahood is taking the job in San Jose partly so he can live closer to his mother, who just turned 80, and his three sisters. He said he'll miss taking his ski boat and wakeboard out on Folsom Lake with friends and family on hot summer days.

However, Mahood said he also wants to pursue fresh opportunities.

"Nine years is a long time to be in one place, especially at a chamber of commerce," he said. "I am ready for some new challenges in a new community."

Mahood was a champion for the region's economic development. He was instrumental in forging a good working relationship between the chamber, the Downtown Sacramento Partnership and the Sacramento Convention & Visitors Bureau, as well as area businesses and other business organizations, and then collaborating on mutually identified priorities, DSP Executive Director Michael Ault said.

"Matt did a tremendous job of not only managing and growing the chamber, but really building a coalition amongst area business organizations," Ault said.

Mahood will help launch the search process for his replacement. He said he's proud of the Metro Chamber's hard-working staff and volunteer leaders and their ability to reach the chamber's goals each year.

Although he'll be leaving, he said he'd like to see the Metro Chamber and its partners build a stronger, more positive "sense of self" and brand for the region after its image has been pummeled by being included on Forbes' list of "most miserable cities" and from stories about high foreclosure rates, unemployment and other government problems.

Mahood said he thinks cities and counties and some nonprofit organizations should collaborate more and even consider consolidating functions to become more efficient and bring taxpayers and other funders more return on investments. He said he'd also like to see the Metro Chamber and partners finalize and put out a regional economic development strategy based on good data, followed by an action plan that will create jobs.

"Housing and construction are not coming back anytime soon, and the state budget mess will continue to hit this region hard," he said.

Many people expressed sadness at Mahood's departure. Mayor Kevin Johnson described Mahood as a "champion" for the business community during the worst economy since the Depression.

"It's worth noting that his final achievement was playing a lead role in organizing the corporate and business community in the successful drive to keep the Kings and NBA in Sacramento," Johnson said in an emailed statement Tuesday. "Our community would not have been able to over-deliver on support and sponsorships without Matt's work, and we will surely miss his leadership."

The San Jose chamber is eagerly awaiting the new opportunities and direction a new president will bring, said the chamber's current president, Pat Dando.

"We also think Matt will bring strong leadership to the chamber – just looking at what his time with the Sacramento chamber produced," she said. "He seems to have a real knack for achieving a collaborative effort in the business community toward the common good."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Sacramento mayor stands in for Kings at NBA draft lottery

2011-05-17T00:58:35Z

The first time Kevin Johnson was involved in the National Basketball Association draft, he was passed over by the Sacramento Kings. Now mayor of Sacramento, Johnson will represent the Kings at the NBA draft lottery Tuesday.

The lottery will be televised on ESPN during a pregame show just before Tuesday night's playoff game in Dallas, when the Oklahoma City Thunder takes on the Dallas Mavericks in game one of the Western Conference finals. The draft lottery portion of the show, which determines the order for the NBA draft June 23, could begin as early as 5:10 p.m. Pacific time.

In 1987, Johnson was drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers, who got the seventh pick in the draft. The Sacramento Kings had the sixth pick and could have chosen him. Instead, they drafted Kenny Smith, now a commentator on TNT’s “Inside the NBA.”

Last week, the Maloof family, co-owners of the Kings, asked Johnson to stand in for the team after the former NBA All-Star-turned-politician led a full-court press to stop the team from moving to Anaheim. Johnson was honored to be asked to stand in for Sacramento when the league announces the draft pick order at the NBA Entertainment studio in Secaucus, N.J.

"He feels it's an exciting opportunity to not just represent the Kings, but to represent the city of Sacramento and the entire region," mayoral spokesman Joaquin McPeek said.

Johnson left for the East Coast over the weekend and could not be reached for comment.

He was asked to take part out of respect for him and the office of mayor, Kings co-owner Joe Maloof said Monday via spokesman Alex Sigua.

“We hope that he can bring some luck to New Jersey and get us that first pick, so we’re depending on him to get it done,” Maloof said.

The 14 teams that didn't make it into this season's playoffs participate in the NBA draft lottery.

The Kings tied with the New Jersey Nets for the fifth-worst record in the 2010/2011 season. The Kings won a coin toss and now have the fifth-best standing for getting one of the top three picks, team spokesman Troy Hanson said shortly before flying to New Jersey for the event.

The actual lottery will be held in a back room, with one person from each team sitting in to watch the process. John Kehriotis, a limited partner in the Kings, will represent the team in those proceedings.

During the televised portion, NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver will then unveil the draft order in reverse from 14 to one. Johnson will take a ceremonial role and sit in the Kings' position during that part of the process.

Teams are usually represented by the team president or general manager. However, a player or former player, team owners, executives and coaches have also held the honor. But team owners can choose others to represent the teams as well.The Kings recently had a season ticket holder represent them at the draft lottery.

A draft lottery event for season ticket holders will be held at the Crest Theatre, 1013 K St., Tuesday. Joe Maloof, guard Marcus Thornton, Head Coach Paul Westphal and Player Personnel Director Jerry Reynolds are expected to take part. Doors open at 4:30 p.m.

For luck in the draft lottery, the Catholic Maloof said he’s doing a nine-prayer Novena.

“A good friend of mine in Memphis, Tenn., calls me every day and we do a prayer each day for nine days,” Maloof said. “My mother taught me about the prayers many, many years ago. I’ve used them ever since and every once in a while, those Novena prayers come through.”

The team’s dismal standing this year will also help.

"All the teams have chances based on the win-loss record. The more losses you have, the better odds you will have a better pick," NBA spokesman Jon Hammond said.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Mayor tapped for NBA draft lottery at Kings rally

2011-05-11T05:49:27Z

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson will represent the Kings at the National Basketball Association draft lottery next week, team owners and the mayor announced at a Tuesday rally.

Johnson and developers representing the ICON-Taylor arena team will meet in Las Vegas Wednesday with George Maloof, whose family controls a majority share of the team, to discuss the arena project. The Maloof family owns the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.

On stage at a Kings rally in Cesar Chavez Plaza, Gavin and Joe Maloof asked the former NBA All-Star player to step up for them next Tuesday at the draft lottery at the NBA Entertainment studio in Secaucus, N.J.

"I accept! I accept! I accept!" Johnson yelled into a microphone, his shouts reverberating from speakers and echoing off the walls of the Citizen Hotel, California Environmental Public Agency headquarters, Park Tower and historic City Hall in downtown Sacramento.

Sacramento’s mayor led a regional effort to keep the Kings in Sacramento – making a case to keep the team to the NBA Board of Governors in New York and persuading the league to send a team to gather more information in April. The Maloofs announced May 2 the team would stay in Sacramento for at least another year.

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, Kings Head Coach Paul Westphal and former star Kings players including Doug Christie, Bobby Jackson and Scot Pollard joined Johnson and the Maloofs on stage at the rally's climax.

As many as 6,500 fans turned out to support the Kings and catch glimpses of the players, according to figures provided by the NBA.

Fans like Laurie Fredricks of Midtown, Anna Ampania of Roseville and Edward Leon of Sacramento said they'd like to see a new arena replace Power Balance Pavilion and would even support a tax increase to see that happen.

"I'm a major Kings fan," said Fredricks, who had never been to an NBA game until moving to Sacramento in 2000. She fell in love with the Kings and pro basketball after seeing them play at Arco Arena.

"This town cannot lose the one major sports franchise we have," she said.

Fans who gathered in the park heard Christie, Jackson and Pollard tell stories about games and watched game clips on a 20-foot by 12-foot screen. Kings mascot Slamson, Kings PA announcer Scott Moak and many more also entertained the crowd.

Many on stage spoke about Sacramento Kings fan loyalty and the need to push ahead to get a new arena built. Kings legend Chris Webber, who has said publicly he's working on a plan to get private investors for the arena, riled up the crowd with a videotaped appearance shown just before the mayor and the Maloofs took the stage.

"The world heard you," Webber told fans. "Let them know we will not lose our team. Go Sacramento!"

The meeting in Las Vegas will be the first between the ICON-Taylor team, which is preparing an arena feasibility study for the city, and George Maloof, who is overseeing the arena effort for the family. NBA attorney Harvey Benjamin and Johnson will take part in the meeting.

The city needs hard data from the Maloofs for the arena feasibility study. The brothers said previously they would share revenue information if the team stayed in Sacramento for the 2011/12 season. However, Johnson's staff could not say whether Maloof will turn over financial statements at the meeting Wednesday.

The NBA and the Maloofs are planning special events to promote the team and ticket sales in May and June. An event may be held during the Second Saturday Art Walk and possibly the draft lottery.

Current season ticket holders have until June 3 to renew their season tickets. An open house to allow new season ticket buyers to choose their seats will be held June 8 and 9. New season ticket buyers must make $100 deposits per seat, said Chris Granger, executive vice president of the NBA's Team Marketing and Business Operations.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

"Jane's Walk" Urban Planning Walks

2011-05-04T05:27:47Z

Sacramento Jane’s Walk 2011: Saturday, May 7 and Sunday, May 8

Jane’s Walk USA is a series of free neighborhood walking tours that helps put people in touch with their environment and with each other, by bridging social and geographic gaps and creating a space for cities to discover themselves. Since its inception in 2007, Jane’s Walk has happened in cities across North America, and is growing internationally. Sacramento’s Jane’s Walk series incorporates elements of urban planning, neighborhood advocacy, urban history, and architectural history, to demonstrate how a neighborhood’s physical form promotes its walkability, sustainability and economic and social vitality. All tours are free of charge; show up at the starting point at the designated time in comfortable walking shoes. No RSVP is necessary.

In 2010, Sacramento's first Jane's Walk series took place on May 1 with four simultaneous tours. This year, five total tours are being held over two days; except for the Oak Park and Southside Park tours, the tours are held at different times, so people can attend more than one.

Sacramento Jane’s Walk Schedule

Saturday, May 7

Alkali Flat
10 AM – Noon
Tour Guide: Luis Sumpter, Sacramento Old City Association Board Member
Starting Point: Shine Coffee, 1400 E Street
SOCA and Alkali Flat Neighborhood Association board member Luis Sumpter will lead a tour of Sacramento’s oldest surviving residential neighborhood, Alkali Flat. This tour will visit local architectural landmarks, neighborhood businesses, adaptive reuse projects, and new mixed-use projects under construction.

Midtown
2 PM – 4 PM
Tour Guide: William Burg, Sacramento Old City Association Board Member
Starting Point: Mondo Bizarro, 1827 I Street
William Burg, historian and author of Sacramento’s Streetcars, will guide this tour of Midtown’s mixed-use business corridors and adjacent residential neighborhoods, from the days of Sutter through the streetcar era to the present day. The tour will focus on walkability, transit, mixed-use neighborhoods, and Midtown’s legacy as a regional epicenter of creativity and art.

Sunday, May 8

Southside Park
10 AM-Noon
Tour Guide: William Burg, Sacramento Old City Association Board Member
Starting Point: Callahan Bandstand, 7th and T Street, Southside Park
William Burg, historian and author of Sacramento’s Southside Park, will lead this tour, focusing on the neighborhood’s rich cultural diversity, transportation, landscape and urban design, neighborhood activism, and adaptation to changing neighborhood roles.

Central Oak Park Walking Tour
10 AM-Noon
Tour Guide: Tom Sumpter, Oak Park Neighborhood Association
Starting Point: Guild Theater, 2828 35th Street
Neighborhood activist Tom Sumpter will lead a tour of Oak Park’s historic business district along Broadway and nearby landmarks, designed by Sacramento State geography professor Robin Datel and using a tour brochure published by the Center for Sacramento History.

