Newest articles on The Sacramento Press tagged as "railyards"

U.S. Transportation Secretary checks out intermodal facility

2012-02-10T01:44:17Z

Mayor Kevin Johnson toured the downtown railyards with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Thursday, showing off the site of the future intermodal facility and – if all goes well for Johnson and the Think Big Committee – the site of a new entertainment and sports complex.

LaHood stopped in Sacramento on a tour of California to discuss investments being made in job-creating infrastructure projects in Sacramento and around the country, according to a press release Tuesday.

LaHood spoke to a crowd of more than 50, discussing the importance of high-speed rail in California, as well as job potential from the future intermodal facility.

“This facility is what I believe is a national model for a transit-oriented development opportunity,” LaHood said. “(It will) not only create jobs for people in Sacramento, but create an opportunity to be a magnet – to draw people to a part of the city that many people never thought would be usable.”

Johnson said Thursday that the 245-acre downtown railyards will be home to “two crucial hubs” in one location: the intermodal facility and the entertainment and sports complex.

“We believe this will be one of the busiest intermodal hubs in the country,” Johnson said. “It gets at two things at once: transportation and economic development.”

The intermodal facility will be a transit center that will provide connections between nearly all modes of transportation: bicycle, pedestrian, bus, light rail, taxi and train, according to the city website.

Work on the first phase of the transit project began in May and is expected to be complete by the end of 2013.

The entertainment and sports complex is expected to generate more than $7 billion in economic activity over 30 years and nearly 4,000 jobs to the region, according to the Think Big Sacramento website.

“We believe the entertainment and sports complex is a game-changer for this community,” Johnson said.

“We’re talking about a project that will bring 3 million people to downtown. (We’re talking about) a project that will double the size of downtown and will bring $154 million in additional revenue to our region,” he added.

If a financing plan is worked out before the March 1 relocation deadline and the project comes to fruition, it will be a 700,000-square-foot complex in the southern section of the railyards.

Representatives from the Think Big Committee planned to unveil the newest artist renderings of the entertainment and sports complex at Thursday’s event, but the plan changed at the last minute.

“(The renderings) just weren’t as perfect as we’d wanted them to be,” said Kunal Merchant, Johnson’s chief of staff.

“Really, though, people aren’t as interested in what it will look like right now,” Merchant added, “they just want to know how we’re going to pay for it. That’s the priority.”

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

Council: Parking lease issue won't reach June ballot

2012-02-08T22:01:48Z

The push to put a city parking lease to a vote fell flat Tuesday as the City Council rejected a motion to put the question on the June ballot.

It was City Councilwoman Sandy Sheedy who first suggested in November that the voters should have a say in whether the city leases its parking inventory to an outside company.

She conducted a city-wide poll on her website in October, which indicated that
70 percent of respondents favored a public vote on a potential 50-year lease, according to Sheedy.

“The (arena) plan hinges on leasing the city’s parking for 50 years,” Sheedy said Tuesday. “I think such a massive public investment warrants a public vote.”

Still, after almost an hour of public discussion, the council voted 5-4 Tuesday not to place the issue on the ballot.

Sheedy and Council members Kevin McCarty, Darrell Fong and Bonnie Pannell voted in favor of the measure.

Council members Angelique Ashby, Steve Cohn, Rob Fong and Jay Schenirer and Mayor Kevin Johnson voted against it.

The City Council is pursuing the possibility of leasing the city’s parking assets as part of a financing plan for a new entertainment and sports complex.

Opponents of a public vote on the issue said a ballot measure would occur after the March 1 deadline for the city to have a solid arena plan – without one, Sacramento Kings’ owners have threatened to relocate the team.

“We owe the NBA an answer by March. The election is in June. In the effort of being timely, I don’t think we should send it to ballot,” Ashby said.

Another point of opposition was the message a possible vote would send to the 13 companies that have expressed interest in leasing the city’s parking inventory.

“If the leasing of parking assets is put on the ballot it would send a signal to the NBA, AEG, and to the business community across the country that this council is indecisive and it would sabotage efforts to this point,” said Sacramento resident James Battle during public comment.

“It’s impossible to separate this issue from the impact of the vote,” City Councilman Steve Cohn said. “Let’s be clear: it would kill the arena deal in its tracks. If that’s what you want to do, then vote for it.”

Johnson said the list of 13 interested lessees would be reviewed and narrowed down to three or four before a financing agreement would be created.

“The goal is to have that term sheet in place before the March 1 deadline,” Johnson said at his weekly press conference Tuesday.

“We are doing all we can to make that happen,” he said.

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

HUD AWARDS $300K CHOICE NEIGHBORHOODS PLANNING GRANT TO SACRAMENTO HOUSING AND REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY

2012-01-23T23:07:20Z

SACRAMENTO, CA | U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Regional Administrator Ophelia Basgal joined Congresswoman Doris Matsui in Sacramento announced on January 10 that Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency will receive a $300,000 Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant. Sacramento is one of 13 cities nationwide receiving this funding to begin grassroots efforts to revitalize the Twin Rivers Community Housing, a distressed public housing development at 321 Eliza Street, and transform the Sacramento River District-Railyards neighborhood.

“All across the country, local planners are serious about rolling up their sleeves to transform distressed neighborhoods into choice neighborhoods,” said Ophelia Basgal. “This community can now begin the comprehensive planning needed to turn the distressed housing at Twin Rivers Community Housing in the River District-Railyards area – a long-neglected neighborhood – into a viable and sustainable mixed-income community that supports positive outcome for families.”

Building on nearly 20 years of success through HUD’s HOPE VI Program, Choice Neighborhoods links housing improvements with a wider variety of public services including schools, public transit, and employment opportunities. The program is a centerpiece of the Obama Administration’s interagency Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, a collaboration between HUD and the Departments of Education, Justice, Treasury and Health and Human Services. With support from the White House Domestic Policy Council and White House Office of Urban Affairs, the interagency partnership supports local solutions for sustainable, mixed-income neighborhoods with the affordable housing, safe streets, and good schools all families need.

“With this funding, SHRA, the City of Sacramento and its partners will be able to put their full effort into creating a blueprint to provide critical social services, cradle to college education opportunities, and affordable housing in the River District,” said Congresswoman Doris Matsui. “The Choice Neighborhood planning grant will truly help transform and revitalize the River District.”

Sacramento is the only grant recipient west of the Mississippi.

“I am extremely pleased that HUD has selected Sacramento County to receive this very important grant,” said La Shelle Dozier, executive director of the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. “Working with our partners, this award will help us find ways to make our obsolete public housing community a more viable asset for the surrounding neighborhood as well as the low income families that we are serving.”

Key partners in Sacramento's planning effort are California Endowment, California State University – Sacramento, City of Sacramento, River District Property and Business Improvement District, Sacramento Area Council of Governments, Sacramento Employment and Training Agency, Sacramento Steps Forward, Twin Rivers Unified School District, and UC-Davis Center for Regional Change.

As a result of partnerships like these, the Obama Administration is making it easier for local leaders who are working to redevelop neighborhoods to also access support for cradle-to-career educational programs through the Education Department’s Promise Neighborhoods initiative, public safety strategies through the Justice Department, and community health center improvements through the Department of Health and Human Services.

HUD received 71 submissions for FY 2011 Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grants from communities across the U.S. Successful applicants demonstrated their intent to transform neighborhoods while leveraging outside investments and other federal dollars to plan for high-quality public schools, outstanding education and early learning programs, public assets, public transportation, and improved access to jobs and well-functioning services. HUD is focused on directing resources to address three core goals – housing, people and neighborhoods.

The communities awarded the planning grants announced today will build the capacity needed to undertake a successful neighborhood transformation and create a choice neighborhood. These grants enable communities to create a comprehensive Transformation Plan, or road map over the next 18 months to transform distressed public and/or assisted housing within a distressed community. This Federal support provides a significant incentive for the local community to take critical steps to create viable neighborhood transformation.

Congress approved the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative with the passage of HUD’s FY 2010 budget, and in FY 2011 authorized HUD to use $65 million to provide competitive grants to assist in the transformation, rehabilitation and preservation of public housing and privately owned HUD-assisted housing. Congress recently appropriated $120 million for Fiscal Year 2012. Choice Neighborhoods builds on the successes and lessons of HUD’s HOPE VI program and widens the traditional pool of eligible applicants beyond public housing authorities to include local governments, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit developers (who apply jointly with a public entity).

Sacramento’s application can be viewed at http://www.shra.org/Housing/PublicHousingProgram/
ChoiceNeighborhoodsInitiative.aspx.

# # #

Disclosure: Angela Jones is the Public Information Officer for Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. www.shra.org

Mayor: City is at 'critical juncture' on the road to new arena

2011-12-28T01:41:33Z

Mayor Kevin Johnson spoke confidently Tuesday about the possibility of a new entertainment and sports complex becoming a reality for Sacramento – despite the challenges ahead.

“We are at a critical juncture in this process,” Johnson said. “On the court, our team needs to play well. Off the court, I feel good about the progress we’re making on the new entertainment sports complex and the financing.”

Johnson said that – on the public side of the equation – the city is moving forward with its “due diligence” on a plan to lease out the city parking system as part of the financial plan for a new arena.

“On the private side,” Johnson added, “AEG and ICON and all those folks are doing their part, and we are in negotiations now with the NBA and the Maloofs and all the parties involved. We’d like to be in a good position by the March 1 deadline.”

Proponents of a new sports and entertainment complex have until March 1 to solidify a plan to finance the new arena or the Kings owners will have an opportunity to file a request with the NBA to relocate the team.

At the Dec. 13 City Council meeting, Johnson and council members voted to gauge the interest of investors – through a process called “request for qualifications” – in taking over the city’s parking system as a key component of the finance picture for a new arena.

The RFQs were scheduled to be sent Dec. 22, but city consultants suggested holding off until after the new year, creating a delay in the process.

Johnson said that, despite the RFQs being issued later than expected, he has been assured by the city manager’s office that the delay will not affect the city timeline in a significant way.

“I was a little disappointed because I thought we could get (the RFQs) out even with the two weeks (of holidays) so people would know how things are going,” Johnson said Tuesday, “but I’ve been assured that it won’t slow us down at all.”

Once the city receives responses to the RFQs, the city manager and the City Council will have a better idea of how much the city’s parking assets may net. The initial analysis of the plan to lease the parking system showed a range of $170 million to just over $240 million.

Johnson said Tuesday, however, that he believes the gain from the parking assets for the entertainment and sports complex financing plan may be larger than anticipated.

“It’s not deeply rooted in science or empirical data,” Johnson said, “but I do think we can come in higher than we think – and that’s just my gut feeling.”

Johnson said he thinks the city and Kings fans have come a long way from April 13, when it seemed the Kings were about to play their last game in Sacramento.

“I think we are going to get it done, but there’s work to do,” Johnson said. “It’s going to be very challenging, and there are lots of moving parts (in the process), but I think council will step up, the NBA will step up and we will be able to create a win-win-win for all parties.”

The push for a new sports arena has been ramping up since the Sacramento Kings owners, the Maloof family, announced earlier in the year that they might move the team to Anaheim.

The Sacramento Press will take a more in-depth look Wednesday at how Sacramento has faced the possibility of losing the only major professional sports team in the city.

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

City supports high speed rail for the north state

2011-12-07T04:49:30Z

The city of Sacramento responded to the recently released California High Speed Rail Authority business plan with a letter of support – and a couple of suggestions for the authority to consider as the project develops.

City Councilman Steve Cohn said Tuesday that the city is in support of the project overall, but Cohn and the council want to emphasize two points: recognition that the high-speed rail project must be phased in, and funding should also upgrade existing connecting infrastructure.

“It can’t all be built at once,” Cohn said at the Law and Legislation Committee meeting at City Hall Tuesday. “The revised business plan does a more realistic job of explaining this phasing process (than the initial plan).”

The new business plan, released Nov. 1 to update the 2009 plan, outlines a “building block” approach to connecting the state’s major northern and southern California population centers with high-speed trains.

By building the project incrementally, the plan states, it allows for completion in stages as additional funding is identified.

Cohn said that, from the city of Sacramento’s standpoint, the 20-year project will need to connect well to local and regional transit services as it unfolds.

Some inter-city connectors will need to be upgraded and expanded – and that will not be cheap, Cohn said.

“So far, only $950 million of the original (Proposition 1A) initiative has been set aside for inter-city connections,” Cohn said. “We think that roughly 10 percent of total spending on high speed rail should go into these inter-city connections.”

With an estimated total cost of nearly $98 billion, that means $10 billion over the life of the project directed at essential infrastructure, Cohn said.

Cohn said that upgrades to inter-city connectors and existing rail lines will go a long way to increasing the overall efficiency of rail travel even before high-speed rail is fully realized in the state.

“If we invest money in the tracks and signal equipment between here and the Bay Area,” Cohn said, “We can reach the Bay Area in less than an hour with the exact trains we already have. Those trains are capable of going over 100 miles per hour. The problem isn’t the train, it’s in the track and signaling equipment.”

Cohn said the infrastructure work needs to be completed alongside the high-speed rail project so that, when everything is connected, it will create a smooth transition.

California voters approved $9 billion of public funding for the proposed high-speed rail project with Proposition 1A in 2008. Additional funding for the project will come from both federal and private dollars, according to the California High Speed Rail Authority.

The rail project is planned to ultimately connect Sacramento to San Diego via 800 miles of track, allowing upwards of 44 million riders annually to travel quickly from place to place.

The initial 130-mile stretch is slated to be built in the Central Valley at a cost of approximately $6 billion – including $3.3 billion in federal funds and $2.7 from state funds.

The estimated total cost of the first phase of the high-speed rail project, which would connect the Los Angeles basin to the San Francisco Bay Area, is $98.1 billion.

According to Lance Simmens, deputy director of communications for the high speed rail authority, construction on the initial segment – the “backbone” of the rail line – should start in late 2012.

The first segment of the rail project will extend from just north of Fresno to North of Bakersfield, and construction is expected to take approximately five years to complete. Work to connect to Sacramento would begin in 2026.

“The backbone (segment of the project) will be available for Amtrak San Joaquin (passenger rail) service,” Simmens said, “but it will not be high-speed rail yet.”

Trains on the initial segment will travel at normal speeds – typically between 80 to 100 miles per hour, Simmens said. True high speed rail is capable of speeds up to 220 miles per hour.

Simmens said that further construction will allow for faster speeds.

“We appreciate that the high speed rail authority business plan acknowledges the need for inter-city upgrades,” Cohn said. “Sacramento shouldn’t have to wait until 2040 to benefit from high-speed rail. We should be benefiting all along the way.”

The letter of support from the city of Sacramento will be sent to the high speed rail authority within the next week.

Read the California High Speed Rail Authority draft business plan HERE.

Explore an interactive map of the proposed high speed rail routes HERE.

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

More funding for improvements at intermodal facility

2011-11-04T01:35:09Z

The City Council approved $400,000 in funding from new sources Tuesday for upgrades to the Sacramento Intermodal Transportation Facility project, including energy-efficient lighting and new power cabinets that will help reduce air emissions at the new facility.

The project is being built at the downtown railyards and is currently in the first phase of development. City officials say Phase 1 should be completed by mid-summer 2012.

The project is planned to accommodate rail freight movement, heavy passenger trains, light rail transit and intercity and local buses, according to a city staff report. It will also provide facilities for bicycle and pedestrian transportation modes and – potentially – streetcars and California’s high-speed rail.

Last year, original bids for the project made it too expensive, so it was scaled down and re-bid this year. Some improvements that were part of the original project plan were set aside when the project was scaled down.

The new project plan reserved the possibility that those improvements could be returned to the plan if funding was found.

New sources of funding – specifically grants provided through Sacramento Municipal Utility District and a California Air Resources Board program – will be used to return some of those set-aside improvements to the intermodal project.

The anticipated additional improvements include new lighting with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or walkways, tunnels and station platforms and four wayside power cabinets.

The LEDs will replace the fluorescent lighting in the original project plan.

“There will be more efficient lighting now,” Hinda Chandler, senior architect with the Sacramento Department of Transportation, said Thursday. “The light levels will be better with the LEDs, and the quality is better and brighter.”

Chandler said it will cost less to run the lights at the facility, and they won’t have to replace them as often as fluorescent lighting.

The lighting was budgeted in the project for $150,000, and city staff determined it was eligible for funding through an existing SMUD grant for lighting improvements.

Chandler said that the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority (CCJPA) was awarded funds for the power cabinets through the CARB Carl Moyer Grant Program on Oct. 28.

The original project plan called for eight wayside power cabinets, but when the project was scaled back earlier this year, the number of power cabinets was reduced to four. With new funding, the number of cabinets will once again be eight.

Christine Ragsdale, communications director for the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District, said the power cabinets work similar to the way shore power is provided to ships at dock.

The ship – or locomotive in this case – essentially plugs into the power outlet (the cabinet) at the station, and, instead of running on diesel fuel, it is powered by cleaner, less-expensive electricity.

The power keeps train systems operable while they are being cleaned and prepared for the next day’s run.

“These are diesel engines that push particulates into the air,” Tim Taylor, division manager at Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District, said Thursday.

“Being able to put (the trains) on shore power has an enormous health benefit to the community and a significant benefit in terms of air quality,” Taylor said.

The additional power cabinets cost $400,000, which would be funded 80 percent ($320,000) by the Moyer grant and 20 percent ($80,000) by CCJPA.

Ragsdale said this is the first time Carl Moyer Grant Program funds have been used for this specific purpose anywhere in the state.

“It’s a very creative use for this type of grant,” Ragsdale said. “When it comes to air quality, you get a lot of bang for your buck by getting trains to run cleaner.”

Nearly three tons worth – in the form of annual emission reductions, according Taylor.

“This is a fantastic project that is very good for our air quality,” Taylor said.

Chandler said the new funding is already being used to order the new power cabinets. The LEDs will be installed at a later time when the project gets nearer to completion.