Downtown: From the Railroad Tracks to the Civic Center
2 PM – 4 PM
Tour Guide: Melisa Gaudreau, Sacramento Heritage Inc. Board Member
Starting Point: Sacramento City Hall, 915 I Street
Historic architect Melisa Gaudreau will lead a tour of downtown Sacramento, focusing on Sacramento Heritage Inc.’s new tour of the Civic Center area along H, I and J Street between the historic Southern Pacific passenger depot and City Hall.

About Jane’s Walks
Jane’s Walk USA honors the legacy and ideas of urban activist and writer Jane Jacobs who championed the interests of local residents and pedestrians over a car-centered approach to planning. Jane’s Walk USA helps knit people together into a strong and resourceful community, instilling belonging and encouraging civic leadership.

All Jane’s Walk USA tours are given and taken for free. These walks are led by anyone who has an interest in the neighborhoods where they live, work or hang out. They are not always about architecture and heritage, and offer a more personal take on the local culture, the social history and the planning issues faced by the residents. Jane Jacobs believed strongly that local residents understood best how their neighborhood works, and what is needed to strengthen and improve them. Jane’s Walks are meant to be fun, engaged and participatory – everyone’s got a story and they’re usually keen to share it.

Thousands of people have taken part in a Jane’s Walk USA. Past walks have explored a wide range of urban landscapes, from social housing slated for redevelopment to areas with a rich architectural and cultural heritage, to teen hangouts and secret gardens. Walks are led by individuals and small groups. Some are focused around historical themes more than geographical areas, for instance, some strolls have been built around ideas like the history of the bicycle, gay and lesbian history, places of relevance to the homeless, the history of ‘skid row’, and urgent planning matters facing certain neighborhoods.

About the Sacramento Old City Association
The Sacramento Old City Association promotes actions that preserve and enhance a high quality of life for Central City residents, businesses, working people and visitors. The organization works to achieve balanced and harmonious relationships among residential, commercial and employment uses in the Central City. To achieve these goals the Sacramento Old City Association works to:

•Increase public awareness of the irreplaceable historic, architectural and cultural resources of the Central City
•Gather and disseminate information useful in the preservation of structures and neighborhoods of Sacramento.
•Advocate the policies and positions of the organization to the appropriate public agencies and private parties.
•Build and strengthen coalitions with other organizations working to achieve similar goals.
•Promote a quality urban environment through the encouragement of compatibly designed and constructed housing, commercial and office buildings.

For More Information about Jane's Walk or the Sacramento Old City Association:

http://www.sacoldcity.org
http://janeswalkusa.wordpress.com/

Disclosure: William Burg is a board member of the Sacramento Old City Association.

Chris Webber, NBA amp up aid for Kings and arena

2011-05-04T00:58:03Z

Forces now allied behind the Sacramento Kings gathered steam Tuesday in their collective bid to build a more successful team and move the region closer to constructing a new arena.

That effort will be aided by retired Kings player Chris Webber, who said on television Monday night he's lined up private investors to fund a new arena in place of taxpayers.

"Within the year, we're going to make some special things happen," Webber said on TNT's "Inside the NBA." "The goal is to keep the team there."

Webber hinted about his involvement on Twitter Monday after the Kings' owners announced they'd leave the team here for at least one year to give Sacramento more time to pursue building a new sports and entertainment facility.

"SACRAMENTO! It's true! One more year!" Webber tweeted. "But trust me! We are working to make it a lifetime!"

Webber has told Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson in recent conversations he wants to be involved. But they're still figuring out what form that might take, Johnson said in a press conference at City Hall Tuesday.

"He's going to play some role," Johnson said.

Nine staffers from the National Basketball Association arrived in Sacramento Tuesday. They immediately began working at Power Balance Pavilion on the Maloofs' priorities: season ticket sales and corporate sponsorships, Kings spokesman Troy Hanson said.

"They hit the ground running in assisting with all avenues of business operations," he said.

Maloof Sports & Entertainment launched a hiring blitz of more than 20 people as sales kicked off for season tickets Monday night. Demand has been strong since then, said Hanson, who did not provide details.

Meetings are being set up with the NBA, the Maloofs, arena developers, regional elected officials and Kings’ corporate sponsors to continue building on the momentum and energy unleashed in Sacramento in the effort to keep the team from moving to Anaheim, Johnson said.

"Our attitude today is we can't let up," Johnson said.

He expects to meet with the NBA this week. The mayor also said he plans to meet this week or next with the Maloofs. His top priority: getting financial statements from the Kings' last four years. The city of Sacramento and the ICON-Taylor development team needs the information for an arena feasibility study due to be completed by May 26.

They've sought the information for months, but the Maloofs held off while making a decision about whether to move to Anaheim.

That meeting couldn't be confirmed by Hanson.

Support from NBA staff on the ground in Sacramento helps the Maloofs' organization fill holes left by staff who jumped ship over the last year, and especially in the last month or two, before the decision was made about Anaheim.

NBA personnel will give the Maloofs the capacity to be "aggressive" with ticket and suite sales and corporate sponsorships for the 2011/2012 season, which begins in October, Johnson said.

Some NBA staff may work here for just a week or two, while a few may stay far longer, he said.

The NBA has agreed to support a move by the team if sufficient progress isn't made on replacing Power Balance Pavilion by March 1, 2012.

The arena study should be able to propose contribution levels and pinpoint possible gaps in available funding as soon as May 26 but no later than July, Johnson said.

The NBA will be involved in establishing the level of contribution by the Maloofs. Many basketball teams contribute financially to new arenas by signing long-term leases, as NBA Commissioner David Stern said Monday.

Johnson said he will tell the Maloofs they'll need to participate in "a real way" in the public/private partnership that’s expected to be needed to finance a new arena.

"It's got to be real, where our community feels it," he said.

NBA officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Sacramento Kings to stay another year

2011-05-03T01:03:12Z

The owners of the Sacramento Kings announced Monday the team will stay put for at least one more season – giving the region and the National Basketball Association time for one final push to build a new arena.

NBA officials quickly announced a commitment to make one last effort over the next 10 months to pave the way to replace Power Balance Pavilion. The league is sending nine people to Sacramento Tuesday to provide expert support in the regional effort to construct a new arena and to help the Kings' owners, the Maloofs, lead the team to a successful next season, NBA Commissioner David Stern said in a teleconference Monday afternoon.

Kings fans, elected officials and business leaders reveled in the news after such an outcome seemed impossible roughly two weeks earlier, when Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson appeared before National Basketball Association team owners to argue the case for keeping the Kings here. At that time, the team's move to Anaheim seemed certain.

On Monday morning, more than 125 people turned out for a celebratory press conference outside City Hall.

"This is one of the proudest moments in my life because the community believed when no one else did," Johnson said. "This was our playoffs. And Anaheim: We won!"

Video by Brandon Darnell.

An outpouring of support for the team from Johnson, state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, regional elected officials, the business community and Kings fans convinced the NBA and the Maloofs to give the region until March 1, 2012, to make a substantial effort to provide a new home for the Kings, Stern said.

"We came away with a strong sense that this was worth the additional year because it seemed to us to be so important that the leaders of Sacramento ... would not allow the opportunity to pass without getting it done," said Stern, who had talked personally with Johnson and Steinberg about the current level of support for a new arena. "We are feeling pretty good about the prospects here."

Sacramento officials will need to present solid information about design, funding and timelines by then. However, if regional support for arena construction can't be galvanized and a plan isn't finalized by next spring, that will be the league's last effort to get an arena built here.

NBA officials, including members of the league's Relocation Committee, told the Maloofs the league would then support their decision to move "wherever they choose to go" in 2012/13, he said.

The Maloofs had a deadline to file a request to move the team by 5 p.m. Eastern time Monday.

In an announcement emailed shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, the Maloofs said fan support and Johnson's push to get a new arena built were instrumental in their decision not to ask the league for permission to move.

"The fans’ spirit and energy, specifically our season ticket holders, has been remarkable and we are truly thankful for their loyalty," they said in the prepared statement. "We also are greatly appreciative of the support from our corporate sponsors as well as other local businesses that have come forward in recent weeks."

The Maloofs weren't available to respond to questions following the announcement, a Kings spokesman said.

Local business leaders committed more than $10.2 million in financial support for the Kings if the team stayed another year.

The NBA didn't have to do any "arm-twisting" to get the Maloofs to stay one more year. Relocation Committee members suggested to the Maloofs that they'd support a move in a year if they agreed to stay but the effort proved unsuccessful, Stern said.

The decision to keep the team in the state capital came after an NBA fact-finding visit here in the last two weeks. Billionaire Henry Samueli, whose company Anaheim Arena Management manages Anaheim's Honda Center, upped the ante in his bid to lure the team to Anaheim.

He offered to provide a personal loan of at least $75 million to the Maloofs and personally invest more than $70 million for improvements at the Honda Center.

Officials with the city of Anaheim and Anaheim Arena Management, owned by Samueli, are disappointed by the decision. But they will continue their effort to bring the NBA there soon, they said in emailed statements.

“The bottom line is this: The final chapter has not been written," Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait said. "Anaheim will continue to move forward and we remain optimistic to one day welcoming professional basketball to Anaheim.”

Anaheim Arena Management Chairman Michael Schulman added, "We are continuing our pursuit of an NBA team for our venue.... We look forward to securing a franchise for area fans in the very near future.”

Billionaire Ron Burkle's interest in buying the Kings to keep the team in Sacramento – or buying another team if they left – helped keep the region in the game in the eyes of the NBA, Johnson said.

Burkle and the Burkle Group are still interested in being part owners of the Kings. No discussion has been set up with the Maloofs since the decision to remain in Sacramento was announced, but the family knows how to get in touch with the group, San Francisco investor Darius Anderson said following the press conference.

"We would love to be here as part of the ownership group," said Anderson, who took part in the press conference.

In one year, the Maloofs will want to see a "critical path" laid to build a new arena. But ground doesn't need to be broken by then, Johnson said.

Building a new arena for Kings games, big concerts and other events would be catalytic for development downtown, especially in the railyards, Westfield Downtown Plaza and K Street Mall, said Johnson, describing the issue as “bigger than basketball."

"If we go forward and build a sports and entertainment complex, it's going to prove to all of us that we can find a way to make big things happen," he said. "We always felt like this could be a turning point for our community and our region working together.”

Johnson wasn’t the only person who appeared to be all smiles at the press conference. Developer David Taylor, who is working on an arena feasibility study for the city, Assistant City Manager John Dangberg and Sacramento Metro Chamber President Matt Mahood also beamed.

Johnson described Steinberg, also at the press conference, as a “scrappy fighter” who worked “in the trenches with us all along the way.” The two leaders communicated constantly throughout the weekend.

Sacramento City Council members are ready to start meeting to determine how to build an arena, Councilman Rob Fong said at the press conference.

The Maloofs called Johnson early Monday morning to tell him about their decision and say they’re committed to working with the city for the next year. The mayor will meet with the Maloofs this week to talk about how to move forward.

The arena feasibility study is expected to be completed by the end of May. Officials will then present options for public/private financing of the arena to the community so an arena can be built and the Kings never leave, Johnson said.

Chris Granger, executive vice president of the NBA's Team Marketing and Business Operations, senior NBA communications advisor Brian McIntyre and seven others from the NBA will arrive in Sacramento by Tuesday. No meetings have been finalized with the mayor’s office, Johnson’s staff said.

They will provide all the support they can to the Maloofs. They will work in “all aspects” of team operations, including marketing, finance, ticket sales and corporate sponsorship. They’ll also work with politicians, planners and others during a campaign to build a new arena, Stern said.

Stern said he considers it a failure for the NBA to lose any market, especially one as supportive as Sacramento.