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

City Seeks Arena Input

2011-10-27T05:48:37Z

As part of the Entertainment and Sports Complex project, the City of Sacramento has posted a "Notice of Preparation" for an Environmental Impact Report, or EIR. The public has until October 31 to provide comments to help city staff determine what factors should be considered in this important document.

The Notice of Preparation can be found on the City of Sacramento's website in PDF format:

http://www.cityofsacramento.org/dsd/planning/environmental-review/eirs/documents/ESCNOPFINAL.pdf

Reports like this EIR are written to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, which requires that California governments consider the effects of their projects on the state's environment. Environmental review involves more than just the natural world, although elements like air, soil and water pollution are important factors. Also considered are a project's effects on traffic, noise, historic and cultural resources, transportation and parking, population and housing, and economic effects. Cumulative effects of multiple projects are also considered, as well as a project's potential effects on other locations (such as the effects on North Natomas if Power Balance Pavilion is replaced by a new arena.) The EIR should also consider alternatives to the proposed project. Environmental review is not intended to prevent all negative environmental effects of a project. The EIR is a disclosure document, intended to show what potential effects a project could have on a community, the people, places and things around it, and consider options to prevent, limit, or mitigate those effects. The EIR shares information about these possible effects with the general public.

Participation by citizens is a critical part of the environmental review process. Cities depend on citizens and groups in their community to keep them fully informed of all the possible factors regarding a project that they may not have considered. By providing letters indicating areas the city should address in its EIR, we can help the city consider more factors, risks and effects, and perhaps even limit later liability by identifying a simple solution to a problem early in the process. The City of Sacramento opened the public comment period for this EIR on September 28, but the comment period closes at 5:00 PM on Monday, October 31. Comments regarding anything the EIR should consider must be received by that date and time . Both organizations and individuals are welcome to send letters or emails to the contact address below.

Comments and suggestions as to the appropriate scope of analysis in the EIR are invited from
all interested parties. Written comments or questions concerning the EIR for the proposed
project should be directed to the environmental project manager at the following address by
5:00 p.m. on October 31, 2011. Please include the contact person’s full name and address in
order for staff to respond appropriately:

Tom Buford, Senior Planner,
City of Sacramento Community Development Department,
300 Richards Blvd., Third Floor, Sacramento, CA 95811.
Tele (916) 808-7931
E-mail: tbuford@cityofsacramento.org

Disclosure: William Burg is a Sacramento resident and full-time skeptic.

Council gives go ahead for study of 'neighborhood friendly' river crossings

2011-10-20T00:58:26Z

The City Council unanimously gave the go-ahead for a feasibility study of seven potential river crossing locations Tuesday and accepted a definition for “neighborhood-friendly bridge” that will set the parameters for design of those bridges.

“This has been a long time coming for both communities,” West Sacramento Mayor Chris Cabaldon said at the Sacramento City Council meeting. “We obsess about the boundaries between the two cities, but the economic vitality, cultural vitality and the urban agenda for both of our communities will be enhanced by being better connected.”

Location details of potential river crossings can be found here.

There are currently three major bridges crossing the river between Sacramento and West Sacramento: Pioneer Bridge, Tower Bridge and I Street Bridge.

That’s not nearly enough to efficiently handle the amount of current traffic, say project planners – let alone any increases in traffic flow that may be the result of building a new entertainment and sports complex in the future.

“Sacramento is underserved by its current connections,” said Ryan Moore, senior engineer with the Sacramento Department of Transportation.

Moore said the limited connectivity across the river creates over-abundant traffic on all of the existing bridges. Also, the three current bridges don’t fully comply with current design standards making non-vehicle uses more difficult – and making the bridges vulnerable during natural disasters or earthquake.

Moore asked council members to allow staff to seek funding for a feasibility study of seven potential river crossing locations. Moore said a feasibility study would allow city staff to find the “greatest amount of benefit” for both Sacramento and West Sacramento.

“It doesn’t commit us to any particular location,” Moore said. “It’s just an evaluation of all the possible locations.”

According to a city of Sacramento staff report, the cities of Sacramento and West Sacramento shared the cost of an initial “need and purpose” study for river crossings, and it is expected that the two cities will continue to work together on future aspects of the project.

The majority of costs involved in a feasibility study are fixed, regardless of the number of crossing locations evaluated, according to the staff report.

Jerry Way, Sacramento’s transportation director, said that “for the cities of Sacramento and West Sacramento to do their due diligence,” the total cost for an evaluation of seven crossing locations is estimated to be between $600,000 and $850,000.

Funds have not been committed for future phases of work, Way said.

Sacramento City Councilman Rob Fong, who represents District 4, where all of the potential river crossings are located, said Tuesday that he is exciting about the possibility of opening more connections with the city of West Sacramento.

“We can’t overstate the importance of connectivity,” Fong said. “It creates economic development opportunities.”

At the July 19 Sacramento City Council meeting, city staff presented council members with a “Need and Purpose Study” for potential river crossings to connect Sacramento to West Sacramento.

One point of contention with council members at that meeting was the term “neighborhood-friendly” bridge.

All of the council members agreed that this was the type of bridge everyone would want, but they disagreed on how to define that term in a way that satisfied each council member’s ideal.

The definition that city staff brought back to council Tuesday – and which was accepted by council members in their final vote – outlined a “neighborhood-friendly” bridge as:

* Primarily serving short local trips.
* Serves all users – including motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, low-energy vehicles and public transit riders.
* Architecturally pleasing and contextually appropriate aesthetics and dimensions for adjacent neighborhoods.
* Does not require widening of the approaching roadways just to accommodate bridge flows.
* Designed with a target traffic speed equal to or less than the roadways approaching the bridge.
* Does not connect directly to streets that are primarily residential.

Fong told council members that he was satisfied with the new definition and felt it would work well with both cities.

“One thing I was worried about (with a potential new bridge) was the scaling,” Fong said. “We don’t want a massive, overwhelming bridge. The good citizens of West Sacramento also want neighborhood-friendly bridges.”

Councilwoman Angelique Ashby, who – until the recent redrawing of district lines – represented one area where a new crossing is being considered, said that she also supports the idea of moving forward with a feasibility study.

“We need to get it right, and we need to get it done,” Ashby said. “This is a great time for us to study all of our options. (New river crossings) will help us with jobs, with public safety and with routes in and out of our communities.”

Some members of the public who commented at Tuesday’s council meeting were critical of the crossing locations selected for study. One speaker approached the podium with “an offer I hope (the council) cannot refuse.”

“You have before you a proposal to study seven bridges at a cost of almost $800,000,” said Jim Randlett of the Sacramento River Crossings Association.

“I propose that you limit the study to just three possible locations – the downtown section to connect Sacramento to West Sacramento – thereby cutting the cost in half and saving $400,000 for the two cities.”

Randlett said that the downtown locations make the most sense because they are in “a central place between the two cities” – an area that is the proposed site for a new entertainment and sports complex and a major transportation hub for Sacramento.

The other four locations, Randlett said, either already have a crossing or are not sufficient for “pushing thousands of (commuting) cars through.”

Calling Randlett’s offer “fetching,” Fong said the cost of a complete study on all seven potential locations would be money well-spent because it would allow the City Council to “make a well-informed decision” about any future river crossings.

“This literally is a go-ahead to spend the money and do the study,” Fong added.

To fund the feasibility study, Moore said he and his staff will look for opportunities for federal grants, Sacramento Area Council of Governments grants, funds from the Sacramento Transportation Authority and possibly Measure A tax revenues.

Measure A (2004) created a quarter-cent sales tax for transportation projects in Sacramento county.

Moore said the feasibility study may take between 12 and 18 months, including finding a consultant, competing traffic analyses, coordinating with regulating agencies – Coast Guard, California Department of Fish and Game and others – as well as public outreach to residents and business owners in the areas that would be affected most by the construction of a new river crossing.

Meilssa Corker is a Staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Proposed plans revealed at intermodal community town hall

2011-08-09T08:24:48Z

Conceptual plans were revealed to the public Monday night for the intermodal transportation facility and the entertainment and sports complex proposed for the Railyards site.

Think Big Sacramento committee members presented the proposal to about 100 community members. The town hall meeting was hosted by City Councilman Rob Fong and the discussion was led by Assistant City Manager John Dangberg.

Attendees had mixed responses to the proposed facility, some questioning the economic viability and some expressing support.

Dangberg emphasized that the project would be an economic driver for the region. Fong, whose district the Railyards is in, said the plans are still in the early stages but that the Think Big Sacramento committee is fully committed to building the intermodal facility.

During his presentation, Dangberg explained that the proposed intermodal facility will be spread out, dispersed and scaled down in a grid form. Plans for the arena involve moving the location as far west as possible – close to the freeway onramp – an area, he said, that is not currently the most desirable.

The arena will also be pushed below grade, Dangberg said – normally arenas are 30 to 40 feet below grade, however, the proposed arena will be pushed even lower. With ground water and ground contamination issues, he said the proposal would have a number of preventive design challenges.

Different modes of transit will be separated by streets and sidewalks so travelers are made to walk from one location to the next – getting more people on the streets. Dangberg said they made this decision based on the advice of the Urban Land Institute to not build a major facility that would act as a barrier to the other side of the tracks.

Another benefit of spreading out the intermodal facility is that it would allow for more development between transit options, including restaurants, stores and office buildings, Dangberg said. These businesses would get a lot of foot traffic from transit users because of the site’s layout.

He added that historic buildings would not be overshadowed by large facilities.

“(This facility will be a) major driver for economic development in the city and the region,” Dangberg said.

At build-out, it is expected to bring as many as 10 millions passengers through per year – equivalent to the current number of passengers at the Sacramento International Airport, he said.

Some community members raised questions regarding the walking distance between the Westfield Downtown Plaza and the transportation sites.

Dangberg estimated the distance between Downtown Plaza to any transportation site to be roughly about 660 feet with an additional 300 feet to reach the arena.

The community members involved in the discussion showed split opinions after the presentation.

Many said they liked the concept of creating the need to walk around the city, however, at the same time, members said that a nice train station would do no good if the city is not doing well economically.

Chuck Robuck, an Auburn resident who uses transit daily, said that he likes the proposed plans for the facilities.

“I like the new concept of where they’ve opened (the intermodal facility) up in front of the arena and lowered the arena,” he said. “To me, it’s not going to be as imposing of a building and you can walk out to the view of historic buildings.”

Robuck said he is still waiting to find out what is actually going to be put into the intermodal facility in comparison to what is actually needed.

John Burton, bike advisor for Dry Creek Parkway, said that he was unhappy with the information given at the meeting.

“The meeting was a failure for me,” he said. “For the amount of time we spent sitting here, there was little information given (about the intermodal facility) so that we could have a rational discussion.”

Sacramento Metro Chamber Interim President and CEO Martha Clark Lofgren said that the Think Big Sacramento town hall provided a good opportunity for public input.

“The city has stressed the importance of the transit component including pedestrian access,” she said. “All of that will promote economic development around the arena site. That’s what we need downtown.”

Fong concluded the event by saying that the intermodal facility is the project he and Think Big Sacramento is most committed to.

“We are absolutely committed to making the intermodal work,” Fong said. “And we’re trying to see how we can make the arena work with it.”

He added that all the plans discussed are still “very conceptual.”

“The funding we have in place is great,” Fong said. “We’ve got a lot more to secure to make it happen and it really is a long-range process and so if we don’t have a lot of details, there is a reason for that.”

Fong wrapped up the discussion by letting the community know that their comments would be taken into consideration during the next steps of the planning. He also invited those interested to become “citizen architects” to share their feedback and contribute to the planning process.

To become a citizen architect or to learn more about Think Big Sacramento, visit their website.

Arena opinion poll released, showing support

2011-08-05T06:00:08Z

A public opinion poll delivered to the City Council Thursday shows support for both the downtown arena and several public funding options.

That poll came in with 33 days remaining in the Think Big Sacramento committee’s 100-day timeline to come up with a “menu of options” for financing an entertainment and sports complex, said Kunal Merchant, chief of staff to Mayor Kevin Johnson.

Paul Maslin, of the public opinion research and strategy organization Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates, said his company did more than 700 phone interviews with residents of Sacramento, Sacramento County, El Dorado County, Placer County and Yuba County. The polls were completed two weeks ago.

The findings, he said, showed that about two thirds of those interviewed support the downtown Sacramento arena proposal, with most citing job creation and economic development as reasons.

The margin of error for the poll was about 3.5 percent.

“Almost 90 percent of voters had some knowledge of the proposal before the survey,” he said, adding that that number is very high for a local issue.

The poll also found that 75 percent of respondents said they preferred having a public/private partnership to fund the arena rather than not having a downtown arena at all.

“Economic concerns are front-and-center,” he said during his report to the council, adding that political party affiliation had no bearing on the issue, with Republicans, Democrats and those who decline to state their affiliation all supporting the proposal by a two-thirds majority.

Numerous funding options showed approval from levels of more than 70 percent to just over 50 percent.

“We rarely find any funding source for any major project that gets a majority (positive) response,” Maslin said.

Maslin added after his presentation to the council that the level of support is some of the highest he’s seen, noting that his firm has previously worked with a football stadium and a baseball stadium in Detroit, which required ballot measures to pass, and a regional effort for an airport in Denver in which several suburban areas agreed to give up land for a regional airport.

Funding sources that got widespread support included digital billboards, mounting a cell tower on top of the building and selling naming rights.

Other funding methods, though still showing support, were not as enthusiastically supported: Those included parking revenue from existing city parking garages that would otherwise be less-than-full during events, sales tax applied to goods sold within the arena and a $2 fee to all tickets to events in the arena.

A tax on hotels to fund the arena showed a 51 percent approval.

“We have about a dozen or more of these funding devices that have a majority of support,” Maslin said, noting that any specific taxes are “tougher to sell.”

The idea of charging a toll on drivers passing though the region received very little support.

“I think there is some momentum building,” he said. “There’s a lot of support for a lot of different ways to build it.”

Merchant told the City Council that a lot of progress has been made since July 2, noting the four-county bus tour and the approval of the arena by multiple local chambers of commerce.

“We have all (funding) options on the table at this point,” he said. “By the 100th day (just after Labor Day), we want to have a menu of options to present to the mayor and council.”

Merchant said that no funding decisions have been made at this point.

Councilman Kevin McCarty said he is concerned that the approval to use city land might have been overrode by people living outside Sacramento, but Maslin said there was no significant difference between the groups surveyed.

McCarty also said he was surprised to see approval of a hotel tax and ticket fees because, typically, voters prefer for others – such as the National Basketball Association or basketball players – to pay for arenas.

Cellphone and billboard ideas are innovative, McCarty added, but he said he sees logistical issues with both, since cell tower revenues – about $20,000 per tower per year – currently go into the city’s general fund or council discretionary funds, and there are already contracts on the books for digital billboards that might preclude their revenues going to the arena.

Another issue he brought up was with one of the other funding sources that has been talked about over the past few months – selling city land. He said he is not sure that putting any revenues from selling city property toward an arena is the best idea, when those funds could also go to the general fund, of which a large part is spent on public safety and parks.

Johnson said after the meeting in a press conference that McCarty asked some good questions that need to be considered, but he is happy to see the high level of support from the community.

“Overall, it just showed there is such strong support in the city and county and region if we approach it the right way,” he said. “We still have a long way to go, but I think that was a good first down for us.”

Two town hall meetings will be held next week for arena-related issues. The first will be held at 6 p.m. Monday night at the Amtrak station at Fourth and I streets and will include a site overview and address how the arena and intermodal transit facility will work together.

The second town hall meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Natomas Charter School, 4600 Blackrock Drive, and will focus on the future of Natomas when the downtown arena is finished.

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

Big things underway at Sacramento Railyards

2011-08-03T19:31:40Z

The Railyards is currently abuzz with activity. I recently had the chance take a short tour of the construction as part of my work with the City and it is a sight to behold. Seeing the massive excavation of dirt is am impressive far cry from what the site looked like only two months earlier, when construction started in May. The progress of the 245 plot of land is a welcome sight.

The earth directly in front of the main shop buildings, north of the Sacramento Amtrak Station, takes a large dip, perhaps twenty feet deep now. Before, this area was a flat expanse of dusty land, reaching to the rail station. Excavators pepper the site, clambering around their newly built depths of soil. Steam leaves the ground where crews have placed lye to evaporate moisture, making the soil more stable. Workers shovel clods of earth in their respective holes. The energy on-site is well into a positive nature.

More information about the Railyards project can be found at the City of Sacramento's Intermodal Transportation Facility webpage.

Disclosure: Carlos Eliason is a photographer, videographer, and designer working in Sacramento, CA. More photographs can be seen at www.flickr.com/photos/carloseliason

Arena effort gets regional business support

2011-07-22T01:10:32Z

In what Mayor Kevin Johnson called an unprecedented event, 14 chambers of commerce from the Sacramento region announced Thursday that they support an entertainment and sports complex in downtown Sacramento.

Johnson said the backing of the regional business community, which came after a four-county bus trip for Think Big Sacramento, is a commitment to the promise he made to the National Basketball Association earlier this year in New York City that Sacramento is an NBA city and can build a new arena.

“I did not sell Sacramento, I sold our region,” he said, adding that a common commitment to a downtown sports and entertainment complex will provide a more vibrant community.

The major obstacle facing the Think Big Sacramento coalition is developing a financing plan for the $386 million arena, something that was expected from the ICON-Taylor arena development team but was not a part of the report released after a nearly four-month feasibility study.

Johnson said he is confident that a workable public/private partnership will be in place before the end of this year, in time to meet the March 1, 2012 deadline to make serious efforts to build a new arena.

“We don’t want to be in the same situation year after year, and we know that March deadline is coming up. It’ll be here before we know it,” Johnson said, adding that he is confident the self-imposed deadline of having financing options in place by mid-September will be met.