It would be fair if the Maloofs and anyone else who’s watched the team’s efforts to build a new arena over the last 10 years are skeptical that it can get done this time. Still, NBA officials and staff will provide all the support they can to see if this “shared vision” can become reality, he said.

"If not, then it will be our shared failure,” Stern said.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

DWB: Before the BIG news

2011-05-02T20:19:41Z

Before the events of this weekend were overtaken by Sunday night's historic news of Bin Laden's assassination, and then immediately by this morning's local news of the Maloofs' decision not to leave for Anaheim (yet), this weekend was already pretty great.

Downtown and Midtown were bumpin' all weekend. I spent a lot of it on my bike, morning, noon and night, and I was not alone. I felt like I was in Sacramento future. But in fact, I was in Sacramento NOW.

Despite terrible news early last week - Sacramento's job market is clearly, measurably the worst in the country, our new budget may have to cut public safety in a way we've never done, and our air quality is Top 10 worst in the nation - it was a great weekend to be in Sactown.

The media, including Sacramento Press, was fixated on the Mobile Food Festival, which was a success. No, not just a success: It was a SUCCESS!! There were people everywhere, on bikes, in lines hundreds long, in traffic backed up all over the area around Fremont Park, and eating in neighboring restaurants that reported 50-100 percent increases in business.

It was a clear message to our "Footloose" mentality City Council and other regulators of civic behavior that we're a grown up city, and we don't need (and our businesses don't need) to be protected from competition or "roaches" or whatever they think they're protecting us (or some of us) from.

As Sacramento Press community contributor Lindol French put it:

“SactoMoFo was an emphatic repudiation of the draconian mobile food restrictions imposed upon us by our elected delegates. Basically, we voted 10,000 to 0 that Measure 5.68 is a crock. We're here and we're hungry, and we don't need our city council to protect us from cheap and delicious street food."

The council should rescind Measure 5.68 immediately. Restauranteurs who feel the heat from food trucks might want to start one or two of their own. Mai Pham of Star Ginger already has plans to do this. Others should follow suit. Free enterprise, remember? In any case, grabbing a bao or tiny burger is an entirely different thing than sitting down for a three course meal. Apples and oranges.

But that wasn't all that was going on in the Grid. Friday night I did an informal study of local restaurants (creepily peering through windows, sorry diners!), and found that while a few were more or less full, most were not. And it wasn't mobile food that was doing it. It was the high price of a nice meal out. We're in a new economy, and that was very clear on a Friday night in the Grid.

Midtown, especially J Street, was busy enough, but nothing worth noting. At that point, I thought the weekend was going to be typically quiet.

But then I went, of all places, to K Street Mall downtown. It was sick with people. People walking from the Kevin Hart's show at the Community Center Theatre, people lined up to get into Dive Bar and Pizza Rock, people eating dessert at Ambrosia Cafe and GoGi tacos at 15th and L.

It was amazing. The main source of the foot traffic was the California Democratic Party's annual convention, which drew a lot of people, as well as the Hart show. But there were also Cindo De Mayo events, a protest or two at the Capitol, and good (if a bit windy) weather. It was a great night to be out and about, and it lasted through the weekend.

Sacramento can be this more often. We have something to offer. We are a destination: A lot of those people were from out of town, and my bet is that they'll say nice things about Sacramento to their friends back home. Six months ago, that may well not have been the case.

A lot of people are working to make this community better, however they define that. And as bad as the news has been lately, it was encouraging to see life being lived on the streets, by locals and tourists and conventioneers.

Let's keep it going. It can work. It TAKES work. But the end result, a vibrant city full of people out and about, eating, drinking, talking and enjoying our central city, is worth every bit of it.

And let's get rid of the silly ordinance.

DWB: OK, breathe

2011-05-02T18:54:09Z

George Maloof's comment this morning that keeping the Kings in Sacramento for one more year is "the right thing to do" struck me as disingenuous.

Since when is "doing the right thing" the way the Maloofs operate? This was not a decision based on principle. It was based on money, and a lot of other things far beyond the M-Bro's control. They simply weren't able to pull the move off. Yet.

That said, this morning's announcement that the Kings will be staying in Sacramento is unalloyed good news. Whether or not the Kings staying in Sacramento is ultimately the "right" thing for Sacramento is still up in the air; but today, it is very much a good thing.

Whether that remains true going forward depends on a lot of things coming together.

We still need a decent arena; the Maloofs still need to get their finances together and start spending money on the team; and there is a lot of resentment at the Maloofs for their handling of this. They have a lot of fence-mending to do.

A few things have come out of this dramatic, constantly-changing story of the last few weeks, months and even years:

One: Sacramento loves the Kings. I have taken heat for saying that Sacramento would recover from their loss, and I still believe that, but it was in no way a good thing that they would leave. Having a pro team brings a city many advantages, from tangible to intangible.

Two: Sacramento does NOT love the Maloofs, and the NBA doesn't seem exactly enamored of them, either. Once they've got their finances figured out, assuming they can, the M-Bros need to hire an exceptionally good publicity team and go on a charm offensive the likes of which this town has never seen. At least for a year.

Three: Mayor Kevin Johnson stepped up. Like him or loathe him, and there are many in both camps, the guy worked tirelessly to make sure that Sacramento did not lose the Kings. He led. There are many things a leader must do, and being the mayor of Sacramento comes with a lot of complicating factors.

But Johnson climbed into the bully pulpit, starting talking and cajoling and reaching out to the business community, and he didn't stop until the deal was done - or undone. And he introduced some new possibilities in terms of ownership and corporate support. So give the man some credit: He was a credible, passionate and tireless voice for Sacramento, which is what he has always claimed to be. He was mayoral.

Four: A new arena remains the key to this whole thing. Those who say we don't need one basically don't know what they're talking about. An arena also remains a key to downtown Sacramento's future. Without an arena, Kings or no, we are less than a second-tier city, and it will come back to haunt us in many different ways.

Sacramento will get its best vision of how that can be done when the Taylor/ICON group delivers its analysis of the ways to get to an arena built later this month. Most likely, it will have to include public funding. This is the sort of things public money is for: Infrastructure.

But even George Maloof sounded doubtful about that this morning. "Is it even right to ask people to pay for it?" he asked rhetorically in The Bee this morning. It is a question that will get a lot of play, and a lot of opinion, before it is settled.

But one thing is very clear now: Without a new arena, the Kings are gone, next year, with the NBA's blessing. Sacramento has a lot of work to do, and a lot to talk about. We need to figure out what we want to be. There will be even more name calling and speculation and conflict over this than we've already had.

But this morning, the news is good: Sacramento, the Kings and a new arena all got a reprieve, and that is good news. Onward.

Kings to stay in Sacramento – for now

2011-05-02T16:32:28Z

The owners of the Sacramento Kings have decided to keep the team here for at least the next season, they announced Monday morning.

The team's owners, led by the Maloof family had a deadline of 2 p.m. Monday to file a request to move the team.

In an announcement emailed shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, the Maloofs said fan support and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson's push to get a new arena built were instrumental in the decision.

National Basketball Association officials have indicated they will support the team moving next year if a new arena cannot be built to replace Power Balance Pavilion.

"However, if an arena plan cannot be finalized in a timely fashion, the NBA’s relocation committee has assured Maloof Sports and Entertainment that it will support an application to move the franchise to another market starting in 2012-13,” the statement said.

The team's owners have no plans to hold a press conference, said a Kings spokesman.

Johnson said Friday local officials hoped a regionally coordinated effort to build a new arena would make enough of a difference that the National Basketball Association and the Maloofs would not move the team to Anaheim for at least a year, giving the region a chance to move forward with the city's arena effort.

Johnson has scheduled a press conference for 11 a.m. at City Hall, 915 I St.

The decision to keep the team in the state capital came after an NBA fact-finding visit here in the last two weeks.

Last week, billionaire Henry Samueli, whose company manages Anaheim's Honda Center, upped the ante when he offered to personally invest more than $70 million for improvements at Anaheim's Honda Center and provide a personal loan of at least $75 million to the Maloofs.

The Sacramento Press will report on the mayor’s press conference later today.

Kings decision coming down to wire

2011-04-30T00:52:29Z

With just three days to go before the Kings' deadline to file for relocation, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson said Friday he's not sure who has the ball – but Sacramento officials hope a regionally coordinated effort to build an arena will make enough of a difference that the National Basketball Association and the Kings' owners keep the team here another year.

Billionaire Henry Samueli, whose company manages Anaheim's Honda Center, upped the ante Wednesday when he offered to personally invest more than $70 million for improvements at the Honda Center and provide a personal loan of at least $75 million to the Maloofs.

Samueli, who owns the Anaheim Ducks hockey team, also revealed $30 million - $40 million in corporate commitments for the Kings and a six-year TV contract worth $144 million from several networks, an Anaheim Arena Management spokesman confirmed.

Since then, billionaire Pittsburgh Penguins co-owner Ron Burkle hasn't come forward with any additional financial incentives to keep the team in Sacramento. Johnson said he thinks the Maloofs haven't "engaged" with Burkle to discuss his desire to buy the Kings, but he doesn't know if the Kings' majority owners might be interested in talking with Burkle if the team stays in Sacramento.

Friday afternoon, Johnson described himself and other officials as "hopeful" and "cautiously optimistic" the team will remain here. The Kings' owners, the Maloofs, are facing more of a fight in their effort to relocate the team than expected, he added in a press conference after a meeting with regional elected officials.

"I think it's pretty clear that they're in a situation where it's not as easy to go to Anaheim as maybe they thought it would be before, and that Sacramento has put forth an attractive alternative or counter-proposal," Johnson said after the meeting at Sacramento Area Council of Governments headquarters. "Money can't buy you the love that I think our community has shown this franchise over the last 26 years."

The Maloofs have a deadline of 2 p.m. Monday to file a request to move the team, Kings spokesman Troy Hanson said.

Samueli and other Anaheim Arena Management officials haven't talked with the NBA since Wednesday, when a conference call was held with the Maloofs.

The NBA's Relocation Committee, chaired by Oklahoma City Thunder owner Clay Bennett, has gathered information about both Sacramento and Anaheim as markets for the Kings. Some of that information was collected by Bennett and others on a fact-finding mission that began here last week.

The committee will report its finding to the NBA Board of Governors only if the Maloofs file a relocation request. The board then has 120 days to vote on relocation, sources said.

NBA officials would not discuss the relocation request process.

About 30 people – the majority of them elected officials – gathered at SACOG Friday morning to get an update from Sacramento's mayor on Kings developments. Attendees included Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna; mayors from Folsom, Elk Grove and Yuba City; Sacramento City Councilmen Steve Cohn, Rob Fong and Jay Schenirer; Downtown Sacramento Partnership Executive Director Michael Ault; and representatives from state and U.S. elected officials.

Sacramento Developer David Taylor also attended the meeting. He told the elected officials Friday that his company and ICON Venue Group have "all the pieces in place" to finish an analysis of how to build and finance a new arena, but they need another month to complete it.

If the Kings stay, regular regional meetings will be held to focus on replacing Power Balance Pavilion with a bigger arena.

Taylor discussed the need to build an arena that fits the Sacramento region’s market. That may mean a 650,000-square-foot arena. That would replace Power Balance Pavilion, which seats up to 17,317 people in 442,000 square feet. Originally called Arco Arena, the facility opened in 1988 at a cost of $40 million.

Johnson said he believes a collaboration by the region's six counties and 22 cities give Sacramento an advantage in a new effort to build an arena.

"It's the regional leadership and coordination of us working together (that) will be one of the things that is going to help us get the ball across the finish line as it comes to a new sports and entertainment complex," he said.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Folllow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

NBA considers Kings' fate

2011-04-29T00:42:23Z

The National Basketball Association apparently continued weighing Sacramento and Anaheim as markets for the Kings Thursday.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson jumped off a stage to take a phone call at a groundbreaking ceremony for railyards railroad track relocation Thursday morning. He later said he wouldn't comment on whether the call came from NBA Commissioner David Stern.

Shortly after finishing the call, Johnson told reporters he didn't have any word on a Kings decision, from either Stern or Oklahoma City Thunder owner Clay Bennett, who chairs the league's Relocation Committee.

"I have not gotten an update," said Johnson, who described the call as "private." "I haven't heard from Clay Bennett."

Johnson said he believes the Relocation Committee met Wednesday. NBA representatives also reportedly had a conference call with the Maloofs and Anaheim Arena Management officials Wednesday. NBA officials would not confirm either the meeting or the call. Anaheim city officials weren't involved in the phone call. Kings representatives and Anaheim Arena Management could not be reached for comment.

However, the mayor said he was aware NBA representatives are "still talking to both sides" before making a decision that's expected to be announced by Monday. That's also the deadline for the Kings' owners, the Maloofs, to file a relocation request with the NBA.

The mayor has invited regional elected officials back for an update on the Kings at 11 a.m. Friday at the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, 1415 L St.

NBA officials won't comment on whether the Maloofs still have a choice about staying in Sacramento for at least a year following a successful signature collection drive by politically connected Sacramentans.

A firm hired by Sacramento political consultant Rob Stutzman and former City Councilman Robbie Waters on behalf of the Committee to Save the Kings said this week enough signatures have been gathered to stop Anaheim from issuing $75 million in bonds to help the Kings move for at least a year. The bonds can't be issued until approved by voters in a special election or the next scheduled election in June 2012.

On Thursday, the sentiment and uncertainty in Anaheim echoed that of Sacramento. Officials in both cities used nearly the same words to say they’ve done everything they can and now are just waiting for a decision.

"You can't do any more than we've done," Johnson said, standing in the railyards near what could be the future site of a new arena. "It's in the league's hands at this point."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

River District tour held

2011-04-23T02:08:56Z

The American Institute of Architects' Central Valley chapter this week led a panel discussion and tour in the River District, described by some as one of the region’s hottest areas.

The roughly 773-acre River District, previously known as the Richards Boulevard area, sits north of downtown in an area bounded by the Sacramento and American rivers, the historic railyards and parcels along North 16th Street. More than 200 property owners hold title to about 400 parcels located there.

The discussion featured Township 9 developer Steve Goodwin, Sacramento Economic Development Department Senior Project Manager Rachel Hazelwood, Community Development Department Senior Urban Designer Greg Taylor and California Lottery Deputy Director Terry Murphy.

The panelists discussed the history, development and future of an area recently called one of the region's hottest districts.

"This year, you're going to see so much development going on in this area," said Goodwin, president of the River District board of directors. "It's taken a lot of time. It's taken a lot of effort. I think the city's going to be proud of what we've accomplished in terms of planning for the future of this area."

The size of the River District is about the same size as a chunk of north Portland from the Pearl District to University Park. The 5.77-miles length of waterfront in the district surpasses one of San Francisco's most popular in the area of the Embarcadero, Taylor said.

The River District currently has about 386 residential units. Within 25 years, that could grow to 8,144 units, Hazelwood said.

"It's going to be a future hot spot," said event organizer Carla Collins of MatriScope Engineering. Collins chairs the Young Leaders Group Committee for the Urban Land Institute Sacramento.

Those attending the event then broke into groups to tour three new landmark projects under construction: the new Lottery campus and the Greyhound bus terminal, and to learn about landscape architecture plans at the site of the future Township 9. Planners, designers and builders met groups at each site to lead tours.

Township 9

The 65-acre Township 9 site will feature a six-acre riverfront park and a linear parkway on North Seventh Street.

The park will include an outdoor amphitheater and plants that recreate natural habitat for wildlife. The linear parkway will contain a fountain and watercourse that ends in a retainment pond. A road running along the existing levee and the park will make the American River in that area more accessible to the public. Construction on the project's first building is expected to start this year, said Jeff Townsend with Jacobs Engineering.

California State Lottery Building and Campus

Newly transplanted palm trees and other plants currently dominate a 10,500-square-foot outdoor plaza at the new California State Lottery Building on North 10th St. But the plaza will also include water features and retail.

The greenery contrasts with the modern glass curtain exterior covering the main building. The campus includes a prominent, glass-enclosed drawing room and a pavilion for Lottery Commission hearings and public meetings.

The new headquarters will include environmentally friendly features such as solar panels and drought-tolerant, low-maintenance vegetation on some roofs. Inside, offices were placed at the core of the building, and worker cubicles were placed near windows to maximize natural light, said Curtis Owyang with LPAS Architecture & Design.

Greyhound Terminal

The temporary Greyhound bus terminal on Richards Boulevard is a pre-engineered metal building being constructed for $5 million with the idea that it can be reused for another purpose or dismantled and moved after it's no longer needed in Sacramento. The building is expected to be used as a terminal for 10 - 15 years.

Inside, the roughly 10,000-square-foot terminal has three sections: a 4,000-square-foot main lobby; an administration area with ticketing and baggage services; and an area with food service and restrooms.

Buses will line up behind the building, which will have a landscaped front entrance for passengers but no public parking lot. Parking may be added later. A soft opening may be held in July, said Craig Stradley of Mogavero Notestine Associates.

NBA group rolls into Sacramento this week

2011-04-18T23:00:45Z

A National Basketball Association committee will arrive in Sacramento this week to study the possibility of keeping the Kings here.

Reports surfaced Monday that a group of six would be coming here Tuesday to get more information about new financial support for the Kings. On Friday at the NBA Board of Governors meeting in New York, NBA Commissioner David Stern said team owners agreed to learn more about corporate sponsorships and other money that may be available to help the Kings make more money in Sacramento.

The only information that could be confirmed was that Oklahoma City Thunder owner Clay Bennett, who chairs the board's Relocation Committee, and NBA Executive Counsel Harvey Benjamin will be here Thursday and Friday, according to Tim Frank, the NBA's senior vice president of basketball communications.

An agenda has not been set yet, he said.

The Maloof family, which owns or controls a majority share of the Sacramento Kings, has been exploring a possible move to Anaheim. Last week, the NBA Board of Governors agreed to a second deadline extension for the Maloofs to seek permission to move – from April 18 to May 2.

Mayor Kevin Johnson's office is still working out meeting logistics with the NBA.

"We're putting together the details for the upcoming meetings," mayoral spokesman Joaquin McPeek said.

At least $7 million in commitments for corporate sponsorships and suite revenues were made to Johnson and business leaders including Sacramento Metro Chamber President and Chief Executive Officer Matthew Mahood shortly before the NBA Board of Governors meeting, which was held last Thursday and Friday.

The money was raised as Kings fans, Sacramento business leaders and Johnson and other city officials rally around various efforts to stop the Kings from going to Anaheim. A drive to collect about 10,000 Anaheim resident signatures and possibly block more than $75 million in bonds to help the Kings to move is going "very well" and is more than half way to its goal, said Kellen Arno of Arno Political Consultants in Carlsbad.

On Thursday, Johnson also told the NBA billionaire Pittsburgh Penguins co-owner Ron Burkle and San Francisco investor Darius Anderson would like to buy the Kings or help the city draw another pro basketball team if the Kings move.

Mahood and others with the Metro Chamber continue to search for new corporate sponsors and suite holders to bring the Kings new revenue.

“The Sacramento Metro Chamber is currently working with the mayor’s office in the ongoing effort to demonstrate that Sacramento has been and will continue to be a viable NBA market for the Sacramento Kings," Mahood said in a prepared statement Monday.

Staff reporter Brandon Darnell contributed to this report. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for the Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

NBA takes more time to study Kings move

2011-04-15T23:53:49Z

Sacramento Kings fans will have to keep holding their breath over a possible team move after a National Basketball Association official on Friday said the league needs time to learn more about the unfolding deal in Anaheim and the viability of keeping the team in the capital.

The NBA Board of Governors agreed to extend the deadline for the Maloofs’ request to move until May 2.

On Thursday, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and San Francisco investor Darius Anderson told NBA team owners that billionaire Pittsburgh Penguins co-owner Ron Burkle is leading a plan to buy the Kings or help bring another pro basketball team here if the Kings leave.

Johnson also said he and business leaders have raised commitments for at least $7 million in corporate sponsorships and suite revenues in the last week to create "significant immediate additional revenues" for the Kings, according to the mayor's office.

NBA team owners want to know more about the money available to help the Kings "better compete" and improve economic performance next year in Sacramento if the team stays, NBA Commissioner David Stern said at a press conference in New York Friday.

"Mayor Johnson came in and said ... there will be lots of additional dollars available that would improve the Kings’ performance, the Kings’ economic performance, in Sacramento, if they stay, and that the community had recently been mobilized, and was in a position to (help keep) them there for the coming season," Stern said. "The other things were to find out what the mayor was referring to with respect to additional revenue opportunities that would allow the team to better compete next year and be economically feasible."

While Burkle has a "good reputation," Stern said the sale of the Kings or drawing another team to Sacramento wasn't high on the league's list of priorities.

The key to keeping the NBA in Sacramento is a new arena. Power Balance Pavilion is so inadequate the National Collegiate Athletic Association won't bring its basketball tournament back there, he said.

"The issue first and foremost in Sacramento is whether there's the will and the ability to build a new arena for an NBA team and the other events...." Stern said. "The mayor's vision is for a downtown arena as part of a major redevelopment of 230 acres. You know, we don't know if that's real or a pie in the sky. We don't know whether we can find that out in a couple of weeks, but we are going to knock ourselves out to do it."

A team led by Colorado arena builder ICON Venue Group President Tim Romani and Sacramento developer David Taylor are expected to complete an arena feasibility study in early May.

Stern indicated Johnson's "business-like approach" and thorough presentation about Sacramento's strengths as an NBA market and the current effort to build a new arena were instrumental in getting the league to ask for more time to study the two locations.

Members of the NBA Board of Governors Relocation and Finance Advisory committees are expected to meet with Johnson and Sacramento business leaders to get more concrete information.

Several efforts to keep the Kings or the NBA in Sacramento and to fund a new arena are under way, with new developments still taking place, Sacramento Metro Chamber President and Chief Executive Officer Matthew Mahood said Friday.

“The Sacramento region’s business community has demonstrated substantial interest in stepping up to ensure we remain viable as an NBA market, with or without the Sacramento Kings," Mahood said in a prepared statement. "Over the course of the next few weeks, we look forward to further defining the business community’s support and commitments."

The idea to extend the relocation request deadline a second time came from NBA Board of Governors Chairman Glen Taylor, who owns the Minnesota Timberwolves; Oklahoma City Thunder owner Clay Bennett, who chairs the board's Relocation Committee; and the Maloofs.

In a teleconference late Friday afternoon, Johnson said the extension signals the game isn't over in Sacramento yet.

"I'm encouraged by the delay. I'm also encouraged by the fact that the NBA is going to send a team out to investigate the potential of Sacramento," he said. "I'm not declaring victory by any means."

Members of the two committees also want more time to look into the proposed deal between the Kings and Anaheim, especially after the terms of the deal were revised over the last few days. They need more information about loans and investments, television revenue and construction plans that could help increase expected revenue at Anaheim's Honda Center. They also would need to determine the Kings' relocation fee, Stern said.

Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait issued a statement Friday afternoon saying his community is "primed and ready" to welcome a basketball team.

“We understand that the relocation committee is balancing a variety of issues as they make this decision and have decided to take a little more time," he said. "We remain hopeful and optimistic that the NBA will have a franchise playing at Anaheim’s Honda Center in the near future."