“Then, in subsequent months, the rest of September, October and November, we believe we will have a critical path of a public/private partnership ... all before the end of the year. That’s our goal,” he said.

He alluded to creative funding models and “outside-the-box” thinking on the financing, but he did not give any specifics on funding options, except to address the question of a sales tax.

“No one here wants to do a sales tax,” he said. “We didn’t take it off the table, but we knew that would not fly. We learned that in 2006.”

Martha Lofgren, interim CEO of the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce, said the Metro Chamber has supported the idea of a downtown arena since at least 2004, and she said regional funding is the only method that makes sense.

“One agency, one local agency can’t do this alone,” she said. “There has to be a regional effort to fund a regional sports and entertainment center.”

She added that a downtown arena will benefit the whole region, not just Sacramento.

“If there’s one thing I think we as a region need right now, it’s an economic catalyst,” she said. “We need to move forward, get the financial picture in place and get the momentum going.”

The independent report released late last month claims that the region will benefit from $7 billion in economic activity over 30 years and create 4,000 jobs.

Some in the community have been skeptical of those numbers and the actual economic effect from an arena, but Lofgren said she believes the numbers are accurate.

“You need to know this is a very thoughtful process that has led up to the announcement today of the support from all of the regional chambers,” she said, adding that the business community has had since the beginning of June to check out and verify the numbers.

Willie Pelote, assistant director for the Political Action Department of the California chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME International), said that as a representative of labor, he also believes the numbers are accurate.

“I think the mayor and his team have been very thorough in making sure that they do the research that’s necessary so when they say something to the public, the public can go and check it out,” he said. “That’s why I think the region’s going to buy into this concept ... we’re looking at job creation.”

He added that he is “very comfortable” with what the finance committee – headed by former Sacramento Treasurer Tom Friery – is doing to make sure it is not being built on the backs of taxpayers.

Other chambers of commerce supporting the downtown arena are the Rancho Cordova Chamber of Commerce, the Sacramento Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Sacramento Black Chamber of Commerce, the Sacramento Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce, Citrus Heights Regional Chamber of Commerce, Folsom Chamber of Commerce, Lincoln Area Chamber of Commerce, Rainbow Chamber of Commerce, Rocklin Area Chamber of Commerce, Roseville Chamber of Commerce, Slavic-American Chamber of Commerce and the Yuba-Sutter Chamber of Commerce.

Pelote said he expects a similar showing of support from labor organizations in the coming weeks.

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

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.

Mayor spreads word about the benefits of an entertainment/sports complex

2011-07-13T01:57:27Z

Mayor Kevin Johnson is currently in the process of visiting Sacramento’s six major counties to discuss the benefits of a future entertainment and sports complex along the stretch of what used to be the old Southern Pacific railyards downtown.

At the mayor’s weekly press conference Tuesday, Johnson, who had just visited El Dorado County and the city of Folsom the day before, called his visits “authentic outreach.”

Johnson is going on a bus tour Thursday to visit regions of El Dorado County, Davis, Roseville and Rancho Cordova to seek input from the communities there, he said.

This city-to-city outreach is part of the the mayor’s Think Big Coalition. Johnson said the four guiding principles include putting the taxpayers first, making sure it’s about jobs, acknowledging that having an entertainment/sports complex is bigger than just sports and recognizing the need to win as a region.

“It’s really about us taking the show on the road and talking about the economic impact and benefits of having a new entertainment/sports complex,” Johnson said. “It’s much broader than the city of Sacramento. People of the region love that we’re going to them.”

In order to bolster community participation and support for an entertainment/sports complex, Johnson said there will be a design contest in which citizens will compete to design some part of the space outside of the proposed complex. The details are still being worked out through Citizen Architects, a support group for Think Big Sacramento.

“What makes our region different is the grassroots movement. There’s nowhere else in the country that’s getting the kind of input from its citizens the way we do it in Sacramento.

Johnson said that he is on day 44 of 100 days of their Think Big technical review of examining the old Southern Pacific railyards. Next week, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) will be examining the proposed entertainment/sports complex site.

“The other aspect of the 100 days is the financing,” Johnson said. “We’re looking at the menu of options that would fall into public financing, and we hope to have that done in a 100-day period.”

Other topics discussed included the importance of the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Greyhound bus station on Wednesday. The cost for the project was approximately $7 million, Johnson said.

The Community Investment Program (CIP) and share and redevelopment money were used to fund the project, Johnson said.

“We’ve been very frugal and efficient in terms of what we’ve been doing,” Johnson said. The Greyhound station (on L Street) has been something that has been an eyesore for years and we’re excited that we’re finally in a position to relocate the bus station to the new location on Richards Boulevard.”

The new Greyhound bus station was built a year ahead of schedule.

“It will be a state-of-the-art facility and it will be secure. People will feel safe there. Everything we’re doing is green now and we’re going to be a leader in that so it’s a sustainable building,” Johnson said.

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.

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.

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.

'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

State weighing courthouse sites

2011-03-15T04:01:17Z

Local leaders are pushing to get a new criminal courthouse built at the edge of the railyards downtown, with a decision on the location likely to be made by the end of March.

Bill Vickrey, the director of the Judicial Council's Administrative Office of the Courts, is reviewing two sites where the state could build a $439 million courthouse. One location is at Fifth and H streets across from the federal courthouse, and the other is a hole in the ground at 301 Capitol Mall where developer John Saca once planned to build twin 53-story condo towers.

The 44-courtroom facility is being built to relieve crowding at Gordon D. Schaber Sacramento County Courthouse and is currently one of the state's largest new courthouse projects. Sacramento's new criminal courthouse project is second only to a $633.9 million, 71-courtroom facility being planned in San Diego, said Teresa Ruano, spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of the Courts.

"We expect to be able to announce a decision about site selection by the end of this month," Ruano said.

A project advisory group that includes representatives from the city and county of Sacramento and the courts has provided input on the downtown sites.

In June, the Sacramento City Council agreed to support construction at the northeast corner of Fifth and H streets. Just two blocks from Schaber Courthouse, that site is adjacent to Sacramento Valley Station and close to the Sacramento County Jail. 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.

City officials think a stately courthouse at Fifth and H would be a catalyst project for redevelopment of the historic railyards. But they'd like to see more residences, restaurants and other mixed use brought to Capitol Mall to liven up the area after 5 p.m., said Assistant City Manager John Dangberg.

"It's arguably one of the grandest boulevards in Northern California," he said. "Certainly in the Central Valley, there's nothing that compares with it."

Business leaders including members of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership are also voicing support for that location in letters and meetings with the Administrative Office of the Courts. Building a criminal courthouse that requires high security on Capitol Mall would be a "short-sighted" waste of prime real estate that serves as a scenic gateway into downtown, according to the partnership.

"Clearly, the Fifth and H site is what we feel is the most appropriate location for this facility, with related adjacent services and an opportunity to really complement starting the development in the railyards," DSP Executive Director Michael Ault said Monday.

The Sacramento District Council of the Urban Land Institute has also weighed in on the process. In a letter last month, urban designer Allen Folk, the council's chairman, encouraged the courts to consider the regional and neighborhood contexts, access to public transit and whether the building would promote nearby development when choosing a site. A courthouse should be near support services such as law offices, bail bondsmen and restaurants, he said.

"Courthouses by nature need to be located in an area that would be convenient to visitors and services," he said.

The 1965 Gordon Schaber courthouse was designed with 22 courtrooms but is currently operating 44. Criminal and civil court cases will be divided up once the criminal courthouse opens, with Gordon Schaber courthouse being used for civil court matters and administration. The new courthouse will replace 35 of the courtrooms and allow nine new judgeships, Ruano said.

Construction is expected to begin in early 2013 and be completed in 2015. Funding for the project would not come from the state's general fund. The Administrative Office of the Courts must ask the California State Legislature's Joint Legislative Budget Committee to issue lease-revenue bonds. The bonds would be paid back through court fees, penalties and assessments from within the judicial branch under Senate Bill 1407.

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

Railyards growth should start small, experts say

2011-01-29T01:38:02Z

The next stage of growth for Sacramento's historic railyards should continue to connect the site with surrounding areas, allowing for smaller-scale development of neighborhoods linked by public transit and an open-space network, urban development experts said Friday at City Hall.

An eight-person panel of development and design experts presented recommendations for downtown railyards development to the city.

They were brought to Sacramento through a fellowship program sponsored by the Urban Land Institute's Daniel Rose Center for Public Leadership in Land Use. The panelists spent three days working in Sacramento and touring the railyards before making the recommendations.

The city and the railyards’ former owner, Thomas Enterprises, pulled together $225 million in local, state and federal funding to build infrastructure including streets, bridges and relocated train tracks. Site cleanup and completed environmental reviews have helped ready the site for construction.

As one of the country's largest infill projects, redeveloping the roughly 240-acre site will take years and must be market-driven. The city may own only 33 acres of that site. Yet as "good stewards," city officials and staff must now help reshape the development vision to plan for new economic realities and allow incremental growth, said panel co-chair Con Howe, managing director of CityView Los Angeles Fund and Los Angeles' former planning director.

"Owners and developers come and go," Howe said. "But the city will be the steward ... for a very long time."

The plan for the site should be integrated with plans for the River District, Sacramento and American riverfronts, the central business district, residential neighborhoods such as Midtown, open space and transportation networks, panelists said.

Sacramento's 2030 general plan does that to a small degree. But specific plans for each area are far more detailed.

"We think it's essential you look at the city ... and start to think about all these resources you could be connecting ... so the whole is greater than the sum of its parts," said Robert Lane, senior fellow for urban design at the Regional Plan Association in New York.

The plan should view the railyards as a transit district, rather than just a site containing a transit center, they said.

The panelists recognized that all cities must work in an economic climate where there's a lack of both public funding and private investment. They recommended linking public and private investments to build small neighborhoods that are each complete as a place.

The most expensive way to start would be from the inside out, starting with development of the historic central railroad shops. An alternative would be to allow more natural growth from the city to move into the site, said Frank Cannon, president of Union Station Neighborhood Company in Denver.

Denver provides a good example of how long redevelopment of a large former railyard can take. It's taken at least 30 years, three mayoral administrations and multiple property owners to develop its 200-acre freight yard. After consolidating rail corridors, reclaiming riverfront, building streets and other infrastructure and investing in a multi-modal transit facility, the area is now one of Denver's most desirable, Cannon said.

The city should also start finding ways to expose residents and visitors to the historic site and create a sense of place there, they said.

The site hasn't been open to the public for decades, so most Sacramentans don't have a true sense of the history and size of the railyards and its Central Shops.

John Hodgson, former chair of the ULI Sacramento District Council, said he was "blown away" when he toured the site for the first time last summer after living here for about 40 years.

While long-term plans could include public markets and the future railroad museum, the city should create low-cost uses that will get people to the site and excite them about future development possibilities, said Marlene Gafrick, director of Houston's Planning and Development Department.

Interim uses could include street festivals, sports, arts, culture, wellness and educational events inside and outside the central shops, she said.

Representatives of Thomas Enterprises and Inland American Real Estate Trust, which now owns 203 acres of railyards, attended the presentation.

Mayor Kevin Johnson was among four mayors chosen as the center's 2010/2011 fellows. The other cities are Detroit, Houston and Charlotte, N.C.

Johnson's efforts to promote Sacramento and a national buzz about the railyards site helped the city win one of the four spots, city Infill Coordinator Desmond Parrington said later.

Sacramento's fellowship team also includes Assistant City Manager John Dangberg, Sacramento Area Council of Governments Executive Director Mike McKeever and Hodgson, president of The Hodgson Company, a Sacramento land use development and advocacy firm. Each of those three served on a fellowship panel for one of the other cities.

The fellowship program seeks out cities with interesting land-use challenges and provides free assistance.

Johnson and the city's three other fellows will visit Miami in February and Denver in June to learn from land-use issues there. They and city staff will work with panel members to build on and implement the recommendations over the next year.

"It's a very good juncture for us to get that kind of feedback," Parrington said. "It's a good juncture not only because we have a change in the developer, but because of the economy. The plan (by Thomas Enterprises) was developed in the height of the boom. Now we're in the trough. It's a good time to revisit things."

City rebids track relocation

2011-01-27T02:26:58Z

Sacramento transportation officials on Wednesday rebid the city's downtown railroad track relocation project.

Tracks that are part of a major trade route must be moved 500 feet north of their existing location at Sacramento Valley Station, Fifth and I streets, and straightened to allow for longer freight trains. That will enable a larger volume of trains to move through Sacramento and to do so more quickly.

The project will also separate currently shared freight and passenger tracks to increase safety while still allowing freight trains to move at higher speeds.

Four new tracks – two devoted to passenger trains and two for freight – will be built. Passenger platforms, separate tunnels for pedestrians, passengers and service and new utilities will also be added, said Department of Transportation Operations Manager Fran Halbakken.

The Department of Transportation won $20 million in federal stimulus money and more than $25 million in state Proposition 1B money for the project.

But the cost for the track relocation itself had to be scaled back to $45 million. Then the project had to be redesigned and rebid last May after the city was unable to find another $12 million in funding.

“Staff has worked tirelessly to get this project ready to rebid – in between coordinating with a new property owner/partner on a dozen new agreements, so as not to jeopardize any of the $45 million in federal and state funding that has been cobbled together for this much-anticipated project,” city transportation department Director Jerry Way said in a prepared statement.

Sacramento Department of Transportation Director Jerry Way. Photo by Brandon Darnell.

Sacramento Valley Station sits on the Central Corridor, a national trade route whose western junction is the high-volume Port of Oakland. Currently, freight and passenger trains share three tracks in a configuration set up about the time the Sacramento station was built in 1925.

Total cost of the project, including construction management and other work, is about $68 million. Work was delayed while the project was redesigned and rebid, and while ownership of the historic railyards changed hands. The city had hoped to break ground last May.

The project, which includes construction of the Fifth and Sixth street bridges, makes up the first phase of the new regional transportation center to be built near the Sacramento Valley Station. Moving the train tracks also allows further development of the historic railyards.

Developer Thomas Enterprises defaulted in June on more than $187 million in private loans, which had been used to buy 238 acres of the railyards in 2006. The company’s lender, Inland American Real Estate Trust now owns the site and is partnering with the city on the track relocation project on adjacent city-owned land.

Groundbreaking is expected in May. Transportation officials expect the work to take about two years.

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

Council to consider arena team qualifications

2011-01-26T06:48:01Z

The Sacramento City Council decided Tuesday to move forward with all four teams vying to develop a new arena for the Sacramento Kings – for at least a little longer.

Following a motion by City Councilman Steve Cohn, all nine members of the council voted unanimously to schedule a hearing in two weeks for the teams to provide their qualifications and financing approaches directly to the council.

In doing so, they decided not to follow a recommendation made Friday by Mayor Kevin Johnson's arena task force that the city start working with just one team, led by Sacramento developer David Taylor and ICON Venue Group, a prominent Colorado sports facility developer.

Several council members said they had more questions that have to be addressed before they could make such a decision. Some initially expressed an interest in giving city staff a 90-day period to evaluate all four teams.

Assistant City Manager John Dangberg suggested a two-week time frame as an alternative and Cohn made the motion. They did so after the ICON-Taylor team and the CORE team indicated they wouldn't continue with the process if all four teams were kept in the game three more months. The Natomas Entertainment Sports Center Partners and the Convergence Team said they would.

"At some point, we really want to have our staff that we hired to work for us" evaluate the teams, City Councilman Kevin McCarty said.

City Councilman Rob Fong urged city staff to engage the Maloofs, who own the Kings, soon to determine what approach they'd support for building a sports and entertainment facility to replace Arco Arena, the Kings' current home.

Johnson led the meeting but remained silent during a public hearing and council discussion lasting more than two hours. He brought the ICON-Taylor team together after the Convergence Team, which then included Taylor, failed to produce a viable project on schedule last year.

ICON President and CEO Tim Romani asked the council to give his team 90 days to study the project's feasibility and to develop a proposal and financing plan.

Romani warned that the Kings are not "locked into" Sacramento, and representing team owners who decide to relocate is "a messy ordeal." He said he'd rather help find a solution so the Kings can stay in Sacramento. Right now, the team is playing in an arena that "pales in comparison to every other arena in the NBA," Romani said.

"It's a critical time for Sacramento if (you) want to keep the Kings," he said. "I can tell you this: I think the time for process is behind you. I think the time for results is right now."

In the second half of March, the Maloofs will have an option to get out of their lease at Arco, task force co-chair Chris Lehane said.

The task force gave the ICON-Taylor team a first-place ranking based on its experience. ICON has built more than 50 sports complexes throughout the world and is especially experienced in building NBA arenas, task force member Tom Friery told the council.

Natomas Chamber of Commerce President Ed Koop and several others from Natomas asked Johnson and the Council to reject the recommendation of the ICON-Taylor team.

About 400 people signed petitions in support of keeping the arena in Natomas. Koop countered comments that no economic development had sprung up around the arena. At least two dozen restaurants, hotels and other businesses have been opened near the arena, Koop said.

"We want the arena. We deserve the arena. And we've got a good plan," he said. "We're pretty confident you're going to (see) that Natomas makes the most sense."

Councilwoman Angelique Ashby, who represents Natomas and downtown, said the Arco site must be redeveloped in a way that would be as beneficial as having a new arena if the project is built downtown. The area's 80,000 residents can't just lose a facility that benefits the local economy so heavily, she said.

In 2006, Sacramento County residents voted against funding a new Kings arena in the downtown railyards. Three of the teams have proposed that site as a possible location.

Fong asked if the city and development teams will consider a new model to finance a new arena, given the state of economy. In most if not all current cases, an entity other than NBA teams build new arenas, however, the teams become the tenants and then benefit from all the revenue that comes in from operating the facility. That income could be used by developers to offset the cost of building the arena, he said later.

Sacramento will have to look at something other than a "classic" funding plan – and the task force recommended the ICON-Taylor team because its members were confident the team would "look outside the box," Lehane said.

The task force and all four teams have acknowledged there must be some public funding for a new arena, but what form that might take isn't agreed on or clear. The task force believes building a new arena downtown makes "the most sense," he said.

"This is ultimately a decision for this body," Lehane said.

Natomas leaders 'frustrated' over arena battle

2011-01-25T01:45:42Z

Natomas business leaders admitted Monday they’re fighting an uphill battle to avoid losing the Sacramento Kings arena.

At a morning press conference, Natomas Chamber of Commerce leaders said they’re asking Mayor Kevin Johnson and the Sacramento City Council to reject a task force recommendation announced Frida y.

The task force, which was appointed by the mayor, recommends Sacramento developer David Taylor and a Colorado sports facility developer be chosen to explore building an arena downtown over the next three months. That team won the recommendation over three others, including one backed by the Natomas chamber.

"Natomas is not giving up the fight to keep the arena in Natomas," said Chamber President Ed Koop, who stood in a soggy field within view of Arco Arena, the Kings’ current home.

The chamber and its arena development team, Natomas Entertainment Sports Center Partners, propose building a new arena on the land – about 100 acres owned by the city.

The chamber and Natomas ESC Partners also encouraged Sacramento residents who support keeping the arena in Natomas to show their support at the City Council meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

The task force is scheduled to present an analysis of four arena teams and recommendations to the City Council then.

The Natomas chamber has gathered hundreds of signatures from residents, business owners and others who want to keep the arena in Natomas, said Marni Leger, who chairs the chamber's arena committee.

Koop and Leger spent the rest of the day meeting with City Council members to discuss their concerns. More appointments were scheduled for Tuesday.

They're asking the City Council to determine how much it would cost to build an arena downtown versus in Natomas.

Skanska, the Natomas team's contractor, looked at two proposed downtown sites – the downtown railyards and Westfield Downtown Plaza – and estimated keeping the arena in Natomas would save $100 million to $200 million, said Bob Moreno, managing director of Brookhurst Development Corp. The company is a partner on the Natomas development team.

The ICON-Taylor team doesn’t have a plan to build an arena yet but asked the city for 90 days to create one. The task force is recommending the city work exclusively with that team, but the lack of a plan will continue to delay getting an area built after another attempt failed last year. The Natomas site is “shovel-ready” and has all the necessary infrastructure, they said.

"It's pretty frustrating to be at this point," Koop said. "From the beginning, we've known we're fighting an uphill battle."

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

ICON-Taylor team favored to build arena

2011-01-22T01:52:52Z

Sacramento developer David Taylor and a prominent Colorado sports facility developer have been pegged as the top contenders in an effort to build the city a new downtown arena.

Mayor Kevin Johnson's arena task force is recommending city officials work with Taylor and ICON Venue Group to determine if building a sports and entertainment center is feasible now and if they're the right team for the project.

In an analysis released Friday, the task force encouraged the city to give the ICON-Taylor team 90 days to study the viability of such a project and to develop a proposal and financing plan. The team was handpicked by Johnson after another team, which then included Taylor, failed to produce a viable project on schedule last year.

Without a detailed proposal for the task force to consider, the ICON-Taylor team's first-place ranking to build an arena in the downtown railyards was based on its experience and credibility. The team's partnership with the historic railyards' new owner, Inland American Real Estate Trust, was also a factor in the selection, according to the analysis.

"While the lack of a development plan could be considered non-responsive in some circumstances, the (ICON-Taylor) team warrants unique consideration owing to its extensive experience and track record, locally, nationally and globally, in the development of major projects, including events centers, under challenging circumstances," the task force said in its analysis.

Task force co-chair Chris Lehane is scheduled to present the analysis to the Sacramento City Council at its Tuesday night meeting.

The task force is recommending the city manager's office take up to 120 days to determine if the team's proposal demonstrates "a real promise of feasibility" and if the Sacramento Kings owners, the Maloofs, or the NBA will commit to stay in Sacramento and work on an acceptable development agreement.

The task force also recommends the City Council consider entering an exclusive negotiating period with the developers to hammer out a final agreement on the project.

Four teams met the task force's Dec. 30 deadline to submit proposals or indicate interest in developing an arena to replace the Kings' current home, Arco Arena, in Natomas.

Detailed proposals were submitted by the Convergence Team, led by Sacramento developer Gerry Kamilos, and Natomas Entertainment Sports Center Partners, led by Mike Corrick of Nacht & Lewis Architects and Rick Millitello, general manager and executive vice president of Skanska USA Building Inc. of Oakland.

Providing proposals with detailed funding plans seemed to work against them, as the task force used those details to rank the teams lower in the analysis.

Natomas ESC Partners, which was ranked fourth, expressed a concern about how a federal moratorium on development in Natomas might affect their proposal during the task force's fact-finding meetings with development teams last week.

The task force said the proposal doesn’t seem to be in the city’s or region’s best interest economically, when compared to building an arena integrated with downtown's future regional transit center. Also, redevelopment of the Arco Arena site should work without a new arena, the task force said.

The Convergence Team, which won the first shot at developing an arena last year, has simplified its proposal, yet its plan remains the most complex.

A California Exposition and State Fair manager told task force members that Cal Expo officials are reluctant to consider even a scaled-down plan to privately develop part of the existing state fair site to help fund a downtown arena.

"The project’s inherent complications likely render it feasible in theory only," the task force said in its analysis.

The CORE team was ranked second by the task force. The team – led by former arena task force member and president of McClellan Park, Larry Kelley, and entrepreneur Ali Mackani – has made a determination of project viability its priority, like the ICON-Taylor team.

The team includes experienced local players such as Kelley, a notable developer, and real estate attorney Mike Kvarme, another former task force member. But the team is lacking a sports facility developer with ICON's expertise, according to the analysis.

The task force recommends the City Council be asked in 90 to 120 days – late April or late May – whether to enter an exclusive negotiating period with the developers.

On Tuesday, the City Council could make a decision to proceed with one or more of the development teams. Because the team's proposals varied so much in terms of detail, 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.

City staff would then take 60 days to review the proposal or proposals, prepare a staff report and return to the council, possibly in July, for consideration of an exclusive negotiating period, said Assistant City Manager John Dangberg.

Curtis Park neighbors fear clear-cutting of Heritage Trees in Union Pacific Railyard site

2011-01-19T21:37:52Z

Developer Paul Petrovich has requested a permit from the City of Sacramento to remove 57 Heritage Trees on the Union Pacific Railyard site where he plans to build Curtis Park Village, a development project. A hearing has been set for this Friday, January 21st, at old City Hall, where the permit will be reviewed and the issue decided. Neighbors from Curtis Park will meet immediately beforehand to discuss the issue and speak to the media.

While Petrovich Development says the trees must be removed because the soil around the trees is toxic, there does not appear to be adequate documentation to support this claim.

Just over one month ago the State Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) lowered the clean-up standards at the request of the developer. Although the Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association (SCNA) has asked for information that would show the level of toxics around each tree, this documentation has not been provided to SCNA or to the City. The developer is relying on a "general order" by DTSC to remove toxic soil from the entire railyard site that was issued in 1995--an order that was not specific to the Heritage Trees in question. Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association and many concerned residents feel strongly that, until specific documentation is provided, these Heritage Trees--some over one hundred years old--should not be massacred with a chainsaw.

Petrovich Development is required by law to replace the trees with new plantings, inch for inch, either on the site of development or offsite. Although the developer is working through the Sacramento Tree Foundation on this mitigation, he is planning on replanting trees offsite only, and has not disclosed the location at which he intends to do this. SCNA would like at least some of the mature Heritage Trees he will remove to be replaced onsite. And, while the developer claims that he will plant over 2,400 new trees onsite, the trees he is planning to plant will be exponentially more diminutive, and in no way compare with the large, beautiful, old Oaks that will be lost.

SCNA is asking that the developer’s mitigation plan be discussed before he gets the permit to act. Furthermore, evidence that the ambient levels of toxicity that the developer claims to exist beneath some of the trees has not been shared with SCNA. The confusion around this lack of disclosure is supported by the fact that some of the Heritage Trees earmarked for destruction are on the far periphery of the property and would have had less chance of accumulating toxic buildup.

Petrovich Development will also remove an additional 189 non-heritage trees, many of which are large but were excluded from consideration as Heritage Trees on a technicality. For example, a 52-inch diameter Valley Oak that has been estimated as being over 250 years old and was designated by the Sacramento Tree Foundation as a special "Legacy Tree," has been classified as “non-heritage” due to its label of not being in "good condition.” This classification is now being used by the developer as grounds to remove the tree.

It is difficult for neighbors to express the deep feelings that have developed over the generations for these particular trees. The Heritage Trees are felt to be a tremendous asset to the community. They have stood for over one hundred years, symbols of a neighborhood devoted to trees amidst a city famous for this devotion.

Studies conducted by ornithologist and Certified Wildlife Biologist Dan Airola, who lives in the Curtis Park neighborhood, have shown that this woodland of Oaks supports a high density of migratory birds during the spring and fall migration periods. The number of birds supported is over thirty times more than what is seen in adjacent residential areas. In addition, the Heritage Tree ordinance cited by the developer was meant to apply to trees in backyards and median strips--not to a large, 72-acre parcel of land. SCNA feels that this ordinance is being purposely misused in order to allow the developer to clear-cut the Heritage Trees from the railyard site.

The Sierra Curtis Park Neighborhood Association urges citizens from every neighborhood to come together to help save these precious heritage trees.

What: Gathering outside Council Chambers at City Hall
Hearing inside City Hall to determine if the developer of Curtis Park Village will receive a permit to remove 57 Heritage Trees from the site

When: Friday, January 21st at 8:30am--Gathering outside the Council Chambers at City Hall, where Curtis Park residents will be available for interviews Friday, January 21st at 9:00am--Hearing inside City Hall

Where: Gathering--In the courtyard between the old City Hall and the new City Hall, 915 I Street Hearing--the old Council Chambers at City Hall, 2nd floor, 915 I Street

Who: The following people will be available for comment before and after the hearing:

Michael Bledsoe, Chair, SCNA Neighborhood Concerns Committee, (916)402-7066

Dan Airola, Certified Wildlife Biologist, Airola Environmental Consulting, (916)494-1283, d.airola@sbcglobal.net

Katie Thomas, local resident who has been working closely on the issue, cell is (916)812-0747, home is (916)455-5170

Patrick Soluri, President, Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association, immediately from Thursday morning and before and after the hearing at City Hall, (916) 455-7300

Curtis Park Neighbors who live close to the trees, immediately before and after the hearing at City Hall

Inland to reimburse city for railyards overpayment

2011-01-14T02:34:46Z

The new downtown railyards owner has consented to cover a $3.2 million debt owed to the city for a key parcel of land, a company spokesman said Thursday.

Inland American Real Estate Trust agreed to reimburse the city for the amount taxpayers overpaid the railyards' former owner, developer Thomas Enterprises, for nearly 33 acres of land next to the historic train depot: $2.65 million plus interest, said Inland spokesman Jared Ficker of California Strategies, a public affairs company.

Last spring, a court arbitrator ended more than three years of dispute between the city and Thomas by setting the value for the land at $52.35 million, significantly less than the $55 million the city paid in 2006.

"From our perspective, this had to get resolved so we could move the project forward. So that's what we did," Ficker said.

The city plans to build a new regional transit center on the land. The property is also being discussed as a possible location for a new arena.

Ownership of the parcel must be transferred to the city so the city can request bids for track relocation work within the next few weeks – which in turn protects federal and state funding for track relocation and other railyards infrastructure. It's too early to provide a figure for the amount of funding that will be protected, Ficker said.

"We knew this was a critical path item to moving forward on the track relocation," Ficker said.

Thomas Enterprises had proposed several alternatives to reimbursing the city for the overpayment, but no agreement was reached before the company lost ownership of the railyards in a foreclosure auction.

The Sacramento City Council must approve the parcel purchase and sale agreement and a handful of other agreements. The items are expected to go before them next week or the week after, Ficker said.

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

Railyards Look Back on Track

2011-01-07T23:39:20Z

Work is underway once again at the downtown railyards.

Here are some images I captured Jan. 6, 2011 between 7:13am and 8:44am:

An Amtrak train makes its way toward Sacramento's train station during an early foggy morning, skirting the east side of the historic railyards.

Two workers on the 6th St. bridge appear to be talking (above) and another sandblasts the surface (below).

Three construction workers walk along a portion of the 5th St. bridge along the east side of the old buildings.

An expanded view of the 5th and 6th St. bridges (above and below).

Looking northwest to an old water tower on the west side of the 6th St. bridge.

A panorama from north to south, looking west.

For related article, CLICK HERE>>>

SacPress Photos | Kati Garner

Editorial: More progress on the downtown arena

2011-01-07T03:37:20Z

What a difference a recessionary year makes.

Thursday morning’s meeting of the Sacramento First Task Force, which has been looking at competing proposals for a new sports and entertainment arena, was scaled down in every way from last March’s high-profile event.

Held in the much smaller Old City Hall meeting room, which was notably chilly (which task force co-chair Chris Lehane half-jokingly explained as city cost-cutting) the event drew far fewer people, nearly half of whom were on one of the four teams vying for approval. The media presence was far smaller than last year.

With four proposals instead of seven, and even the task force itself smaller by two members, everything in the room reflected the lowered expectations of the moment.

Mayor Kevin Johnson, the driving force behind the recent movement to build a new arena, was not present, preferring to issue a vaguely encouraging press statement.

So why did I leave the meeting feeling so optimistic?

The four remaining proposals are modest. Three of them are reiterations of proposals from last year, and the most modest of all was that of the three-week-old team of David Taylor Associates and ICON Venue, a new player in the game.

That that last proposal also seemed the most likely to be realized speaks volumes.

Last year’s pick, the Convergence Team’s “three-way-land-swap” proposal, spearheaded by developer Gerry Kamilos, was even more inscrutable than last year, when it won the competition with a proposal that fell into the so-crazy-it-just-might-work realm. Turns out it was so complex, with so many moving parts, that it could never work. Sacramento Press reporter Suzanne Hurt has covered this process exhaustively.

Although Kamilos and his team continued to insist that they could pull it off, questioning by the task force Thursday did not produce convincing answers. The task force’s frustration boiled over when member Mark Harris attacked Kamilos’ plan with particular brutality, comparing the proposal to a game of three-card monte, which seemed to stun the audience. Harris’ frustration may have been shared by many in the room, but let’s be real: Harris was a member of the task force that chose Kamilos’ plan. To now try to publicly humiliate Kamilos seems unprofessional and downright rude.

Despite Harris’ descents into showboating, a necessarily realistic air pervaded the two-hour event. Every one of the presenters focused, in different ways, on what has always been the key issue: the financing.

As Larry Kelly, a former member of the task force who recently joined Ali Mackani’s CORE Group, said, “It doesn’t matter what pretty pictures we show or where we put it .… Unless you can finance it, you can’t build it.”

The Natomas ESC Partners had detailed charts to show how they would finance it. Kamilos continued to insist that, against all odds, he could convince a new State Fair board that this land swap was in its interests, and Kelly and Mackani were vague but admirably passionate.

But at the end of the meeting, it was the least-detailed presentation, by the newest group, that seemed to hold the most promise: the David Taylor/ICON Venue proposal.

It has been only three weeks since Johnson introduced longtime Sacramento developer Taylor to Tim Romani, president of ICON, which is the premier developer of arenas and stadia in the world, with buildings like London’s O2 Arena and Denver’s Pepsi Center in its portfolio. But already, at least in my mind, this seems like the team that can make it happen.

The reasons are many, but foremost among them is the fact that they entertain the possibility that it might NOT happen.

There was a calm, centered, confident tone to their brief presentation that inspired confidence. And confidence is what Sacramento needs to move forward with what many agree is an essential element of our town’s growth. We need to be able to believe in the people who are leading this development.

Both ICON and Taylor have impressive track records that should at least give them some room – or at least 90 days – to come up with a plan. As Romani said, in 90 days, they will talk with the two crucial players – the Kings organization and the city of Sacramento – and figure out whether this can be done.

It is likely, of course, that they will report that it CAN be done, by them. But that ICON has done it before, many times in many places, matters.

There will of course be naysayers who will have a million reasons – or at least a well-worn quip or two – why this is a “rip-off,” a “scam,” or a “pipe dream.” Why it won’t work. Why it shouldn’t be done. Why the Maloofs don’t deserve it, as if this is about the Maloofs.

Or even, perhaps, why Sacramento doesn’t deserve it.

But Sacramento needs this. An arena downtown, most likely at the railyards, for many reasons, is the crucial cornerstone on which the revitalization of our entire city, and our region, will be based.

Just as compelling to me was the Taylor-ICON insistence, alone of all the groups, that there will need to be public money involved. Contrary to anti-government talking points, public money is regularly used to encourage development, especially when that development will grow the tax base and “raise all boats.” The $200 million gaps that other proposals admitted will not be closed by private money, and Sacramentans should be willing to invest in their future. A downtown arena is one of the best investments we could make.

But this is a subject for another day. For those who are convinced that a downtown arena is a good thing for Sacramento and for the entire region – and there is no doubt in my mind that it is – then the Taylor-ICON proposal deserves some time and consideration. I think the Sacramento First Task Force should give them the nod when they meet in City Council chambers on Jan. 25.

Task force weighs four arena teams

2011-01-07T02:45:51Z

An arena task force will use flexibility to analyze a second round of project proposals because there is such a wide range of plans now before them, a task force co-chair said Thursday.

Co-chair Chris Lehane called the proposals to build Sacramento a new sports and entertainment facility "apples and oranges.” Each plan from the four teams has different levels of detail and preparation, ranging from three weeks to more than a year, he said after a public hearing at historic City Hall.