The Kings have enough time to move even after the relocation request deadline was extended. The committees’ members are likely to believe Southern California can support three NBA teams, Stern said during the press conference.

"The committee thought that it would be a good idea to do a little bit more fact-finding and determine how this will ultimately play out," Stern said. "There's no agenda here – just to make sure that something as important to all parties as the transfer of a team to another city and the attempts of that city to keep that team was fully understood, fully briefed."

The NBA has declined requests for more information about the relocation vote process.

Neither Anderson nor Burkle could be reached Friday to comment further on plans to buy the Kings or another basketball team. The Maloofs and billionaire Henry Samueli, who owns Anaheim Arena Management, which operates Anaheim's Honda Center, would not comment Friday.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Go Time: Sacramento vs. Anaheim at NBA meeting

2011-04-14T00:37:34Z

In the world of professional basketball, Northern California is set to take on Southern California in two heated matchups over the next 24 hours. Only one of the competitions will take place on a basketball court.

Representatives from Sacramento and Anaheim are expected to appear before the National Basketball Association Board of Governors Thursday to discuss a Kings move to Anaheim and the future of basketball in Sacramento – just hours after the Sacramento Kings are set to go up against the Los Angeles Lakers at Power Balance Pavilion Wednesday night.

At the same time, different groups are working on efforts to keep the Kings in Sacramento or form an ownership group for a new team if the Kings leave. The Kings must file a request to move by April 18.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson planned to attend the Kings' last game of the regular 2010/2011 season, mayoral spokesman Joaquin McPeek said.

That could also be their last home game in Sacramento if the team moves to Anaheim before next season.

After the game, Johnson will fly to New York for a pivotal meeting involving the fate of the Kings. Johnson and Tim Romani, president of Colorado arena builder ICON Venue Group, are scheduled to address the board Thursday, McPeek said.

The mayor will stress the city's commitment to the Kings and construction of a new arena, as well as a move to find financial backers to bring a new team here if needed. Romani will update other NBA team owners on the effort to build a new arena, according to McPeek and the mayor's blog.

"The message will be brief, simple and honest: Sacramento has been a terrific NBA city," Johnson wrote in his blog Tuesday night. "We deserve a chance to maintain our place among other elite cities, if not with the Kings, then with another franchise."

The Maloofs, who own a majority share of the Kings, will also address the board. But whether they will formally request to move the team remained unclear Wednesday. The Maloofs won't comment on their plans, said Troy Hanson, vice president of media relations for the Kings.

"They're making a presentation to the board of governors tomorrow," Hanson said. "That doesn't (necessarily) mean that they file for relocation."

Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait and City Manager Tom Wood will focus on Anaheim in their comments to the board. They will likely tell the NBA the city is ready for a pro basketball team, and its Honda Center was built for two professional teams, said Ruth Ruiz, spokeswoman for the Anaheim city manager's office.

Billionaire Henry Samueli, president of Anaheim Arena Management, and other company representatives are also expected to attend.

A group called the Committee to Save the Kings has collected more than half of the roughly 10,000 signatures needed from Anaheim residents to possibly block $75 million in bonds to help the Kings move to Anaheim.

The Anaheim City Council agreed to issue the bonds on March 29. But a successful signature collection drive could force the issue to be decided by voters in June 2012 – which might block the Kings' relocation.

Tuesday night, former Kings player Chris Webber announced on TNT's postgame show he's involved in a separate effort to keep the Kings in Sacramento.

Others involved in that effort include Greg Van Dusen, who helped bring the Kings to Sacramento and later served as the team's executive vice president; Arco Arena architect Rann Haight; Tom Peterson, the Kings' former food and beverage vice president later put in charge of strategy and quality control for Maloof Sports and Entertainment; banker John Cassidy of Yuba City; and investment specialist Roger Stewart of Coeur D'Alene, Idaho.

Stewart represents an investment group that's attempting to acquire the $77 million bond debt the Maloofs owe the city, in exchange for control or ownership of Power Balance Pavilion and surrounding land. However, the details of such an acquisition would still need to be worked out with the city, the county and the Maloofs, Van Dusen said Wednesday.

The arena and land is currently owned by Sacramento taxpayers.

Webber surprised the group Tuesday night after he discussed the ongoing effort on national TV. Webber has told them he's willing to help lead a move to keep the Kings, Van Dusen said.

"He has the kind of charisma" needed to garner support, Van Dusen said. "The most spectacular years of his tremendous career were here in Sacramento. He has great passion for our community. He's willing to put his money where his heart is – which is a blessing for us."

Stewart is still reaching out to more potential investors. The Kings have indicated they're not interested in playing in a renovated arena. But the group believes one option could be to renovate the old Arco Arena, at least until a new arena can be built, Van Dusen said.

"If they have the chance to pull this off, it has the opportunity to buy us some time and be a real game-changer," he said.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

City considers cost savings with pension plan changes

2011-04-13T04:02:01Z

The Sacramento City Council is expected to consider cost-cutting changes to employee benefits and how they are managed in the next few weeks after an internal audit report moved forward Tuesday.

Recommendations for ways to save money are being made as the city grapples with an expected budget deficit of $35 million - $40 million for fiscal year 2011/2012. The four members of the City Council Audit Committee voted unanimously to forward a report on the completed Audit of Employee Health and Pension Benefits to the full council in as soon as two or three weeks.

City Auditor Jorge Oseguera gave a brief presentation on the report's five findings and some of its 28 recommendations to help solve issues determined by the audit. One of the findings indicates that the city's growing costs for employee pensions could be reduced if the city shares pension costs with all employees.

One recommendation would require police, fire and management personnel to pay into their retirement funds for the first time – which could save the city about $40 million over the next five years. Some committee members indicated after the meeting that they would consider supporting such a change in pension contributions.

However, employee contribution rates are set in labor contracts, so changes in employee contributions and the exact rates would have to be negotiated with labor unions.

"That's probably where we have to go," Committee Chair Steve Cohn said after the meeting at City Hall. "I think most of our labor unions understand that will be on the table. We're not trying to do a Wisconsin here where we impose things unilaterally."

City Councilman Jay Schenirer, Councilwoman Angelique Ashby and Councilman Darrell Fong are the other committee members.

Employee Pension Contributions

Like more than 1,500 other local public agencies statewide, the city of Sacramento has a contract with the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) to provide pension benefits to city employees after retirement. Contributions typically come from both employers and employees, according to the report.

The city's annual contribution toward pensions grew from $29 million in 2004/2005 to nearly $45 million in 2009/2010 – a total increase of more than 50 percent. Pension contribution increases have grown more quickly than city revenue, which decreased slightly year to year from 2004/2005 to 2008/2009, according to the report.

"The city's pension costs have increased over the last several years," Oseguera told the committee. "Unfortunately, those costs are projected to continue to increase well into the future."

The report recommends management, fire and police personnel who have not been contributing to their pensions now start contributing 4 percent, and management support employees who've contributed 2 percent also now pay 4 percent – the same rate as all other employees.

Sacramento employees are divided into two groups: safety workers (most fire and police department employees) and miscellaneous workers (most other employees, including managers).

For most miscellaneous employees, the city pays 14 percent for each employee's pension contribution, which includes 3 or 5 percent of what would normally be the employee's total 7 percent contribution – while the employee pays 4 or 2 percent to make up the difference.

However, exempt management, fire, police and other safety employees have not paid any contributions toward retirement pensions. The city has paid both the employer and employee contributions for those groups.

The total city contribution for these employees is also higher, ranging from about 18 percent for exempt management to nearly 32 percent for fire, police and other safety employees.

Such a change is expected to save the city an average of $7.9 million a year, or $39.7 million total, over the next five years, according to the report.

Representatives of firefighters, retired city employees and management not currently represented by a labor union raised questions and concerns and gave recommendations.

The audit didn't include comparative data from all six cities that it's required to, based on city population: San Francisco, Oakland, Fresno, Santa Ana, Anaheim and Long Beach, said former city Labor Relations Director Dee Contreras, who's leading efforts to unionize 677 employees including managers and administrative staff.

Dick Mayberry, who represents Sacramento Area Fire Fighters Local 522, said the city and unions agreed the city would pick up the employees’ pension contribution in lieu of raises because making pension contributions cost less in the long run.

"It wasn't a gift," he said. "That was arranged as a benefit to the city."

Mayor Kevin Johnson recognizes cost-cutting measures are needed, according to his staff in a phone interview Monday. But it remains unclear whether he would support police and fire employees making contributions to their retirement benefits.

"Public safety is our top priority. In general, we have to look at opportunities to create savings across the board," mayoral spokesman Joaquin McPeek said."We must pursue them aggressively."

Joan Bryant, director of public employees for Stationary Engineers Local 39, said she agrees with the audit's findings. She thinks non-unionized managers and police and fire personnel who don't pay for retirement have an unfair advantage over other city employees. Requiring them to contribute to their retirement funds would show there isn't "favoritism" for those employees, she said Monday in a phone interview.

"If the city were to have this group of safety employees paying a portion of their retirement, it certainly would boost the morale of the people we represent," said Bryant, whose union represents about 1,400 city employees.

Committee members also agreed that Cohn should discuss with city staff when the report should go before the council in order to give city auditor staff time to respond to concerns raised Tuesday and to coordinate a possible decision with action on the city budget. Cohn will also talk with the city attorney and others to determine if any of the issues involving labor negotiations or legal strategy need to be discussed in closed session.

Schenirer said he doesn't know how much of a contribution safety and management personnel might be asked to make to their pensions. But the city can't gloss over impacts to people's lives as it works to find answers to its financial problems, he said.

"When you're facing a $40 million deficit, we're out of easy fixes," he said. But "Those are our employees. They're human beings. Those are not just numbers. We have to think about what's behind the numbers and how that affects individuals."

Staff reporter Kathleen Haley contributed to this report. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Railyards preferred for new courthouse

2011-04-12T22:43:24Z

A project advisory group on Tuesday endorsed a site on the edge of the downtown railyards for the location of a new criminal courthouse.

The group, which includes representatives from the city and county of Sacramento and the courts, would like to see the $439 million courthouse built on the block between Fifth and Sixth streets from H to G streets. The group prefers that location over a vacant lot at 300 Capitol Mall, according to the Judicial Council's Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC).

City and business leaders have previously voiced support for the railyards location because it's close to other courthouses, law offices, law enforcement and public transportation.

The 44-courtroom facility is being built to relieve crowding at Gordon Schaber county courthouse, used by the Superior Court of Sacramento County. The building may be up to 16 stories tall. Presiding Judge Steve White of the Superior Court of Sacramento County said the endorsement moves the system a step closer to having a "modern, efficient and workable" courthouse.

“Our present courthouse, which is almost 50 years old, is much too small and inadequate to handle the large volume of criminal cases being tried," he said in a prepared statement. "Those using this old, insecure facility have suffered too long with an inadequate, overcrowded and badly designed courthouse.”

The site currently holds a parking lot and railroad tracks that are being relocated by the city as part of a project to build a new regional transportation center.

The AOC will hold a public hearing on the draft environmental impact report at 5:30 p.m. May 4 in the Dept. 1 courtroom at Schaber courthouse, 720 Ninth St. The AOC is accepting public comments on the draft environmental impact report through May 24.

The AOC must complete the environmental review process, negotiate for site acquisition and win approval from the State Public Works Board before the site can be bought and design can start. Nacht & Lewis Architects of Sacramento and HOK of St. Louis, Mo., have been chosen to design the courthouse.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson is "pleased" the railyards site was identified as the preferred location for the courthouse. The location will benefit both the city and the court, he said.