Lehane and member Matt Kelly, executive secretary of the Sacramento-Sierra’s Building & Construction Trades Council, said they appreciated the work Sacramento developer Gerry Kamilos and the Convergence Team put into their proposal last year. Their team was given the first shot at the project, and their effort helped move forward a process that can take years, Lehane said.

But task force member Mark Harris, an infrastructure finance expert, berated Kamilos and the team for asking for more time after failing to make enough progress on their proposed three-way land swap during the exclusive negotiating period they had with the city until late October.

Last year, Harris had called the land-swap proposal a "three-card monte." On Thursday, he sarcastically apologized to "the hustlers and scam artists throughout the world" for having compared them to the development team.

"I'm not only disappointed, but I'm offended that we've wasted so much time with the Convergence group," Harris said, raising his voice.

Standing alone before the task force, Kamilos asked for four more months to work out agreements with Cal Expo, the NBA and the Sacramento Kings owners, the Maloofs, in order to build a $500 million – $550 million project at the downtown railyards. His team was the first to get the NBA and the Maloofs to put a financial agreement to build a new arena on the table in 10 years, Kamilos said.

"I take offense to the fact that you choose not to recognize all these elements that have been accomplished in the last year and that have never been made in this city before," he said.

The Convergence presentation and a question-and-answer session with task force members dominated nearly half of a hearing that ran more than two hours.

Kamilos is no longer partnering with another Sacramento developer, David Taylor, who was a member of the Convergence Team until they didn't produce a viable proposal on deadline. Taylor said he joined ICON Venue Group and other members of a team hand-picked by the mayor three weeks ago because he felt they needed to simplify the project and bring in expertise he hadn't seen yet.

Taylor gave a presentation with Tim Romani, president and chief executive officer of Colorado-based ICON.

ICON has managed more arena and stadium development projects worldwide than any other firm. Romani counseled the task force against continuing with the competition Johnson established by putting out a public call for proposals, first in late 2009 and again in late 2010, and appointing the task force. He said leaders should be collaborating to build an arena.

"I don't believe a competing process is going to get you where you need to go," he said. "The collaborative process of all the business leaders, along with the city and the team, is what it's going to take to make this happen."

Presentations were also given by the CORE team, led by entrepreneur Ali Mackani and McClellan Park President Larry Kelley, and by Natomas Entertainment Sports Center Partners, led by Mike Corrick of Nacht & Lewis Architects and Rick Millitello, general manager and executive vice president of Skanska USA Building Inc. of Oakland. Natomas ESC Partners is the only team proposing a plan for the existing Arco Arena site.

The teams focused on the need to determine funding plans, their individual expertise and how soon they could present development and funding plans to the city. All four recognized the need for a public-private partnership on funding, which they said could take several forms except for any type of tax increase.

“There’s no way in hell that this project is going to get done without public help,” Taylor told the task force.

The CORE team and the ICON-Taylor team have no financing plans yet. The Convergence Team and Natomas ESC Partners have detailed finance plans, but questions remain for both.

Romani said the ICON-Taylor team could tell the city whether they can take on the project and how they'd develop and finance it within three months. The CORE team asked for six months to work with city on a financing plan.

The task force will release an analysis of the concepts Jan. 21. The four proposals may be ranked in order of preference, but that's still being determined, Lehane said.

Over the next two weeks, subgroups of the task force will meet with each of the four teams at least once but possibly several times to get more specifics about the teams' expertise and plans.

Task force members advised Natomas ESC Partners to create a more individualized funding plan with several financial models to offer the Maloofs more flexibility, and to flesh out their argument that keeping the arena in Natomas fits with the city's 2030 General Plan and plans for economic growth and increasing jobs.

The task force will present a report on the proposals to the City Council Jan. 25.

Johnson didn't attend the hearing, but he issued a statement later.

"The competition is great for the city, because it gives us more options and ensures we move forward from a position of strength," he said in a prepared statement sent by e-mail. "The public hearing is a great step forward, but we all know these types of deals are not easy – even in the best of times. I look forward to reading their upcoming analysis along with my council colleagues at the end of the month."

Photo 1 of arena task force member Mark Harris and Photo 2 of developer Gerry Kamilos by Brandon Darnell. Photo 3 of Convergence Team lead counsel Chuck Trainor speaking and Don Johnson of Kamilos Co., seated, by Suzanne Hurt, a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Inland moves cautiously on railyards

2011-01-05T04:37:14Z

The new owner of the downtown railyards development site on Tuesday night disclosed plans to move slowly on the property.

A consultant for the suburban Chicago real estate investment firm, Inland American Real Estate Trust, said the company has "no immediate plans" to change the land use plan the Sacramento City Council approved for the country's largest infill project under its previous owner, Thomas Enterprises.

In 2011, Inland will concentrate on continuing infrastructure projects including bridge construction and railroad track relocation – the "critical building block" for further development, said Inland spokesman Jared Ficker of California Strategies, a public affairs company.

"We need to stay focused on the current and substantial infrastructure development," he said. "We're going to be focused on that for the next year."

The 13-minute presentation before the City Council was Inland's first public appearance and discussion of its plans for the site since foreclosing on the property near Sacramento Valley Station on Oct. 22. Inland officials including Project Manager Dean Stermer were present but didn't address the council. Thomas Enterprises officials also attended the meeting.

The Oak Brook, Ill., company took ownership of the 203-acre site dubbed the Railyards after Georgia developer Thomas Enterprises defaulted on nearly $194 million in loans in June.

Inland American, one of five real estate investment trusts owned by the Inland Real Estate Group of Companies, created Inland American Sacramento LLC as a single-asset entity and holder of the railyards property. The parent company has diverse real estate assets in every state, with a total value exceeding $25 billion.

Inland will continue working with the city to resolve the transfer of a parcel now owned by the city. Inland will present a series of agreements to help work out the transition in coming weeks, Ficker said.

Since October, Inland has been working with city, state and independent contractors to keep infrastructure construction going on such projects as the Fifth and Sixth street bridges and track relocation and to protect state and federal funding for the work.

About $167 million in state, federal and local funds plus $71 million in private funds from Thomas – a total of $238 million – has been lined up for infrastructure, Assistant City Manager John Dangberg said.

The railyards once drove Sacramento's economy after they were opened in the steam locomotive era by Central Pacific, which later became Southern Pacific. The heart of the railyards were its railroad shops. Those central shops were closed in 1999 after Union Pacific bought Southern Pacific.

Eight central shop buildings were all that remained when Thomas Enterprises bought 238 acres of the historic railyards from Union Pacific in late December 2006. Thomas planned to transform the property into a $6 billion, 21st-century mixed-use district designed to recapture the importance of the former railroad site and double the size of downtown. Thomas was working closely with the city, which expects to build a regional transit center on adjacent land.

Thomas' plans called for more than 12,000 residential units, 2.3 million square feet of office space, 1.4 million square feet of retail, nearly 500,000 square feet of mixed-use space and 46 acres of parks and other open space. The heart of the development was expected to be a cultural center based in rehabbed railroad shops sitting around a large central plaza.

Inland plans to work closely with the California Department of Parks and Recreation to rehab the central shops, Ficker said.

Thomas began cleaning the shops of lead paint, asbestos, metals and other industrial toxins in July 2009. Thomas has completed nearly all soil remediation caused by about 150 years of industrial use on the site. The only work that remains is under railroad tracks and can't be cleaned until the tracks are relocated, Dangberg said.

The track relocation project is expected to be put out for bid this month. A contract must be approved by March to keep $25 million in state Proposition 1B monies already awarded, said Jerry Way, director of the city's transportation department.

Mayor Kevin Johnson thanked Inland officials for all their work so far and asked them to return to the council "sooner rather than later" for council input when they begin considering modifying the land use plan.

"You guys came in and grabbed the bull by the horns and did everything we could have asked for," he said. "We have some ideas we would like to share at the appropriate time."

Photo of Jared Ficker, left, and Dean Stermer by Kathleen Haley. Bridge construction photo by Brandon Darnell. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Four teams vie for arena project

2010-12-31T02:41:25Z

A team handpicked by Mayor Kevin Johnson and led by Sacramento developer David Taylor and national sports facility builders has emerged as one of the frontrunners to develop a new arena.

Taylor quietly ended his partnership with developer Gerry Kamilos after their first proposal, a complicated land swap, didn't produce a viable proposal by its October deadline. Taylor is now partnering with the historic railyards' new owner, Inland Real Estate Group of Companies, and others. On Thursday, his group submitted a letter of interest to Johnson's arena task force briefly outlining a proposed process for developing a sports and entertainment center.

Another three teams submitted new or modified arena proposals by a noon deadline Thursday. This time, none of the teams have the backing of the National Basketball Association or the Maloof family, which owns the Sacramento Kings.

The other candidates were among the seven original teams that submitted arena proposals last year. They include the Sacramento Convergence team led by Kamilos; the CORE team led by entrepreneur Ali Mackani and two former arena task force members, real estate attorney Mike Kvarme and developer Larry Kelley, president of McClellan Park; and Natomas Entertainment Sports Center Partners, the only team proposing a plan for the existing Arco Arena site.

The NBA has also ended its partnership with the Convergence team after endorsing that plan in January 2010 during a bold press conference across from City Hall.

"The NBA is not backing any one of the arena initiatives, and we will have no further comment at this time," NBA spokesman Mike Bass said in an e-mail to The Sacramento Press Thursday.

The Maloofs have been trying to get an arena built to replace Arco for 11 years. But the family isn't joining any teams in the current effort to get a new arena built. Johnson, a former NBA player, is leading the effort and will brief the Maloofs on the second round of ideas once he gets the proposals, Kings spokesman Mitch Germann said.

"The Maloofs aren't tied to any of the groups that are giving presentations," Germann said. "They're excited to see the proposals that come as a result of this."

Johnson put out a call for proposals late last year, then put together a task force to analyze the proposals. The mayor reconvened the task force in November and put out a call for a second round of new or updated proposals.

The players left in the game are teaming up with national firms that have substantial experience developing, designing and building stadiums and arenas for professional football, baseball and basketball teams.

ICON-Taylor
Taylor has joined a team put together by the mayor that includes Inland, which owns the land adjacent to city property where some teams have proposed a new arena be built; Populous, a global sports architecture firm based in Kansas City, Mo.; New York-based Turner Construction; former arena task force member Dan Meis, who designed the Staples Center in Los Angeles; and ICON Venue, an owner's representative company whose website says it specializes in delivering home venues for pro sports teams. ICON’s projects have included Denver's Pepsi Center and the Chicago White Sox's new Comiskey Park, named US Cellular Field.

Taylor said Johnson contacted him about joining a new team after he left the Sacramento Convergence team.

"I felt the prior effort was not going to have the legs I would have liked it to have," Taylor said. "After being asked to look at this other team and talking to them at length, I was convinced it made sense to give it another try."

The ICON-Taylor team would focus on identifying strategies to finance an integrated arena and regional transit center in the railyards. The team offered to refine designs, present cost and revenue information and develop a conceptual approach for the project by April.

Sacramento Convergence Team
In a letter submitted to the task force Thursday, Kamilos and his team have altered their original proposal, but key elements remain. The team still proposes to build the arena on city railyards land and the Maloofs would operate the facility under a 30-year lease. The plan would still require state legislation to move forward.

But the team's proposed real estate deal has been simplified somewhat, and the price tag for the "Downtown Events Center" has been cut from $400 million to $350 million. Developers also propose buying an adjacent two to six acres from Inland to accommodate parking and a hotel, retail and dining adjacent to the arena and the future regional transit center, Kamilos said.

However, the team now proposes working with the California Exposition and State Fair board to build new fairgrounds at the existing state fair site and to privately develop 125 acres for destination retail, dining and entertainment and other mixed use, including residential and possibly office. State fair operations would remain with the Cal Expo board, but other events at the site would be run privately by VisionMaker Worldwide, a member of the Convergence Team.

The plan would also redevelop the 184-acre site containing Arco Arena in Natomas for mixed use. The arena would be retooled and existing parking would remain.

Under the plan, the Maloofs would share parking revenue and possibly a ticket fee. The Maloofs would operate the arena and collect revenue from facility rentals. The developers would assume the Maloofs’ $67 million Arco Arena debt and pay it off under the current schedule over 17 more years.

"It's essential in a small market that the facility is operated by the team ownership, especially in these times, in order for teams to break even on a cash flow basis," Kamilos said.

The Convergence team has added new members, including AECOM; Hunt Construction Group, which is building the Barclays Center in Brooklyn; Tutor Perini Corp., which has built sports centers and regional transit facilities; and POSCO Engineering & Construction. The group expects to finish a project analysis by May, which would allow construction to begin in 2013 and the new arena to open in summer 2015, according to the letter.

CORE Team
The CORE team – chosen by the task force as one of the top three candidates last spring – has altered its proposal by adding the railyards as a second possible location for an arena and recruiting Kelley, a former Kings owner, to lead the effort. The team also added Kvarme and his law firm, Weintraub Genshlea Chediak. Kelley and Kvarme were key players in one of the country's biggest infill developments and public/private partnerships involving redevelopment of McClellan Air Force Base.

The team continues to offer Westfield Downtown Plaza as another viable location and met briefly with representatives of Westfield and the Maloofs to discuss whether they might be able to work together on the project. The response was positive, but more information must still be gathered to create a workable financing plan under a public/private partnership, Mackani said.

The team will seek assistance from consultants such as Flintco, which has worked on such projects as the FedEx Forum in Memphis, Tenn., he added.

"But at the end of the day, it's about how to fund a project like this. Not how to build it," Mackani said. "That's where our focus is going to be."

Natomas ESC Partners
Natomas ESC Partners didn't make any significant changes to its proposal, but resubmitted it after getting Johnson's assurance it would be reconsidered, said team member Mike Corrick of Nacht & Lewis Architects in Sacramento.

The plan proposes building a $410.6 million, 950,000-square-foot sports and entertainment complex on 100 acres of city-owned land just north of Arco Arena. Arco would become a science park, possibly containing a science museum. Developers would also add a wetlands greenbelt, 250,000-square-foot office park, a spa hotel, retail and housing built in phases to the site.

The team includes Wisconsin-based Hammes Company, which developed the $1.6 billion New Meadowlands stadium that opened in April for the New York Giants and the New York Jets; Skanska, the construction firm that built New Meadowlands; NBBJ, a Seattle firm that built the Staples Center in Los Angeles and six other arenas or stadiums; municipal financing expert Jeff Baize of Brookhurst Development Corp.; and Nacht & Lewis Architects.

The project would be funded by Citigroup issuing taxable bonds that would be repaid over 25 years through the Kings' $10 million annual lease of the property, 50 percent of game day ticket revenues totaling $25.4 million a year, new naming rights, parking fees, facility rental and other revenue. The city would provide the land.

"We thought we had a very viable plan for the Natomas property and we had a very qualified team and a feasible financing plan," Corrick said.

In an e-mailed statement, Johnson said he recognizes developing the project will be challenging, especially in such a tough economy. But the four teams now vying for the project have substantial track records, he said.

"The game is now on," he said in the statement. "And these four different teams will compete with one another and the people of Sacramento, who care about jobs, will be the real winners of this competition."

The arena task force released the four project concepts shortly before 4:30 p.m. A public hearing is set for 10 a.m. Jan. 6 at historic City Hall. The task force will release an analysis of the concepts on Jan. 21, prior to a Sacramento City Council discussion Jan. 25.

In the end, the winning proposal will be the one with the best financing plan, Corrick said.

"It'll be interesting to see what comes out of this round," he said.

Graphic 1 provided by the ICON-Taylor team. Photo of Gerry Kamilos by Suzanne Hurt. Graphic 2 provided by the CORE Team. Graphic 3 provided by Natomas ESC Partners. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Sacramento development in 2010

2010-12-30T03:28:33Z

Development in Sacramento suffered some significant setbacks in 2010. But there were modest moves forward as well, making for a mixed picture heading into 2011.

The focus was on five major projects, which included:

1. The Railyards
A suburban Chicago real estate investment firm, the Inland Real Estate Group of Companies, took ownership of most of Sacramento's historic downtown railyards in a courthouse foreclosure auction held in October. Inland foreclosed on the 203-acre Railyards site after then-owner Thomas Enterprises defaulted on nearly $194 million in loans in June. The two sides had been negotiating on a loan extension for several months but failed to agree on terms. Since October, Inland has been working with city, state and independent contractors to keep infrastructure construction going on such projects as the Fifth and Sixth street bridges and railroad track relocation.

The bridges are expected to be done in January. Work on the $60 million railroad track relocation was delayed after bids came in $12 million over budget in May and Thomas defaulted. In August, the City Council approved a track relocation redesign as part of the first phase of the new train station and public transit center being built adjacent to downtown's Sacramento Valley Station. The city delayed seeking new bids for relocation construction from fall 2010 to January. Inland was scheduled to publicly discuss its approach to the site for the first time at a City Council meeting Dec. 14. The presentation was postponed until early January.

2. Sacramento Arena
The city of Sacramento spent a large portion of 2010 trying to find a workable plan to build a new multipurpose arena to house the Sacramento Kings and host music and other events. Seven development teams made brief, public pitches at City Hall in January. Mayor Kevin Johnson formed an arena task force to consider the proposals. The task force recommended three plans as the top contenders in March. In April, the City Council approved an exclusive negotiation agreement with the Sacramento Convergence Team, a group led by developers Gerry Kamilos and David Taylor. That team lost its exclusive negotiating rights in October after failing to sell Cal Expo officials on their idea: to move the state fairgrounds to the area around Arco Arena and to then allow private development of the existing fairgrounds, which would clear the way to build an arena on city-owned property at the downtown railyards. The mayor reopened the process and set a noon Thursday deadline for new and modified proposals.