"The project will represent a major investment in Sacramento and serve as a catalyst for future development, as well as provide the court with an ideal location to operate effectively and efficiently,” Johnson said in a prepared statement.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Mayor to address NBA; city still in dark about arena's future

2011-04-01T03:03:43Z

The Sacramento Kings’ owners won’t be the only ones talking about their possible departure with the National Basketball Association next month. Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson will be there, too, the mayor said Thursday.

Johnson announced he has been granted permission to address the NBA Board of Governors at their meeting in mid-April – just days before the Kings’ deadline to file a relocation request.

He expects to take “a contingent of Sacramentans” to New York with him to help explain that Sacramento would like to continue its partnership with the Kings and is seriously pursuing construction of a new arena, he blogged Thursday evening.

“They will want to know about possibilities of a new arena in Sacramento, and whether after all these years, our community can finally deliver,” he wrote. “But the bottom line is, the opportunity to speak straight to the NBA is a huge step for our community.”

With the Sacramento Kings' departure looming over the region, the city is facing at least two possibilities that depend on whether the team pays off a $77 million debt or defaults.

City officials have not yet been able to discuss a possible compromise with the Maloofs, who own a majority stake in the Kings.

There has been little dialogue between the Maloofs and the city regarding the team's plans to resolve the debt and the arena's future if the Kings leave. However, the Maloofs did indicate this week to Mayor Kevin Johnson they'd repay the debt.

"We are encouraged that they've said they will do what's in the best interests of the city," Assistant City Manager John Dangberg said Thursday.

Two outcomes are outlined in agreements established between the city and the Kings in 1997, when the city sold $73,725,000 in lease revenue bonds to refinance the Kings' debt on Arco Arena, recently renamed Power Balance Pavilion. The city then bought the arena from the Kings and set the team up on a 30-year plan to repay the debt through lease payments made to the city.

Two Possible Outcomes

The Maloofs bought a majority share of the Kings in 1999 and in acquiring the Kings also acquired the debt.

Under those agreements, if the Kings leave now, they must pay off a $77 million debt – which includes a roughly $10 million early payment penalty – and Maloof Sports and Entertainment will then own the city's aging arena.

But if the Maloofs default on the debt, that leaves the city to pay back the bond holders. If that were to happen, the city of Sacramento would get a $25 million stake in the team and retain full ownership of the arena, a practice facility and 85 acres of land there.

The city would owe about $67 million if it doesn't make an early payoff within the next seven years. The city would hire an arena operator to manage Power Balance Pavilion and bring concerts, shows and other events there, rather than operate the arena, Dangberg said.

"The city doesn't have the capacity to operate the facility," he said.

The Maloofs could still turn over operation of the facility to the city if they pay off their debt and continue to own the arena after leaving Sacramento. City officials hope the Maloofs would give the city control over operations there, Dangberg said.

"Our assumption is they would continue to operate the facility. That's not an obligation or a guarantee," he said. "So that's what we are eager to sit down and discuss with them – the future operation of that facility."

However, countless compromises could be negotiated between the city and the Kings.

Other Scenarios

The city could retain arena ownership, and the Kings could offer to pay cash for the difference between the value of the arena, which the city has not had appraised, and land and their $77 million debt. If the city operates the arena or hires an arena operator, the city would receive revenue needed to continue paying the debt service on the bonds, Sacramento City Councilman Steve Cohn said.

In another scenario, the Kings could pay back the $77 million and then sell the property to someone who wants to use the facility or land for a purpose other than an arena, he said.

Cohn and other city officials have said the Kings have made every payment on their loan since 1997.

“Right now, I just want to emphasize, we have no reason to believe they are going to default,” Cohn said.

The city hasn't spent money to get the value of the arena and land appraised, which is "a lengthy process," Dangberg said.

Within the last few days, the Assessment Appeals Board for Sacramento County lowered a 2008/2009 assessed value of Arco Arena and the land it sits on, which impacts its current assessment, said Assistant County Assessor John Solie.

The board expects the assessed value of the parcel will be $33 million - $35 million for 2010/11, he said. Three other involved parcels are assessed at a total of $5,185,000.

In late February, the Kings asked for an extension on the NBA's March 1 deadline for relocation requests for next season.

On Tuesday, the Anaheim City Council made a Kings move easier by agreeing to issue $75 million in bonds – $25 million to improve the Honda Center and build a practice facility and $50 million for a loan to the Kings.

Anaheim Arena Management, which operates the Anaheim-owned Honda Center, could not be reached for comment on a contract with the Kings.

The NBA granted the extension, giving the team until April 18 to file a request for relocation. However, the April 18 deadline may be to seek approval to study relocation.

It remains unclear whether the Kings will request relocation before or during a meeting of the NBA Board of Governors April 14 or 15, or later.

The relocation request may be a two-step process involving two separate NBA Board of Governor meetings. At the April meeting, the Kings may first announce they're pursuing relocation to Anaheim and ask for permission to explore the opportunity.

They may request relocation later. That request would likely be voted on in a different meeting.

Neither the NBA nor the Kings would discuss the timing or the process for the Kings' relocation request and the NBA Board of Governors' vote on that request.

"The Kings have not applied at this point, so there is no timeframe," Tim Frank, senior vice president for NBA basketball communications, said in an email Thursday.

"As far as the board meeting, all we know at this point is that Kings ownership wants to discuss this situation with the board. There is no other information I have at this time," he added. "I have no idea what will happen until we see if they apply or not."

Staff reporter Kathleen Haley contributed to this report. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @Suzanne Hurt.

Sacramento wants Kings promise, NBA backing

2011-03-31T02:50:26Z

The city of Sacramento fired off another round of letters Wednesday in an attempt to stop the Sacramento Kings from moving or at least get assurances in writing that they'll repay a $77 million loan from the city.

A day after the Anaheim City Council approved issuing $75 million in lease revenue bonds to entice the team to relocate, Sacramento officials sent a letter to the King s requesting the team's owners promise in writing to repay Sacramento.

Assistant City Manager John Dangberg also sent a letter to National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern and the NBA Board of Governors. Dangberg wrote that the city is asking the board to make its approval of the team's relocation contingent upon the Kings paying its debt.

"In recent weeks, the Kings have taken steps and made statements that indicate it would be prudent and appropriate for the city to request that the Kings now put in writing the assurance" owner George Maloof has made publicly, but not to the city, Dangberg said in the letter.

None of the Maloofs wished to comment Wednesday. But on Tuesday, Kings owner Joe Maloof issued a statement to the media calling the loan from Sacramento a "non-issue."

"We’ve always paid our financial obligations in the past, we’re going to do it in the present and we’re going to do it in the future," Maloof said in the statement. "Whatever the future holds to ensure the long-term viability of the team, the city of Sacramento will be paid in full.”

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson also said Tuesday that the Maloofs personally assured him on Monday they would pay off their debt.

The city could sue the Kings for breach of contract if they fail to pay off the debt and any other outstanding obligations. But city officials are making these requests in an effort to follow standard business protocol as the team’s owners make a serious effort to leave, city spokesman Maurice Chaney said.

“I think we just want to take some reasonable precautions to protect the taxpayers of Sacramento,” he said. “The Maloofs have been very great owners. The comments they made are encouraging.”

NBA representatives could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Anaheim approves $75 million in bonds for Kings, Honda Center

2011-03-30T05:28:52Z

In less than two hours Tuesday night, the Anaheim City Council paved the way for the Sacramento Kings to relocate there by agreeing to issue $75 million in bonds – $25 million to improve the Honda Center and $50 million for a loan to the Kings.

The council's unanimous vote by its five members propelled Sacramento further on its path toward losing the National Basketball Association team that has made its home in the state capital for 26 years.

Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait presided over what he described as a historic meeting.

"Tonight, Anahiem took a giant step closer to bringing an NBA team to Anaheim and the Honda Center," Tait said. "I am thrilled. I think a better word is 'stoked.' "

The council's move was supported by many in Anaheim and Orange County's business community, who spoke during a public hearing that preceded the vote. Neither the Kings' owners, the Maloofs, nor Anaheim Arena Management owner, billionaire Henry Samueli, spoke at the meeting at Anaheim City Hall.

Anaheim Arena Management later issued a statement saying the council's vote was sure to be seen favorably by the NBA board of directors, which is expected to vote April 14 or 15 on a request from the Kings to relocate. The Kings must file a request for relocation by April 18.

“We are grateful to the entire leadership group of the city of Anaheim, who tonight fully endorsed our shared efforts to bring an NBA franchise to the region,” Michael Schulman, chairman of Anaheim Arena Management, said in the prepared statement. "This vote is an important first step as we continue working toward hosting an NBA franchise at Honda Center.”

The loan to the Kings is expected to cover the team’s moving costs, which include a hefty relocation fee from the NBA.

The bonds will be issued only if the team and Anaheim Arena Management sign a venue contract within 180 days and the team relocates, Anaheim spokeswoman Ruth Ruiz confirmed.

The Kings' name was never mentioned Tuesday during consecutive meetings of the Anaheim City Council and the city's Public Financing Authority. The authority, consisting of the same members as the council, also approved authorizing the bond issuance and the terms.

The taxable lease revenue bonds will be issued by the Anaheim Public Financing Authority and financed by three private investment companies. Anaheim and its taxpayers won't be obligated to repay the bonds under any circumstances, Anaheim Finance Director Bob Wingenroth said.

The bonds have a 10-year term, and investors will be reimbursed from arena revenue over that period.

The agreement requires the team name to include "Anaheim," rather than "Orange County" or any other location identifier.

The council's decision ignored a request made Monday by Sacramento city officials that Anaheim drop the financing plan and stop negotiating with the Kings. Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson indicated Tuesday afternoon he wouldn't oppose the team's move if the Maloofs repay $77 million in lease revenue bonds owed to Sacramento – and the Maloofs assured him Monday that they would.

Johnson also said the Maloofs may agree to let the city run Power Balance Pavilion after paying off the loan. The Maloofs agreed to be "good partners" and do what is in the city's best interest, Johnson said during a press conference in North Highlands Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday morning, Kings owner Joe Maloof issued a statement calling the loan from Sacramento a "non-issue."

The council approved a venue contract between the team and Anaheim Arena Management that requires the team to use the Honda Center as its home base for at least 15 years. The council also approved extending its facility management agreement with Anaheim Arena Management by another 10 years to June 2033.

Anaheim's 18,336-seat arena, which the city owns, was built to accommodate two professional sports teams and opened in 1993. Anaheim is close to realizing a "20-year dream" to bring an NBA team to the city, Anaheim Councilwoman Kris Murray said.

Also Tuesday, state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento promised to do everything he could to protect the Sacramento region's "economic well-being." He is considering legislation, as requested by the city, to force the Maloofs to repay the Sacramento loan if needed, Steinberg spokesman Mark Hedlund said.

"His primary concern is to ensure Sacramento is made whole by full repayment of the city's $70-plus million loan if the Kings leave," Hedlund said in an emailed statement. "He's also concerned with the possibility Anaheim may use taxpayer funds to entice a business to leave one major California city to relocate in another major California city."

Meanwhile, the ICON-Taylor group, which is studying the feasibility of building a new arena in Sacramento, has not met with the Maloofs, Sacramento Assistant City Manager John Dangberg told the Sacramento City Council Tuesday evening.

The ICON-Taylor group is making “significant progress in their analysis and are moving forward regardless of what happens with Anaheim,” Dangberg said.

The developers are likely to complete their arena analysis in mid-May, he said.

Before the vote, city attorney Eileen Teichert fired off a letter to Tait asking Anaheim to continue consideration of the environmental impacts of the new Honda Center operations until conducting a "proper" environmental review or issuing a mitigated negative declaration saying the project will have no impact. Anaheim did not respond to that request.

At the Sacramento City Council meeting, the mayor said Anaheim’s decision to give $75 million in financial incentives to the Kings was not a surprise.

“I think it’s disappointing," Johnson said. "(But) I think Anaheim made a decision that’s in their best interest.”

Staff reporter Kathleen Haley contributed to this report. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Photo essay: Tequila Museo Mayahuel; soft opening Friday

2011-03-30T05:06:49Z

Monday night, a huge Dia de los Muertos caricature welcomed guests to Tequila Museo Mayahuel on 12th and K streets.

Inside, sugar skulls, candles and marigolds transformed the new tequila museum and restaurant into a Dia de Los Muertos party, called “Subterraneo” put on by Jose Cuervo Tradicional tequila.

The party was a sneak preview of the not-yet-open Tequila Museo Mayahuel. Only those in the restaurant and bar industry were invited.

Jose Cuervo Tradicional is touring cities around the country with the Dia de los Muertos party and selected Sacramento to host Monday’s event.

According to Gina Castillo, tequila ambassador for Jose Cuervo and Don Julio Northern California, Tequila Museo Mayahuel was chosen because Sacramento is an important tequila market and it’s a brand new restaurant that has a tequila museum in it.

This is the first time Jose Cuervo Tradicional has hosted an event in Sacramento.

“(Mayahuel is) a place that’s going to stick to Mexican culture and since Dia de los Muertos is such a Mexican holiday, we wanted to make sure that we had it in a place that made sense,” Castillo said.

Some of Sacramento’s restaurateurs came to check out the new K Street restaurant and bar, including Ali Mackani, owner of Lounge on 20; Billy Ngo, owner of Kru and Red Lotus Kitchen & Bar; and Andrea Martin, who owns Bulls.

TJ Bruce, who owns Badlands and Hot Rods, was also there and said he was enjoying the party.

“It is very rustic. The food is wonderful,” he said. “It’s very clubby. I think a restaurant would do well (having) a club” atmosphere while it was serving food.

“I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot more low-key” normally, he added.

Small bites, or bocadillos, were served from the menu, including

Bruchetas de Rajas con Crema (french bread slices topped with strips of poblano chiles marinated in sour cream);
Dobladitas de Camaron y Queso Manchego (tortillas stuffed with shrimp and ricotta cheese sautéed with onions);
Molletitos de Chorizo y Queso Monterrey (baguette with black refried beans and chorizo and crumbled cheese);
Brochetas de Pollo y Nopal al Guajillo (chicken with cactus, Guajillo chile and mushrooms);
Tostaditas de Chile Ancho y Nopales (tostadas with Ancho chiles, guacamole and cactus);
Tostaditas de Tinga de Pollo (shredded chicken breast cooked in chipotle sauce, served on a tostada);
Panuchos de Cochinita Pibil (pulled pork that’s been cooked in Ancho chiles and citrus sauce on a soft tortilla with refried black beans).

For dessert, they served Mosaico de Flan de Chile Ancho (flan with pasillo peppers) and a mango mousse cake.

Nate Radabaugh, David Tyler and George Boeger came all the way from Chico to see Tequila Museo Mayahuel.

Radabaugh and Tyler said they do security for Chico’s Normal Street Bar, which Boeger owns.

“This is my first time in Sacramento,” Radabaugh said. “It’s a great city – a walking city – I didn’t know what to expect. I like the celebration.”

On display behind the bar were hand-painted Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia tequila boxes.

“Each box is different – different artist, different art,” Mayahuel owner Ernesto Delgado said. “They hired a Mexican artist to paint their box, and each year, they select a new artist to paint the box, and now it’s a series.”

The tequila boxes are the current display for the “museo” (museum) part of the restaurant. The history and culture of tequila will continue to be reflected in the rotating exhibits planned for Mayahuel.

“The idea is that the whole place is going to function and work like a museum,” Delgado said. “(The) one (behind the bar) is obviously the main exhibit, but throughout the entire restaurant we’ll have different exhibits on different walls that will coordinate with events, programs, venues (and) tastings.”

The exhibits will rotate every three months or so, he said.

Bartenders stayed busy serving specialty drinks, which included Trad Fresco, made of Tradicional Silver, simple syrup, grapefruit juice, muddled cucumber and mint leaves; Paloma Mayahuel, which mixed Tradicional Silver, grapefruit juice, agave syrup, lime juice, seltzer water and a pinch of salt; El Beso Ardiente, made of Tradicional Silver, agave syrup, lime juice, Serrano pepper and muddled pepper wheels; and others.

El Beso Ardiente means "the fiery kiss," according to Castillo.

Nicole Novoa, an analyst for the California Department of Consumer Affairs, said she came Monday because she is friends with the restaurant’s manager, Javier Valdez.

When asked what she thought of Mayahuel, she said, “It’s different from what I’ve seen. It doesn’t compare.... It’s culturally diverse. It has a really good ambiance.”

More than 200 people took part in the celebration throughout the night, according to Delgado.

DJ Alex Trujillo and DJ Will Rodriguez played music all night, getting the Day of the Dead caricatures on the dance floor along with many painted faces in the crowd.

Delgado said Tuesday that he was very pleased with the event.

“I personally loved it. It was a great reflection of what I’m trying to showcase – the culture.... Dia de los Muertos is a day of appreciating the past with the present – the people that have been here – their life and history. In Mexico, we celebrate our past by celebrating the deaths of people that were close to us,” he said.

The grand opening of Tequila Museo Mayahuel is scheduled for the weekend of Cinco de Mayo. However, the restaurant and bar will be open well before that, with a soft opening at 3 p.m. Friday. Delgado said they will serve small plates and a limited cocktail menu.

Tequila Museo Mayahuel is located at 1200 K St. For more information, read Suzanne Hurt’s recent article here or Brandon Darnell’s original article here.

Photos by Chris Brune and Colleen Belcher.

Ground broken on downtown SRO

2011-03-29T02:36:30Z

Construction has begun on Sacramento's newest single-resident occupancy building downtown.

On Monday, a backhoe operator and other construction workers continued demolishing an old foundation at Seventh and H streets. The eight-story, 150-unit mid-rise being built there by Mercy Housing is the first new structure going up in the railyards redevelopment project area.

Once completed, the $47.4 million affordable housing project, known simply as “Seventh & H,” will be one of the city's largest permanent supportive housing projects. Half of the units will be reserved for homeless or recently homeless people, and the rest is aimed at downtown workers making $20,000 to $25,000 a year.

"Seventh and H is a very important part of the larger solution of affordable housing," said Rich Ciraulo, project manager for Mercy Housing in West Sacramento.

Work began March 17 to remove remnants of a building that once housed the Sacramento Police Department's patrol station and police academy. The Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, a project partner, bought the land from the city in 2008. The agency then donated the land, worth $3.1 million, and tore down the old building to allow for new construction.

Demolition crews from contractor J.R. Roberts/Deacon of Citrus Heights were still pulling foundation debris out of the ground Monday. The soil will be recompacted, then new foundation construction will begin.

The concrete-frame building will use concrete and steel-reinforced piles that are 65 to 70 feet deep to avoid pile driving in land next to an electric substation that powers the Capitol and a large part of downtown, Ciraulo said.

"SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District) has been warning us all along to be very careful," he added.

Architects Mogavero Notestine Associates of Sacramento and SERA Architects of Portland designed the building. The exterior will be covered with tan brick and metal panels. Second-floor roof gardens are included in the design. The cost increased from $41 million to include a full solar panel array on the roof, a solar water-heating system, a larger health clinic and other features.

Support services will include programs on health, education, community integration and finances. The Effort, a Sacramento nonprofit health services provider, will offer primary health and behavioral health services in a 5,200-square-foot clinic located in the building on H Street.

Construction is expected to be complete in October 2012. Six months prior, Mercy will start interviewing prospective tenants with help from local nonprofits and agencies that work with the homeless. Mercy Housing also will enlist real estate brokers to find restaurant tenants for two other ground-floor spaces on Seventh Street.

Mercy Housing and SHRA cobbled together $21.7 million in federal low-income housing tax credits through the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, about $20 million in redevelopment funding – which includes tax increment affordable housing set-aside funds – plus other funding from the Federal Home Loan Banks and the California Housing Finance Agency.

"When you put it in the context of what's going on with the larger economy and what's going on with affordable housing right now, it's very exciting to have it be a reality," Ciraulo said.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter at The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

City of Sacramento asks Anaheim to end negotiations with Kings

2011-03-29T02:22:39Z

Sacramento officials asked the city of Anaheim Monday to stop all negotiations with the Sacramento Kings and drop plans to issue $75 million in lease revenue bonds to entice the team to move.

Otherwise, Sacramento expects Anaheim and the Anaheim Public Finance Authority to contractually require the Kings' owners to first repay Sacramento $77 million for lease revenue bonds issued here in 1997, according to a letter emailed late Monday afternoon to Anaheim City Manager Tom Wood.

"I am deeply concerned about the potential for Anaheim's actions causing irreparable harm to the city of Sacramento," Sacramento Assistant City Manager John Dangberg said in the letter. "As the Anaheim city manager, you certainly understand the financial and budgetary implications for Sacramento were the Kings to relocate without satisfying their approximately $77 million obligation to pay off the city's bonds."

The letter was issued on a day when Sacramento city staff were off work for the César Chavéz holiday. Dangberg was not available to comment.

A public hearing and vote is scheduled before the Anaheim City Council at 5 p.m. Tuesday. The only two items on the agenda involve a resolution to approve Anaheim Public Financing Authority lease revenue bonds for improvements and working capital for the Honda Center – an arena owned by the city of Anaheim.

Billionaire Henry Samueli owns Anaheim Arena Management, which manages the arena, and the Anaheim Ducks hockey team.

The financing authority is scheduled to meet immediately after the council adjourns for a vote on a consent calendar item authorizing issuance of the bonds.

The Kings agreed to pay off outstanding bonds in Sacramento if it moved to another city before 2027, according to Dangberg’s letter.

A move by the Kings would lead to "blighting impacts" for Sacramento, Dangberg wrote, adding that city officials are working on another letter addressing what they see as an inadequate review of the environmental impacts of projects Anaheim is now considering funding. Legal challenges to public projects are sometimes filed over claims involving environmental impact concerns.

Anaheim has failed to turn over all records relating to the Kings, the National Basketball Association and the Maloofs as requested in a public records act filed by Sacramento March 4, the letter stated.

The letter was sent to Anaheim at 4 p.m. Copies of the letter were also emailed to the Sacramento City Council, Mayor Kevin Johnson, the Anaheim City Council, Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait, the Anaheim city clerk, State Senate President Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento, The Sacramento Bee and The Orange County Register.

Monday evening, Mayor Kevin Johnson's office issued a statement reiterating his expectation that the Maloofs will repay their loan from Sacramento.

"The mayor continues his laser focus on fighting for what’s best for Sacramento. First and foremost, that means doing everything we can to keep the Kings, and all the economic and community benefits they provide," mayoral spokesman Joaquin McPeek said in the statement. "But it also means taking basic precautionary measures to protect taxpayers in case the team does relocate."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Oak Park residents envision something other than McDonald's for vacant lot

2011-03-28T05:35:26Z

How about a hardware store, garden shop, day care center, café, dog park, hair salon, yogurt shop or art supply business? These were some ideas vocalized during the community-visioning event Saturday where more than 50 people gathered at Grange Hall to share thoughts about potential uses for a vacant lot at 2nd Avenue and Stockton Boulevard in Oak Park.

A McDonald’s with a 24-hour drive-through is currently proposed for the one-acre site, which faces commercial and medical buildings on Stockton and a residential neighborhood on 2nd Avenue.