3. K Street Mall
Movement also took place on K Street Mall. The most important development took place in July, when the Sacramento City Council chose two teams — one led by D & S Development, Inc., and CFY Development, Inc., and the other by Sacramento developer David Taylor — to revitalize the troubled 700 and 800 blocks. Work continued in 2010 on the $4.5 million project by the city and Sacramento Regional Transit to renovate St. Rose of Lima Park and the 700 block streetscape. The City Council also allowed bikes to return to K Street Mall and paved the way for cars to return in 2011.

The Downtown Sacramento Partnership hired a retail recruiter to help reduce vacancies, upgrade the retail mix and support business owners in the 66-block property-based business improvement district. Work also got under way on several new K Street Mall businesses. San Francisco nightclub owner George Karpaty’s crew worked through 2010, and he expects to open Dive Bar, Pizza Rock and District 30 at 1016, 1020 and 1022 K St. in January. Ernesto Delgado also expects to open his Tequila Museo Mayahuel at 12th and K streets in early 2011. Vive Cocina opened in February next to St. Rose of Lima Park

Meanwhile, a grand opening for St. Rose of Lima Park's renovation wasn't held during summer as planned following a conflict that kept the city from turning on the park's new interactive water fountain, or sprayground.

4. Docks Area Riverfront Promenade
In June, the city marked the completion of Pioneer Landing Park and the first phase of the $15 million Docks Area Riverfront Promenade with a ground breaking. The $5.4 million first phase included the park and 1,200 feet of parkway from O Street to R Street. The one-mile promenade is expected to provide a paved path connecting Old Sacramento and Miller Park by 2013 or 2014.

The first phase was paid for with money from State Proposition 40, State Proposition 1B street improvement funds, redevelopment tax increment financing and development impact fees from parks. The city has already applied for nearly $5 million in Proposition 84 grant funding from the state to finance most of the promenade's second phase. The third phase, which would also cost about $5 million, is expected to start in 2013 if funding is available. An estimated $14 million in infrastructure for the Docks Area had been expected to begin between mid-2011 and the start of 2012. The start of infrastructure work is expected to be postponed while the city seeks funding.

Just across I-5 from the Riverfront Promenade and connected by the O Street bridge and refurbished bike and pedestrian viaduct at R Street was the $100 million expansion of the Crocker Art Museum.

5. River District
City staff unveiled the River District Specific Plan, which the City Council is expected to vote on in January. A groundbreaking ceremony was held for the new, temporary Greyhound bus terminal in August. The $5.4 million bus station is being built at 420 Richards Blvd. on about 1.75 acres in the Discovery Centre development in the River District. The old Greyhound terminal at Seventh and L streets is expected to close in 2011. The bus terminal will eventually move to the new regional transit facility expected to be built in the Railyards development within eight to 15 years.

Work also continued on Sacramento Regional Transit's new green line from downtown to the River District, and eventually, to the airport. Utilities were relocated, track foundation was laid and some overhead poles to hold wire were installed. The line is expected to open in mid-2011, but no date has been determined. In September, Sacramento's Discovery Museum and its partners sought the community's help in applying for $7 million in state grants to build the Powerhouse Science Center. PG&E readied the site near the vacant 99-year-old PG&E power station on Jibboom Street for construction. Museum officials hope to break ground in late 2011 or early 2012 and open the new museum in late 2013 or early 2014.

First photo by Brandon Darnell. Arena graphic provided by the CORE group. Other photos by Suzanne Hurt, a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Council members discuss Central City

2010-12-16T02:42:44Z

Sacramento’s Central City has received a lot of media attention for shootings and muggings in recent months. However, the area is also frequently in the spotlight because of large-scale development projects, such as the downtown Railyards or George Karpaty’s trio of businesses on K Street.

The Sacramento Press recently interviewed three City Council members to learn about their plans for the Central City. Councilwoman Angelique Ashby and Councilmen Steve Cohn and Rob Fong shared their priorities for the different parts of the Central City they represent.

Ashby’s portion of the area includes the downtown Railyards, K Street, Old Sacramento, Alkali Flat and the River District. Ashby mentioned the Railyards and K Street Mall as examples of key development sites in her district.

“Some of the best opportunities in the city lie in the downtown portion of District 1,” she said.

As an elected official, she said she wants to help avoid hurdles in the development process. “In my position, I can help make sure they get those projects done in a timely manner,” she said.

Ashby also said she wants to be a behind-the-scenes facilitator for the various groups involved with projects in the area. Stakeholder groups involved with Central City development projects, such as community members, government agencies and environmental organizations, need a “point person” at City Hall, she said, adding that she wants to take on that role.

Public safety in her district, and throughout the city, is a key priority, Ashby said.

Cohn, too, emphasized public safety when asked about his work in District 3. His section of the Central City includes Midtown and part of downtown. His district’s stretch of K Street starts at 16th Street and heads east.

He pointed out the shooting death of a 24-year-old that occurred after a Second Saturday Art Walk event in September. Cohn also mentioned that the neighborhood has bar and nightlife issues. He said he wants neighborhoods and businesses to work together to solve public safety and public nuisance issues in Midtown. In his view, Midtown’s development has been a success, he said.

“I want to make sure it can continue to succeed and not be a victim of its own success,” he said.

On a different topic, he said work is under way to enhance Sutter’s Landing Park on the northeast edge of Midtown.

Meanwhile, Fong said he was excited about the R Street streetscape project in his district. Fong’s piece of the Central City includes part of Midtown and downtown. The street improvements will make the street more pedestrian-friendly and inviting, he said.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the effort to revamp the street with new lighting and parking enhancements was held in September. The street will be remodeled from 10th to 13th streets.

Click on the following links to view maps of City Council Districts 1, 3 and 4.

Learn more about some of Ashby’s priorities for North and South Natomas here.

Photos of Cohn and Fong by Brandon Darnell. Photo of Ashby by David Watts Barton.

Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Natomas fights for arena

2010-12-16T02:11:02Z

Natomas business leaders have a critical meeting Thursday in their fight to keep the arena from moving downtown.

Natomas Chamber of Commerce President Ed Koop and N Magazine Publisher Emeritus Marni Leger, who chairs the chamber's Keep Arena committee, are set to meet at City Hall with City Councilwoman Angelique Ashby.

They'll discuss the advantages they see in a revised proposal to build a new sports and entertainment complex on 100 acres of city-owned land adjacent to Arco Arena. The original proposal, created by Natomas Entertainment Sports Center Partners, was one of seven submitted to the city late last year to construct a new arena in Sacramento.

They'll also ask Ashby to help keep the modified proposal on the list of contenders as the Dec. 30 deadline for another round of new or revised proposals approaches and those proposals are considered early next year, Koop said. (LINK to article announcing Dec. 30 deadline)

"If we're not even on that list, it's game over for us," Koop said.

The Natomas Chamber sent letters to Mayor Kevin Johnson and his arena task force last week also requesting that the proposal be kept in the running.

The chamber and its members believe the Natomas location would allow an arena to be built sooner and cheaper than any other location. The environmental review period would be shorter because acceptable air quality and traffic already exist at Arco Arena. The city-owned site is shovel-ready and has infrastructure in place – two freeways, access roads and utilities, Koop said.

Constructing an arena downtown would significantly worsen traffic congestion on freeways and streets downtown, he said.

In addition, chamber leaders contend the team of developers put together by the chamber and Mike Corrick of Nacht & Lewis Architects is the most experienced of the seven. NBBJ, a global architecture, planning and design firm based in Seattle, built the Staples Center in Los Angeles and six other arenas or stadiums.

The chamber began the campaign to keep the arena in Natomas a year ago after Johnson put out a call for arena proposals and said he'd prefer the new arena be built downtown. The committee ceased its work after the city of Sacramento entered an exclusive negotiating agreement with another team led by local developers Gerry Kamilos and David Taylor.

The committee resumed its work three weeks ago after the arena task force was reconvened. Since then, committee members and volunteers have been gathering petition signatures. They hope to collect 1,000 to present to the city and arena task force by Dec. 30.

Stickers reading "Keep the Arena in Natomas" have been popping up on car bumpers and store windows in the area. The free stickers are being handed out by the chamber and business owners such as Koop, whose Fastsigns franchise at 2840 Del Paso Road is within sight of Arco Arena.

The loss of the arena would hit retailers and other businesses like his hard. Koop has sold car wraps, promotional signs and other products to the Kings. Restaurants and bars are flocked by customers before and after basketball games and concerts at the arena. Area residents who work at Arco Arena could lose their jobs if the arena moves, Koop said.

"We want to keep the arena where it is, for a lot of reasons," Koop said. "If you put an arena in downtown Sacramento, you would be helping downtown. But at the same time, you could be destroying the economic environment in Natomas."

Both Natomas and the downtown railyards sit in Ashby's district. She didn't express support for either location.

She said she recognizes the arena brings much commerce to Natomas, yet she believes other types of development at the site could bring the same benefit. Ashby wants to see the same number of jobs and economic benefit brought to the area if the arena closes in Natomas and the land is used for something else, she said.

"All those things need to be part of the deal," she said.

A public hearing on the proposals is scheduled for Jan. 6. The arena task force has said it would present an analysis of the proposals on Jan. 21.

Natomas Chamber leaders realize downtown Sacramento needs to be improved and that something needs to jumpstart its economic engine. But Natomas businesses and residents are counting on that, too, Koop said.

"Something like this (new) arena can really help put us on the map and really help us revitalize this area," he said. "I think they're putting too much emphasis on the arena being the magic bullet that would turn downtown Sacramento around."

Photo of Ed Koop provided by the Natomas Chamber of Commerce. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.

Inland presentation postponed

2010-12-14T23:07:48Z

The railyards' new owner won't make its first presentation to the Sacramento City Council Tuesday night. The site update has been postponed until after the holidays.

City staff withdrew the item from the council agenda Tuesday morning under agreement with the Inland Real Estate Group of Companies, a suburban Chicago real estate investment firm that foreclosed on the defaulted property in October, said Assistant City Manager John Dangberg.

Thomas Enterprises was developing the site as the Railyards, but defaulted on loans from Inland in June.

Inland's railyards project team felt it needed a couple more weeks to understand issues and flesh out the presentation.

"We mutually agreed that it would be better timing early in January," Dangberg said. "They felt they'd have a better presentation early next year."

Inland representatives have already met privately with individual council members and assured council and city staff that they're committed to the site's future, he added.

The council agenda still contains a consent calendar item authorizing Interim City Manager Gus Vina to appropriate $7.5 million in federal funds and transfer $1.5 million from the city's State and Federal Grant Match Project for railyards access improvements to Interstate 5 and Richards Boulevard.

Inland officials could not be reached for comment.

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

Photo by Brandon Darnell.

Inland to present plans to council

2010-12-11T01:33:45Z

The new owner of the historic railyards will roughly outline plans for the site Tuesday.

Representatives for the Inland Real Estate Group of Companies, a Chicago-area real estate investment firm, are scheduled to appear before the Sacramento City Council for the first time since taking over the defaulted property Oct. 22.

They will briefly discuss their approach to the project and what may be the focus in the future, as well as give a quick update on infrastructure work taken over from Thomas Enterprises and other issues they're focusing on in the transition, said Assistant City Manager John Dangberg.

"I think they've gotten their bearings and just want to share with the public where they're at," Dangberg said.

Thomas Enterprises was developing the site as the Railyards, but defaulted on loans from Inland in June. Inland representatives have engaged in "a tremendous amount of coordination" with city, state and federal agencies for more than a month to ensure infrastructure work and its funding continue, said Dean Stermer, who heads up Inland's team on the project.

"Our primary job is to complete the work that's ongoing right now," Stermer said Friday from the company's offices in Oak Brook, Ill. "That's 110 percent everyone's focus right now."

The council agenda also contains a consent calendar item authorizing Interim City Manager Gus Vina to appropriate $7.5 million in federal funds and transfer $1.5 million from the city's State and Federal Grant Match Project for railyards access improvements to Richards Boulevard and Interstate 5. The contract is expected to be awarded in March. The total cost of the project is estimated at more than $10 million.

The City Council meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday will be the council's last for 2010.

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

Fifth and Sixth street bridges nearing completion

2010-12-03T01:11:27Z

The two city-funded bridges under construction in the railyards are scheduled to be completed next month.

The bridges will make Fifth and Sixth streets continuous where they are currently cut off by the railyards just east of the Amtrak station downtown.

“The bridges will be for both vehicle traffic and pedestrians,” said Linda Tucker, spokeswoman for the Sacramento Department of Transportation.

The transition of much of the railyards property from Thomas Enterprises to Inland American Real Estate Trust, Inc. following Thomas Enterprises’ defaulting on loans will not affect the bridge construction, since they are on city-owned land, according to Tucker.

When it comes to the track realignment necessary for trains to be able to pass under the bridges, there are still some possible kinks to work out.

“We are continuing to work out with Inland the transfer of agreements,” Tucker said. “My understanding is that we will be doing some joint announcements in a couple of weeks just to update the community on what’s been worked out.”

The $9 million bridge project is fully funded, as is the estimated $50 million track realignment.

The track realignment project will be opened for bidding in January, Tucker said.

“We are looking forward to moving ahead,” she said. “It’s been a bit exhausting going through the transition, and I think everyone – City Hall as well as the community – is looking forward to seeing more work going on out there.”

The blue square on the map above shows the Fifth and Sixth street bridges. The red square is intersection of F and Seventh streets for reference.

Brandon Darnell is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Arena task force meets next week

2010-11-11T02:10:15Z

Mayor Kevin Johnson is reassembling his arena task force next week to consider next steps in the effort to get a new arena built in Sacramento.

Mayoral Special Assistant R.E. Graswich and other staff from the mayor's office expect to meet Nov. 18 with at least 10 members of the original Sacramento First Task Force. Details for the private meeting at City Hall were still being finalized Wednesday.

Graswich will update the task force on the status of a proposal from their chosen developer, Sacramento Convergence Holding LLC, led by Gerry Kamilos and David Taylor. The developers’ exclusive negotiating period with the city ended late last month after they were unable to produce a viable plan on schedule.

The discussions will consider whether the city made mistakes with the Convergence team, what those mistakes might have been and what a logical next step might be, Graswich said.

"We want to have a frank discussion about where we're at," he said.

City staffers have also said they will propose a way to move forward with the process to the City Council. But that might not happen until January.

None of the seven teams behind competing arena proposals will be there. Five teams, including Convergence, have expressed interest in still being considered.

Some teams are in the process of finalizing updates. Most are essentially the same plans they originally submitted.

Task force members may be especially interested in updates to two proposals they identified as runners-up to the Convergence proposal, Graswich said. One would be from Thomas Enterprises, which owned the former Union Pacific railyards until last month and also proposed building an arena on the adjacent city land. The other was a plan by Ali Mackani and a group called CORE to build the arena where Westfield Downtown Plaza is now located.

Thomas Enterprises' proposal is "problematic" because of the company's financial problems – it lost ownership of the 203-acre Railyards development site after defaulting on loans for the property, Graswich said.

"It just creates questions about their viability, really," he said. "But that proposal was on city property. So that proposal is still of interest."

On Tuesday, Johnson traveled to suburban Chicago to meet with Inland American Real Estate Trust, the new owner of the former Union Pacific railyards. Inland officials sounded "enthusiastic" about the possibility of constructing the arena on adjacent city-owned land, Johnson blogged after the meeting.

A report on next week’s meeting is expected to be released soon afterward.

Johnson is eager to get the task force working again, after the group made progress last spring with its first recommendations, Graswich said.

"Hopefully, we can regain some of that momentum," he said.

Graphic provided by Thomas Enterprises as part of its downtown arena proposal.

Inland forecloses on Railyards

2010-10-23T01:24:16Z

A Chicago-area real estate investment company took possession of most of downtown Sacramento's historic railyards Friday in a courthouse auction after no one else bid.

The company, Inland American Real Estate Trust, officially foreclosed on Thomas Enterprises' 203-acre Railyards site by winning the auction outside the Sacramento County courthouse Friday afternoon. Inland had set the opening bid at $50,350,000 in an off-site process earlier this week.

"Inland will now roll up its sleeves and work with the city, state of California and other agencies to allow the project to proceed," Inland representative Jared Ficker said just minutes after the auction.

Inland will work with the city, state and independent contractors to keep infrastructure construction going on such projects as the Fifth and Sixth street bridges and railroad track relocation, according to Ficker and Assistant City Manager John Dangberg, who attended the trustee sale.

The company is putting together a development team and will set up an office in Sacramento. Ficker said it’s too early to comment on how the planned development would change under new ownership. Inland expects to announce its plans within two months.

Thomas Enterprises staff will serve as project consultants for Inland for an undetermined amount of time during the transition. Under an agreement between the two companies, Thomas will have the right to buy the Inland subsidiary that now owns the Railyards for the next 18 months.

Dangberg applauded Thomas Enterprises for all of its hard work at the site and in getting $154 million in federal and state funding for the development.

"The city of Sacramento is looking very much forward to working with Inland for a smooth transition," he said.

The auction wasn't marketed to potential investors worldwide. That led auction experts to predict that the sale was held as a technicality so Inland could get clear title to the land.

During the auction, Priority Posting auctioneer Mike Birdsall explained rules for more than 30 people and journalists gathered to watch the event. The crowd included representatives from Inland, Thomas and the city, as well as curious onlookers.

"Your bid will only be canceled by a higher bid," he said, sitting behind a laptop computer at a table outside the courthouse doors. "I will not pronounce the property sold until I have the funds in my hand."

The auction didn't go off without a couple of hitches, though.

One guy thrust bankruptcy papers at Birdsall in the middle of the Railyards auction. The documents were for another property, the man said later.

Birdsall misread the opening bid from Inland as $50,350. However, the trustee's instructions to set the opening bid at more than $50 million trumped the auctioneer's misquote. Birdsall held the auction a second time at Ficker's request.

"Going once, twice, third and last," Birdsall said. "Property sold to the beneficiary."

No one else entered a bid during either auction. If someone had, Ficker could have bid higher on behalf of Inland and won ownership of the property.

Technically, the auction was for the property's second mortgage. Inland owned the first and second mortgages.

If someone else was the successful bidder, they would not have gotten the deed to the property unless they could also pay off the undisclosed first mortgage or deed, which likely would have been much higher.

The foreclosure ends months of uncertainty over the project. Thomas defaulted on nearly $194 million in loans on the property in June. The company could have declared bankruptcy, which could have tied up the site in a lengthy legal process.

Mayor Kevin Johnson said he believes foreclosure was the best outcome, said mayoral Special Assistant R.E. Graswich.

Graswich let the mayor know by text message when the auction was done. Johnson had just one thing to say.

“His text message said, ‘Amen,’ ” Graswich said.

Photos by Suzanne Hurt.

Railyards set for Friday auction

2010-10-20T02:18:49Z

Sacramento has probably never seen a foreclosure auction like the one that may take place here Friday.

The 203-acre Railyards property is scheduled to be sold for cash on the spot to the highest bidder on the Sacramento County courthouse steps at 1:30 p.m. Friday.

Poised for the auction block: Most of the historic former Southern Pacific railyards, where railroad shops more than a century old mark one end of the first transcontinental railroad. Adjacent to downtown, the site's been approved for a $6 billion mixed-use project reported to be the country's largest infill development.

Current plans call for a regional transportation center to be built there, along with housing, office, retail and open space. Other developers are working on a proposal to build a new Sacramento Kings arena on city-owned property between the Railyards site and the downtown train station.

Georgia developer Thomas Enterprises defaulted on its loans for the property in June. Its lender, Inland American Real Estate Trust of suburban Chicago, scheduled the auction last month.

The two sides may still negotiate a new agreement on what are now nearly $194 million in loans before the auction takes place.

"A lot of this could be just smoke and mirrors. They're probably scrambling right now," said Robert Storment, president of the California State Auctioneers Association.

It's also possible, even likely, the auction will be postponed by the seller, as late as the morning of the auction. Once an auction is scheduled, it can be postponed repeatedly for up to a year after the initial date.

A courthouse sale of such a property would be unusual anywhere in the country. What makes this stand out is that the property once housed railyards and is a big chunk of land right next to a major city's downtown core, said Hannes Combest, chief executive officer of the National Auctioneers Association, based in Kansas.

"That is very unique," she said. "You don't find 203 acres within a city that are available for development."

The sale could throw a spotlight on the hidden world of foreclosure auctions.

Every weekday, a group gathers just outside the doors to the Gordon D. Schaber Sacramento County Courthouse, where hundreds of thousands – sometimes millions – of dollars’ worth of foreclosed property is auctioned off.

Auctioneers usually set up at green metal tables off to the side of the courthouse entrance. Throughout the day, they "cry" or announce the properties for sale and the auctions that have been postponed.

"This sale is made without express or warranty...." one auctioneer began on a recent morning. "How much am I offered and by whom? Do I hear a higher bid?"

Auctioneers must call out the entire process whether anyone is bidding or not. Most sales involve houses. Thousands of homes are sold in foreclosure auctions every day in this country.

Only a very small percentage of properties are bought outside Sacramento's courthouse, the auctioneer said.

The majority of people who enter the courthouse take no notice of the tiny, often quiet group of men in military-short haircuts, T-shirts and jeans. Some buyers represent themselves. Others earn commissions representing investors.

Fortunes can be made and lost there on real estate deals gone bad. Buyers are known for being cut-throat competitive. Eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, many are unfriendly to outsiders who don’t operate in their small daily sphere.

"There's no love down here," an auctioneer said.

Currently, Stewart Default Services and a company called Priority Posting have assigned the sale of the Railyards property to an experienced auctioneer. The property reverts back to the bank if it's not sold at auction.

Thomas may be trying to negotiate to repay significantly less than what they currently owe because the land is no longer worth that much in 2010. The auction was still scheduled as of late Tuesday afternoon.

Usually, a property like the Railyards would be auctioned in a very different way. Such property is usually marketed worldwide. "Due diligence" packages with 100 to 200 pages of information would lay out the property's pros and cons for buyers. Preview time would be arranged. The sale would usually take place on site at the Railyards or a nearby hotel conference room.

However, it's still possible large groups of buyers could turn up at the courthouse Friday. In that case, principal investors would be likely to attend to handle the bidding themselves. But they could send representatives who'd communicate via cell phones and post bids as requested. Cash must be paid on the spot and could be in the form of cashier’s checks.

Many courthouse foreclosure auctions are held so the bank can get clear title to the property. The lender may send a representative to keep bidding until they are the high bidder or they get the price they want.

"They don't expect anyone to show up," said Tommy Williams, a nationally recognized auctioneer who co-founded Williams & Williams of Tulsa, Oklahoma. "It's nothing more than a legal formality to get this into the hands of the mortgage company."

Storment agreed. Still, stranger things have happened at foreclosure auctions, he said.

"I have seen someone come out of the blue – maybe there's a group that thinks it's worth 500 million. Maybe they think 500 million is a steal," he said. "But I wouldn't make that bet."

Railyards auction date set

2010-10-01T01:35:50Z

Railyards developer Thomas Enterprises moved closer to surrendering the downtown Sacramento property in a foreclosure auction after a notice of the sale was filed Tuesday.

Infrastructure work continued Thursday, after a public sale to the highest bidder was set for 1:30 p.m. Oct. 22 on the steps of the Sacramento County courthouse, 720 Ninth St., according to a notice of trustee's sale. A copy of the notice filed by Stewart Default Services on behalf of Thomas' primary lender, Chicago-area Inland American Real Estate Trust, was posted at the property’s front gate.

The two sides have been trying to negotiate an agreement to avoid a foreclosure even before Inland filed a notice of default June 15. An agreement may still be reached, avoiding a foreclosure sale.

The sale appears to be listed at slightly more than 203 acres, after Thomas Enterprises sold nearly 33 acres out of its 238-acre Railyards property to the city. The company previously reported the property’s size at 244 acres, but that represents the size of the planning district.

Thomas Enterprises now appears to owe nearly $194 million, after interest, fees and other costs have added up on what was $187 million in loans, according to the document.

Officials from Thomas Enterprises and Inland did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Cal Expo: No arena deal

2010-09-25T00:56:10Z

California Exposition and State Fair officials said no Friday to being part of an arena land swap deal.

At the end of a four-hour meeting, the board voted 7-2 against further study of a proposal by developer Gerry Kamilos and the Sacramento Convergence team to relocate the state fairgrounds to Arco Arena in Natomas and to develop the 350-acre Cal Expo site to help finance a new arena downtown.

Board members said they want proceeds from Cal Expo's development to benefit the state fairgrounds and the state, rather than a private company and an arena. The Cal Expo board has already spent too much time studying ideas to modernize the fairgrounds by helping to get an arena built, they said.

"We've got to finally come to our senses and get rid of this arena deal," said board member Steve Beneto.

The latest proposal would have turned ownership and operation of the fairgrounds and the annual state fair over to a private company, VisionMaker Worldwide. The company was founded by former Disney and Universal Studios executives. But a private equity firm, Makan Capital Group based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, bought the company in 2007, according to the company's website.

Under the plan, Cal Expo officials and staff would have had creative control of the fair and ownership of the land. VisionMaker would have returned ownership of the facilities to the state after 30 years.

The board had been willing to consider a proposal to move the fairgrounds if the site was better and brought more revenue to Cal Expo than the existing one, board members said.

"We've been working on this for three years. We have explored one alternative after another," said board member Marko Mlikotin. "Our best interests are served by staying put."

Cal Expo staff have told the developers repeatedly that Arco Arena wouldn't work for the fairgrounds and asked them to propose other locations, Cal Expo General Manager Norb Bartosik said.

The 184-acre Arco site is too small and loses Cal Expo's visibility because it can't be seen from highways. Existing neighbors have also expressed opposition to the fairgrounds relocating there, said consultant Andy Plescia.

But the $400 million arena project is not dead, Kamilos said.

He and Sacramento developer David Taylor and the other stakeholders, which include the city, VisionMaker and the Maloof family, will come up with another strategy that could involve developing the Arco Arena site to help finance building a new arena in downtown's railyards. The Convergence team is considering "a number of options" and will discuss alternatives at a workshop with the Sacramento City Council Tuesday.

The Maloofs, who own the Sacramento Kings, will now work on alternatives to get an arena built.

“We must continue to work hard to find a solution," co-owner Joe Maloof said in a prepared statement late Friday afternoon. "We look forward to hearing what are the next steps and options."

Cal Expo officials must focus on developing or selling some of the existing land to rebuild the fairgrounds at its current location, said board member Paul “Rick” Stacey.

"Maybe that is a public-private partnership," he said. "But on our terms."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Arena, Railyards projects teetering

2010-09-24T01:35:28Z

Following several setbacks, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson said Thursday things aren't looking good for downtown's two biggest development projects, the Railyards and the arena.

A downtown arena proposal involving a complicated land swap and the state fairgrounds has only an outside chance of happening. At the same time, it would be in the city's best interest if a suburban Chicago real estate investment company forecloses on Thomas Enterprises and its 244-acre Railyards project, he said in a press conference at City Hall.

Johnson said he hopes California Exposition and State Fair officials will postpone a decision at a Friday board meeting and spend another month evaluating a deal for a new fairgrounds and arena that was recently reworked by developer Gerry Kamilos and the Sacramento Convergence team.

If the deal falls apart, the city would consider other developers' ideas to build Sacramento a new arena and take another look at renovating Arco Arena so the Kings could continue playing there.

"We always felt it was a long shot," Johnson said. "As a city, we didn't want to be hanging on too long to an idea that couldn't come to fruition."

The mayor said he hopes Inland American Real Estate Trust will initiate a "friendly foreclosure" on Georgia-based Thomas Enterprises next month. The developer has been meeting with its primary investor for months in an attempt to renegotiate $187 million in defaulted loans.

If they take over the project, Inland officials have promised to meet financial obligations to protect federal and state funding and jobs. But Inland may create a new plan to develop the historic railyards, he said.

Inland officials and Thomas Enterprises Vice President Suheil Totah could not be reached for comment.

The Sacramento City Council previously agreed to exclusively negotiate on an arena project with Kamilos until the end of October. That should be enough time to determine the plan's financial feasibility and to see if Cal Expo officials are interested, Johnson added.

Railyards photo by Eric Whalen. Photo of Mayor Kevin Johnson by Suzanne Hurt, a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Railyards future in limbo

2010-08-31T00:54:37Z

No decision has been made on the future of Thomas Enterprises’ involvement in the Railyards development project.

Officials from the California Department of Housing and Community Development met Monday with the city of Sacramento and Inland American Real Estate Trust to discuss the future of the project.

“We discussed how to keep the TOD funds flowing so that (the) City does not jeopardize the Federal Stimulus funding for the track relocation (5th Street Bridge) and to keep the construction jobs going,” Panorea Avdis, director of external affairs for the California Department of Housing and Community Development, wrote in an e-mail.

“No recommendations or decisions can be made at this time,” Avdis told The Sacramento Press Monday. “We’re assessing and reviewing our options.”

Avdis said the state is not privy to ongoing negotiations between Inland and Thomas Enterprises, so she does not know if Inland plans to go forward with foreclosure proceedings.

“We’re totally committed (to the project),” Avdis said. “We want to see the project happen, but we also want to be prudent with the taxpayers’ dollars.”

Representatives from Inland and Thomas Enterprises did not return phone calls Monday.

Inland recently initiated a foreclosure process on Thomas Enterprises, developers of the Railyards project.

A report is expected this week, but has yet to be released.

Brandon Darnell is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Railyards loans report expected soon

2010-08-27T01:09:54Z

Thomas Enterprises is expected to inform state officials next week whether the company is close to heading off foreclosure on the downtown Railyards development.

The Georgia developer missed the state's deadline Monday to bring more than $187 million in private loans back into good standing and end the foreclosure process initiated by Chicago-area lender Inland American Real Estate Trust in June.

The California Department of Housing and Community Development, which last month froze Thomas' access to $30 million in state funding for the development, agreed on Monday to give the two sides a few more days and postponed further action. The 244-acre infill project could be in danger of losing $71 million in total funding from the state if the situation is not resolved.

Inland officials are traveling from Oak Brook, Ill., to Sacramento early next week for a joint meeting at the agency. The two sides will report the status of their negotiations to state and city officials, said Panorea Avdis, director of external affairs for the state's Housing and Community Development department.

"They are coming here early next week to give us an update," Avdis said. "We don't know how their negotiations have gone."

Thomas Enterprises has been trying for months to renegotiate its loans with Inland. Thomas Vice President Suheil Totah returned from meetings in Chicago Monday without an agreement with Inland.

The issue didn't appear to be solved Thursday afternoon, shortly before most state agencies close down for another furlough Friday.

"We're not going to comment on the status of the negotiations," said Thomas Enterprises Development Coordinator Leslie Valpey Thursday. "We're not going to weigh in at all until the matter is resolved."

The state had previously awarded four grants totaling $78 million in Proposition 1C money for development of the railyards to Thomas and the city. About $7 million has already been disbursed. Housing and Community Development department officials have been reviewing options and will determine the next course of action — such as whether to freeze the remaining Proposition 1C money — after the update. The exact date is still being worked out.

"It's hard to predict," Avdis said. "We're going to have to evaluate it based on what they provide us."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter covering business and development for The Sacramento Press.

Fire ends store's saga

2010-08-17T03:51:30Z

One of Sacramento's oldest markets — a store that stood in the heart of Alkali Flat since 1868 — was ravaged by fire Sunday.

The little brick store had first been damaged by fire last December after a blaze at an adjacent apartment building spread. The market was shut down, then fenced and boarded up. A man had been squatting in the building recently.

Nearly 40 firefighters from nine companies responded Sunday after neighbors heard a boom and saw fire break out on the second floor of the building, 427 10th St., at about 7:30 a.m. A search dog found no one was inside.

Firefighters stopped the fire from spreading but weren’t able to save the building. A city crew later tore the rest of the unreinforced masonry building down, said Sacramento Fire Department spokesman John Burgess.

"It was already at the point of being a collapse hazard because the construction was in the 1860s," he said. "The concern was it would actually fall down with very little effort. So it was taken down."

A fire investigator is trying to determine the cause of the fire.

Neighbors were sorry to see the building demolished. But the market had become a run-down eyesore before the first fire, said Jennifer Caldwell, a neighborhood resident and member of the Alkali Flat Redevelopment Advisory Committee.

“We've been agonizing over that place,” she said. “It has been a blemish on this community.”

The structure had been built as a grocery or other type of mercantile store to serve the monied Alkali Flat neighborhood that sprang up in 1852. Living quarters were built on the second floor, and stables operated in back.

"There were a few (markets) in that neighborhood, even in 1868," said James Scott, who wrote "Sacramento's Alkali Flat" with Tom Tolley. Both are also reference librarians at the Sacramento Public Library's Sacramento Room.

"There was industry. Central Pacific was burgeoning at that time. You had schools being built. And you know you had the upper crust of Sacramento occupying that area as well,” he said. “It was one of those charming spots within a very dynamic neighborhood.”

The store changed ownership and names throughout the decades.

The growth of the nearby railyards led to changes in Alkali Flat as well. The ritzy neighborhood once defined by stately houses, large lawns and wrought iron fences began to change. Smaller, cheaper homes for railworkers began to be built in between the grand homes starting in the 1880s and 1890s.

The market was owned by the Dunphy family from the 1880s until owner Jim Dunphy sold it five years ago. The store had been operated by his grandfather and then his parents. Now 87, Dunphy remembers riding with his father in a horse-drawn wagon to deliver milk to customers, said Kathy Martin, office manager at the Distillery, which Dunphy owns.

Alkali Flat became a blue-collar, family neighborhood. But the area turned into "Sacramento's form of tenement living" when large homes such as the J. Neely Johnson House, a former governor's house, were divided up into multiple apartment units in the 1960s and '70s, Scott said. The buildings and neighborhood became magnets for crime and gangs.

Redevelopment pioneers withstood danger and threats to begin rehabbing homes in the 1970s and 1980s. At some point, the store began selling liquor — the only store to do so in the neighborhood. The building wasn't kept up well, and it got a bad reputation. That really struck at the heart of the neighborhood and the people trying to turn it around, Scott said.

"For a neighborhood that is inhabited by people who care a lot about where they live...the market was always kind of a thorn," he said. "I am amazed that it lasted this long."

Photos by Jennifer Caldwell. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Money woes pile up for Railyards developer

2010-07-31T02:14:09Z

Thomas Enterprises' problems with financing the Railyards development have reached a critical point after the state of California began efforts to yank more than $70 million in funding from the project.

The California Department of Housing and Community Development has put the Georgia developer on notice that it's freezing disbursements because Thomas is in default on more than $187 million in private loans on the 244-acre project.

The state agency sent out a letter July 22 warning Thomas to pay the amount in arrears in order to bring the loans back into good standing and get the lender, Inland American Real Estate Trust of suburban Chicago, to end foreclosure actions within 30 days.

The letter was a 30-day pre-notice of default alerting Thomas Enterprises it is now in breach of contract with the state. Inland filed its default notices June 15.

Work on bridges for Fifth and Sixth streets continued Friday afternoon. However, the move could lead to at least a partial stop in development work at the historic railyards. Thomas already owes various companies more than $5 million for work done so far, said Thomas Enterprises Vice President Suheil Totah.

Next week, company officials will meet with construction contractors, engineers and other vendors to ask them to continue working on the project.

"This letter has now elevated the loan dispute from urgent to critical," Totah said. "Our hope is they would continue their work to allow time for this matter to be resolved."

The state had previously awarded four grants totaling $78 million in Proposition 1C money for development of the railyards. Of that, $50 million in infill grants was awarded directly to Thomas, and nearly $28 million in transit-oriented development grants were awarded to the city on behalf of the project. About $7 million has already been disbursed over the last six months, said Chris Westlake, deputy director of the state's Housing and Community Development department.