“The goal of this meeting is to hear neighborhood concerns about the proposed McDonald’s and develop a new vision about what could go on that property,” said facilitator JoEllen Arnold, who owns a home near the site. “We will then take these concerns and ideas to the City Planning Commission in a few months.”

The event was hosted by Healthy Development for Oak Park and included a presentation by Ron Vrilakas, an architect with 20 years experience in helping shape the urbanscape in Sacramento. Vrilakas recalled a similar situation about a decade ago when a Jack in the Box was planned for 19th and J Streets, and Midtown residents were successful at “holding back the fast food flood gate.” He noted that it didn’t take long for a new opportunity to come along and offer a pedestrian-oriented development with smaller shops that are more fitting in Midtown.

Vrilakas advised the group to focus on the city planning aspect of the proposed McDonald’s and warned against asking for something on the site that is not feasible. He advocated the idea of a mixed-use project.

“This is a strong case,” he said. “Nobody has the right to develop a drive-through. It’s an entitlement in which the applicant asks for a special permit.” He said the applicant is asking for a special privilege in order to make more money without any gain for the community.

Regarding land use, Vrilakas said the drive-through McDonalds is inappropriate in relationship to nearby single-family homes.
“It’s extremely cruel to put this next to homes,” he said. It’s fundamentally criminal.”

According to City Planning documents, the request is for a 3,897 square-foot restaurant with 30 parking stalls, 11,500 square-feet of landscaping and a side-by-side drive through.

During the meeting, residents expressed concerns about what the McDonald’s would bring to their neighborhood. Top worries included increased traffic, pedestrian and bike safety, air pollution from idling cars, noise, trash and increased crime from people coming into the neighborhood at all hours of the day and night.

Switching from the image of McDonald’s, the group then engaged in creating a vision of something better for Oak Park. Arnold encouraged residents to think of what they drive out of the neighborhood to attain. People responded with a wide-range of thoughts including a dry cleaners, bike shop or gym. Artist Frankie Hansbearry illustrated the ideas on a long sheet of paper during the brainstorming. Some ideas were more popular than others, but many responded positively to the concept of a mixed-use space.

While the visioning activity was well received, people were aware that the land is privately owned. The landowner was identified as John Saca, executive president of Saca Development. According to the company’s website, its commercial arm has more than $1 billion worth of transactions with companies such as Chevron, Target, Home Depot, Starbucks and Walgreens.

Charlene Hauser, MD, of Healthy Development for Oak Park, lives on 2nd Avenue and said the site of the proposed McDonald’s is right in the middle of her bike commute to work. Hauser said there is not yet a date for when the proposed project will go to the City Planning Commission and that a traffic study has to be conducted first.

“We were excited to see such a great turn out for this event,” she said. “We look forward to working with our elected officials for the best outcome.”

Visit hdop.webs.com for more information on Healthy Development for Oak Park.

Echoes of Kings' last move reverberate today

2011-03-26T01:30:39Z

The Sacramento Kings have a history of leaving town.

If the team's current majority owners work out a deal soon in Anaheim, Sacramento will become just one more city in a long string of former hometowns.

News of their possible departure emerged a little more than a month ago, leaving many people still trying to understand what the loss of the Kings might mean to the city and the region. That raises the question of what happened in Kansas City, Mo., which lost the team to Sacramento in 1985.

People who lost their jobs because of the move and the hardcore fans felt it most, say those in the pro sports industry. But others who watched the team closely at that time said the team's loss meant little to the city, financially or emotionally.

"It was minimal to none in terms of the impact," said TV and radio sports announcer Kevin Harlan, who started his career doing TV and radio play-by-plays for the Kansas City Kings in 1982.

The Kings were based in the Midwest in an earlier era for the National Basketball Association and basketball. The league wasn't that big and didn't have as many fans.

"It was certainly a different time," said Bob Whitsitt, who was vice president and assistant general manager of the Kansas City Kings and the Sacramento Kings from 1984 to 1986.

The Cincinnati Royals – a team that began in Rochester, N.Y., in the 1920s – moved west in 1972. For the first three years, the team was shared by Kansas City and Omaha, Neb. The name was initially changed to the Kansas City-Omaha Kings because Kansas City already had a major league baseball team called the Royals.

Splitting home games between two cities didn't help when it came to building a fan base. The team gave up its Omaha base in 1975.

The Kings also faced a lot of competition for sports fans and sports dollars in Kansas City, which had a National Football League team that had recently won the Super Bowl, the extremely popular baseball team and a National Hockey League team for a short time in the 1970s.

Kansas City was the smallest market to have teams from all four major sports leagues, Whitsitt said.

Kansas City and the surrounding region were devoted to college athletics, including basketball. One of the country's elite basketball teams is based 40 miles away at the University of Kansas, and two others are close by. Kansas City is also the "epicenter" of the Big 12 basketball tournaments, Harlan said.

"The professional basketball frankly never really caught on," said Dick Berkley, mayor of Kansas City at the time.

In 1981, the Kings also started competing for winter sports dollars against the Kansas City Comets. The pro indoor soccer team shared 19,500-seat Kemper Arena with the basketball team.

The Comets' owners were better marketers who appealed to a very young fan base. Downtown Kansas City wasn't much at the time, and people who lived in the suburbs usually stayed in the suburbs. The Comets changed that by getting kids to drag their parents downtown for soccer matches, Harlan said.

"The soccer team, I thought, probably had as much to do with the downfall of the team as anything," he said. "The NBA just really never had a shot."

The Kings were only able to attract an average of more than 10,000 fans to home games in the 1978/79 season. Turnout was usually far below 8,000 and less than 4,000 after the team's sale to Sacramento owners for $10.5 million was announced in 1984 – unless they were playing a popular team like the Los Angeles Lakers.

It wasn't until after Michael Jordan joined the league that the NBA really took off. Jordan started playing with the Chicago Bulls the year the Kings were sold to Sacramento.

The team's exodus after 13 years had a "modest" impact on property, sales and income tax collections. But there was no emotional impact from the loss, Berkley said.

"Frankly, I thought I would catch a lot of flak on it, because they left very abruptly," Berkley said. "I got four or five phone calls. I thought I would get hundreds.

"We were glad they were here. But the community did not gasp when they left," he added.

The Kings immediately found much more ardent fans in Sacramento, which has no other pro sports team. The Kings sold out many home games at Arco Arena.

"In Sacramento, it's the only thing in town," Harlan said. "It's the big show."

The reaction to the Kings' possible departure has been mixed in Sacramento. Die-hard fans have waged campaigns to keep them here. Local business leaders warn of an expected heavy financial loss to the region.

Other local residents, who voted down a past attempt to build the team a new arena, are equally passionate about their desire to see the Kings and their owners, the Maloofs, hit the road.

Determining what the team's loss might mean to Sacramento isn't easy.

Experts don't agree on what the financial impact might be. The 2010/2011 property tax bill for Arco Arena is about $1 million, with collected revenue split between the city and county.

Forbes listed the team's value at $293 million in January and annual revenue at $103 million.

The city can't provide information about property or sales taxes paid by the Kings' owners, said City Treasurer Russ Fehr. The California State Board of Equalization also can't reveal how much the Kings and Arco Arena pay in sales taxes.

Losing the team would negatively impact the region economically and psychologically. A generation of fans have grown up with the team, Whitsitt said.

"Certainly, if it left Sacramento, that would be a hardship for a lot of people in the community," he said.

The Kings also give Sacramento a lot of exposure on a national scale, said Whitsitt and Harlan.

"It makes your town feel like a big-league town," Harlan said.

Those outside the pro sports industry who have studied the question don't agree.

Dan Rascher, director of academic programs for the University of San Francisco's Sport Management Program, estimates the Kings bring $50 million in direct spending to the city – with about $10 million of that from the team's operational expenditures and the rest from people living outside the metropolitan area who travel here for games.

Indirect spending is estimated to be about 50 to 60 percent above that, said Rascher, who was hired 10 years ago by the city, the Kings and Union Pacific Railroad, which owned the downtown railyards, to create a feasibility study for building a new arena in the railyards.

The financial impact can depend on terms of the lease agreement teams have with government agencies for sports facilities.

Numerous studies of what happens to jobs, tax revenues and all other measures before and after teams move into cities have come to the same conclusion: There's no measurable impact, said Roger Noll, professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University. He co-wrote the book, "Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums."

Jobs and money spent to attend a game or on other area businesses before and after a game just gets redistributed, he said.

"There's no region-wide economic hit," Noll said. "From the point of view of the city itself, it's basically no effect. It's 98 percent hype that it matters to a city."

Government officials and business leaders are pushing forward on plans to build a new arena in Sacramento even if the Kings leave. Having a new arena is the city's only hope to draw another NBA team here, said Harlan, adding he thinks the Maloofs don't want to move.

The chances of getting a new NBA team may be "very, very slim" – partly because other cities are trying to lure teams, too, and there may not be enough companies in Sacramento to sponsor luxury suites, Harlan said.

“I would say if the Kings were to leave, I doubt the NBA would ever go back there," he said. "We said that about Kansas City. And now there's talk Kansas City might get a (new basketball) team."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Dive Bar, Pizza Rock owner hopes to build more elsewhere

2011-03-25T02:17:01Z

Dive Bar owner George Karpaty is expanding his business territory.

Two months after opening the mermaid bar and two other businesses on Sacramento's K Street Mall, Karpaty is in the final stages of negotiating a lease for a fourth concept in El Dorado Hills.

The San Francisco nightclub owner previously said the bars and gourmet pizza restaurant he opened in Sacramento early this year were pioneer concept s he would like to take elsewhere.

Karpaty is now talking with folks in Santa Monica, Hollywood, Las Vegas and Oakland about opening versions of the K Street businesses there, depending on space available. He and Pizza Rock partner Tony Gemignani are also working on plans to open Pizza Rock restaurants throughout the United States, Karpaty said this week.

"Pizza Rock is the one we're looking for a big roll-out and having a lot of them in the next 10 years all over the country," Karpaty said.

Pizza Rock, Dive Bar and the District 30 dance club, located in a renovated building at 1016 - 1022 K St., are all drawing more crowds and making more money than expected for this stage of the business plan, he said.

Current discussions involve opening Dive Bar and Pizza Rock in Las Vegas and opening just Pizza Rocks in the other three cities. Karpaty is looking into opening the entire trio in additional cities because they complement each other well, he said.

Dive Bar's giant aquarium, where "mermaids" and "mermen" can sometimes be spotted, is believed to be the biggest aquarium in a nightlife venue in the world – second only to tanks at professional aquarium museums. The tank at the next Dive Bar will be 40 percent bigger than the 7,500-gallon tank at 1016 K St., Karpaty said.

"We've never opened anything like Dive Bar" anywhere else, he said.

Karpaty already owned popular San Francisco establishments – Ruby Skye nightclub and a "speakeasy" called Slide – when he developed ideas for a vacant K Street building owned by Sacramento developer David Taylor and Los Angeles-based CIM Group.

Karpaty said it's too early to talk about the new concept he has in the works for El Dorado Hills Town Center 30 miles from Sacramento. But he's very close to signing a lease with The Mansour Co., which owns the retail and office complex.

The company's owner, Tony Mansour, said they're about 30 days away from finalizing a lease agreement for 6,000 square feet.

"We're almost there," Mansour said. "You never know until the ink gets dry and the money's in the bank."

Mansour, who lives in both Los Angeles and El Dorado Hills, experienced Karpaty's K Street businesses during their grand openings.

"I never do a deal with anybody unless I know what they serve and how they deal," he said. "We love the pizza and the mermaids."

The El Dorado Hills operation could open within six to nine months if all goes as planned, Karpaty said.

"It's up to him how fast he can open," Mansour added. "We'd love to have him open as soon as possible. We're excited to have him in the area because we think it will draw from the region."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.