"We're concerned with the notice of default that was filed. Any existing liens or mortgages have to be current," he said. "Since these are state bond funds, we are very careful with how they are being utilized."

The letter notified Thomas it is in danger of defaulting on the first grant, which totals $30 million. For now, disbursements are simply being halted. That was the first notice sent out — how much they're in danger of losing has yet to be determined, Westlake said.

"It all depends on what happens with the foreclosure action by Inland," he said. "We have to reassess it at that time."

Thomas officials are worried they may lose additional funding as well.

"The loss of up to $80 million in state funding could have a ripple effect on some of the other funding," Totah said.

Thomas Enterprises has planned a $6 billion redevelopment of the historic Southern Pacific railyards that would add 12,000 residential units, 1.4 million square feet of retail, 2.3 million square feet of office, 500,000 square feet of mixed-use space and 46 acres of parks and open space. The Railyards would be centered around renovated historic railroad shops and a future regional transportation center adjacent to downtown.

The company and Inland have each proposed different options to resolve loan issues, but no agreement has been reached, according to Totah and an Inland official.

"Inland American continues to make its best effort to work with Thomas Enterprises, Inc., the developer of the Sacramento Railyards project, to address the current default status of the loans on the property," Inland spokesman Matt Tramel said in an e-mail.

"Inland American's continued intention with all parties, including the Department of Housing and Community Development and the city of Sacramento, is to work to promote the completion of all activities related to development at the Railyards project," he said.

The $30 million grant was awarded for interior roads and other infrastructure work — not for bridge work — as long as 15 percent of the housing Thomas builds there is affordable. A $17 million transit-oriented development grant is being used to build the Fifth Street bridge.

Work on the Sixth Street bridge is not yet in jeopardy, because the California Department of Transportation awarded that funding in the form of Proposition 1B transportation bond monies.

Sacramento city officials are disappointed over the latest development, but don't believe any grant monies awarded to the city are at risk, city Department of Transportation spokeswoman Linda Tucker wrote in an e-mail.

"None of our funding is in jeopardy as a result of what is going on between the state and Thomas Enterprises," she said. "We remain cautiously optimistic that the state will receive the necessary assurances from Thomas Enterprises within the time frame required so grant funding can continue. That's the indication we have from them."

If the loan dispute is not resolved and Inland sells the railyards land to another developer in a foreclosure sale, which would be expected in early October, state grants are not assumable by a new development company, said Westlake, adding that the state remains committed to the project.

"We want to get the housing built. Getting construction jobs going and keeping them going is critical to the state," he said. "However, we have to be prudent and careful with the large taxpayer dollars involved in the project."

Totah said he remains "optimistic" the company can overcome the current financial challenges. The potential of losing the property and all the work that has gone into the project over nearly a decade is "very alarming," he said.

"If this one is not overcome, it would have irreparable damage and would set the project back a long time," he said.

Photo of Suheil Totah of Thomas Enterprises by Suzanne Hurt, a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Photos of railyards development by Kati Garner.

Sac to plan streetcar's route

2010-07-29T03:29:16Z

The city of Sacramento is back at the drawing board — literally — on its efforts to set up a streetcar connecting to West Sacramento.

A new study to plan the streetcar route in Sacramento has received $310,000 in federal grant funds.

An additional $90,000 from a local source will help pay for the study, according to a July 27 report from the city’s Transportation Department. The City Council signed off on the new funding Tuesday night.

“What we’ll be doing now is looking now more broadly at the best routes for that system on the Sacramento side,” Councilman Steve Cohn said Wednesday.

In the most recent plan, the streetcar would run from West Sacramento City Hall, across Tower Bridge and stop in Old Sacramento at the foot of the bridge.

City leaders learned earlier this month that the Sacramento/West Sacramento project would not receive the millions of federal dollars for which it had applied.

Cohn said one of the weaknesses of the streetcar plan was that it didn’t outline a route in Sacramento beyond Tower Bridge.

In the new study, the city will examine ideas for a route.

“The project focuses on connecting some of the most active destinations in the City of Sacramento including: the dense urban central business district, the vacant 240 acre Railyards redevelopment area, the emerging commercial, arts, and entertainment neighborhood in Midtown, the R Street corridor, the Sacramento State University campus and the Arden Fair Mall,” according to the Transportation Department’s report.

Cohn said he does not expect the city will have a decision on the final route after this study is conducted. But he said he wants to make headway on extending the route past Tower Bridge and connecting it with other forms of transportation, such as light rail.

The city’s report did not specify when work on the study will start. Read the report on the new funding for a streetcar plan here.

Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Arena plan moving forward

2010-07-09T02:56:13Z

A few more details have emerged as part of an arena and land-swap plan currently being considered by city and state fair officials.

A plan laid out by developers Gerry Kamilos and David Taylor calls for mixed-use private development of city-owned railyards land and the current state fairgrounds site. That development would help finance a $400 million sports and entertainment complex downtown and new fairgrounds in North Natomas, according to documents the city released late last week.

The "Sacramento Convergence" development team, which includes Macquarie Capital, would invest $600 to $700 million in private equity and debt in the project. The developers also propose other funding mechanisms, Kamilos said Thursday.

"The city and the state are not in a position to invest anything into these properties," he said. "The idea is to have the private sector come in and provide the capital to increase the value of those properties that both the city and state would benefit from."

Financing is proposed to come from land sales, parking fees, lease revenue, special districts to collect sales and property taxes from the properties, and bond proceeds generated by setting up tax increment districts, refinance districts and bond districts, Kamilos said.

"All the elements have been done before," he said. "It's just been in different configurations."

The team proposes to build a new Sacramento Kings arena that would anchor a railyards complex containing 500,000 to 600,000 square feet of retail, office and hotel space; 100 to 150 residential units; at least one parking garage with 2,200 to 3,000 spaces; and possibly an urban entertainment facility designed by former Disney executives.

As proposed, the 19,000-seat arena would measure roughly 375 feet by 475 feet and be 140 feet high, encompassing 750,000 to 800,000 square feet. The Kings or another professional basketball team would be the lead tenant. The plan is being worked out with the National Basketball Association and the Kings' owners, the Maloof family, who would sign a 30-year lease for the new arena.

"The updated numbers reflect quite a bit of analysis that's been done to date," Kamilos said. "But we still have quite a bit of technical work to do to solidify all the numbers."

The building would be equipped to host concerts, circuses and other events, including professional hockey games.

The Kamilos group is asking the city to donate 9.5 acres of railyards land for the project. The arena and parking structure, which would be shared with a future regional transportation center, would be built on city land in a public-private partnership with the city. But the remainder of the development at the site would be private.

The land is located between the Sacramento Valley Station and Thomas Enterprises' Railyards development. The historic train depot would be linked to the arena with an outdoor plaza serving as a gateway to the arena.

The plan also calls for the sale of 350-acre Cal Expo and swapping that site for one at the Arco Arena site, along with private, mixed-use development of the current state fairgrounds, which would need the approval of the California Exposition and State Fair board.

The developers are proposing to sell or auction the Cal Expo land. That land would be expected to be developed concurrently with an arena and new fairgrounds. However, the state fair would be held at the current site until new facilities were operational, developers said.

One possible concept for the Cal Expo site's development would include 4,900 residential units on 260 acres, a mixed-use retail and residential area containing 210 units and 340,000 square feet of retail on 35 acres. The concept includes 1 million square feet of office space in buildings averaging three stories on another 35 acres, and 20 acres for recreation and elementary school needs, according to the plan.

Money generated by land sales would be used to help pay off debt.

State legislation would be needed to approve the sale of the state fairgrounds for private development. Draft legislation is being created by a team including representatives from the developers, NBA, Maloofs, city, state and Cal Expo and would be presented to the state legislature before Aug. 31, Kamilos said.

The project would benefit the city and state by using private investment for the costly entitlement process that would enable the two sites to be developed, Kamilos said.

"By partnering with the private sector, the public sector entities will actually gain more than if they disposed of the properties as they are in today's market,” he said.

The information provided in the developer's official proposal and the complex plan has just enough detail to help the city and developers make sure the concept works and see if the primary stakeholders, the NBA and Cal Expo officials, are also on board, said Betty Masuoka, a former assistant city manager temporarily managing the project for the city.

A project parameters agreement is now being created for the next phase of work, where the developers and city staff nail down revenue sources, site plans and environmental and technical concerns.

"I think it's important people understand we're moving forward and we're making progress," she said. "It's not being put on a back burner."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter covering business and development for The Sacramento Press.

Study identifies potential economic impact of downtown entertainment & sports complex

2010-06-30T20:21:32Z

The Downtown Sacramento Partnership (DSP), in collaboration with a consulting team from the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, released a report on the potential economic impacts of an Entertainment and Sports Complex (ESC) in the Railyards earlier this month. The report suggests that a well-integrated complex with parallel investment in Downtown’s core assets, including Old Sacramento, Downtown Plaza, JKL Retail Corridor, and the Convention Center, will maximize economic impact and strengthen the surrounding neighborhood.

“We believe that an Entertainment and Sports Complex belongs Downtown and has the potential to stimulate economic activity,” said DSP Executive Director Michael Ault. “In cities like Denver and Indianapolis, development of these venues has been used as a tool to accelerate and compliment revitalization efforts.”

According to the study, transportation access and connectivity, public safety, and local business development in conjunction with reinvestment in the Downtown District are major factors in the future success of an ESC at the Railyards.

The report cites several case studies of both successes and failures of Downtown ESCs throughout the country. Indianapolis, which used ESC development as part of a long-term downtown revitalization strategy, reported a 78% increase in annual downtown visitors compared to 15 years ago. In contrast, Baltimore failed to connect two sports stadiums at Camden Yards and as a result experienced no additional development or revitalization in nearby neighborhoods.

“As the ESC discussion moves forward, this analysis will be a very effective tool to communicate priorities for future development,” said Ault. “It also supports the case for continued investment in Sacramento’s core assets and the Downtown District.

A full copy of the report is available for download at www.downtownsac.org.

Railyards foreclosure process started

2010-06-16T03:22:59Z

A large national real estate investment company took the first step toward foreclosing on Sacramento's railyards Tuesday.

Inland American Real Estate Trust recorded a notice of default against S. Thomas Enterprises of Sacramento, LLC, after the developer missed its April 30 deadline to pay $185 million in loans used to buy the 244-acre property in 2006.

The effort to redevelop the former Union Pacific railyards is the biggest infill project currently underway in the country. The city is considering plans to build a new arena there.

With its parent company headquartered in a Chicago suburb, Inland is reported to be the nation's eighth largest real estate owner.

"Inland American has made its best effort to work with Thomas Enterprises, Inc., the developer of the Sacramento Railyards project, to address the current default status of the loans on the property," Inland spokesman Matt Tramel said in a prepared statement.

Infrastructure work, which has already started, is not expected to be impacted, according to Thomas Enterprises and Inland officials.

The two sides have been negotiating on an extension of the loan for months. They have not been able to agree on a new deadline, interest rates or fees, said Thomas Enterprises Vice President Suheil Totah, standing at the edge of the railyards Tuesday afternoon.

He declined to discuss specifics that led the lender to record the default notice with the Sacramento County Clerk/Recorder's Office, which has set the foreclosure process in motion.

Inland officials would not comment on whether negotiations would continue with Thomas. They did restate their intentions to not walk away from the railyards redevelopment project to city officials, who are trying to get Inland, state and federal officials together in the same room to discuss the situation.

“I have been in contact with top executives at Inland and they are fully committed to the railyards," Mayor Kevin Johnson said Tuesday in a prepared statement. "I look forward to working with our partners on the state and federal levels to make sure this project stays on track.”

Totah said the investment company has indicated its willingness to continue the relationship with Thomas, rather than pushing the Atlanta-based development company to find a new investor.

"The lender has expressed its interest in seeing things continue and is committed to this project," Totah said. "We hope to reach agreement on those final terms as soon as possible."

Thomas Enterprises now has 120 days to repay the loan or win an extension, or it will face foreclosure. Stan Thomas, the company's founder, and others at the Atlanta headquarters expect to resume those negotiations shortly. No date has been set, though.

"We expect things will be resolved within that time frame," Totah said.

Photo by Suzanne Hurt, a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Greyhound terminal moves forward

2010-05-28T04:25:27Z

The Sacramento City Planning Commission approved planning entitlements for construction of a temporary Greyhound bus station on Richards Boulevard Thursday night, paving the way for the relocation of the West Coast's second-busiest bus terminal.

Concerns involving transients, fencing, pedestrian access and bicycle parking were also addressed during the meeting.

In a unanimous vote, seven commissioners granted the necessary special permit and planned unit development guideline amendment to enable Mogavero Notestine Associates to build a bus station at 420 Richard Blvd. on about 1.75 acres in the Discovery Centre development in the River District. Commission Chairman Michael Notestine, a partner in the company, abstained from voting, along with another commissioner.

The location of a bus terminal would require a special permit anywhere in the city, and the permit for the existing downtown bus station can't be transferred, said city Associate Planner Evan Compton.

"Getting it out of downtown is critical," said Commissioner Phil Harvey.

The Discovery Centre development runs from roughly North Third Street to Sequoia Pacific Boulevard between Richards Boulevard and Bannon Street. It was originally approved for only office and hotel construction. Currently, the land holds an office building occupied by the Sacramento Police Department and the Community Development Department.

The bus station will be built near the Union Gospel Mission and a family shelter on Bannon Street, where homeless people have camped in the past.

The city plans to install attractive wrought iron fencing around the entire site, and additional fencing on nearby parcels, after nearby business owners represented by the River District Property and Business Improvement District asked for fencing, landscaping and maintenance that would discourage transient loitering.

"Our area is swarming with homeless and transient individuals that negatively impact our businesses," River District PBID Executive Director Patty Kleinknecht said during the public hearing. She noted a McDonald's restaurant and a nearby gas station have problems with aggressive panhandlers and loitering.

"People don't feel comfortable in that environment. We all know we tend to avoid those business environments and areas where we don't feel comfortable," she added later. "In this economy, businesses need all the customers they can get."

The bus terminal will eventually move to the new regional transit facility slated to be built in the Railyards development. But that could be eight to 15 years away, said city senior planner Rachel Hazelwood, redevelopment project manager for the River District.

Greyhound will be the terminal's tenant on property owned by the city. The lease with the city requires Greyhound to use security cameras and guards. The new bus station will include a ticket checkpoint so that anyone can't just come and go throughout the station, a problem at the current station, Hazelwood said.

"We want to break the cycle of the problem," she said.

The bus company's lease at its current location, 715 L St., is set to expire in 2012. Construction is expected to start in the fall, Compton said.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Railyards parcel value: $52 million

2010-04-29T04:03:57Z

Ending more than three years of dispute, a court arbitrator determined Wednesday the city overpaid developer Thomas Enterprises by more than $2.5 million for railyards land next to the historic train depot.

The land is at the center of current discussions to build a new arena and regional transit center adjacent to downtown.

Arbitrator William Bettinelli, a retired Sonoma judge, set the value of nearly 33 acres of land at $52.35 million, the city manager's office and the developer announced in a joint press release late Wednesday afternoon.

In 2006, the city paid Thomas Enterprises $55 million for the parcel after the developer bought the 244-acre former railyards site from Union Pacific Railroad Co. That money was provided to help the developer close on the acquisition from Union Pacific, said Assistant City Manager John Dangberg.

However, a city appraiser later valued the land at about $8 million, while an appraiser hired by Thomas Enterprises set the value at more than $87 million.

Both sides said Wednesday they will respect the arbitrator's decision.

"We thought the property was worth more (than $55 million). But we did not know how much more," said the developer's independent counsel, attorney Tom Redmon of Wilke, Fleury, Hoffelt, Gould and Birney of Sacramento. "That was the purpose of the arbitration — to have someone finally determine what the value was."

The parcel contains the Sacramento Valley Station train depot, parking lots and existing tracks — which cover roughly three acres — and stretches north to the historic Southern Pacific railroad shops being redeveloped by Thomas Enterprises.

The 32.68-acre parcel includes 17.46 acres of railroad easement. The land is located in the southwestern part of the railyards development and holds historic value as the western start of the first transcontinental railroad.

Bettinelli considered values for about two dozen other nearby properties, such as the Bank of America building at 555 Capitol Mall and two weeks of expert testimony to help determine the price. He has worked as an arbitrator since 1991.

The value was determined based on the expected best use, or how the land is expected to be developed, and comparable real estate prices in the central business district, according to Bettinelli's written decision.

Within 10 days of the ruling, Thomas Enterprises must sign a promissory note to repay the $2.65 million difference in 2012, Dangberg said.

Under the development agreement with Thomas, the city also has the right to a parcel of land, at no cost to the city, to build the 5th Street Garage north of the relocated tracks, between what will be the extended Fifth and Sixth streets.

The Kamilos group, led by developer Gerry Kamilos as the Sacramento Convergence Holdings LLC, has entered into talks with the city to build a new arena. The group is asking the city to donate 9.5 acres of the railyards land next to the train depot for the arena.

Thomas Enterprises paid $218,000 in current and back property taxes earlier this month after Sacramento City Councilman Kevin McCarty drew attention to the unpaid taxes at a press conference and city staff shot off a letter asking the California Department of Housing and Community Development to withhold $17 million in Proposition 1B funds. The back taxes were due in December.

City staff are now looking forward to making more progress with the development, including opening bids for railroad track relocation on Wednesday after the arbitration ruling came out, according to Dangberg and other city staff.

"We agreed to live with the decision," he said. "We've gotten it and now we'll move on."

Photo by Eric Whalen.

Arbitrator sets railyards parcel at $52 million

2010-04-28T23:51:35Z

Ending more than three years of dispute, a court arbitrator has determined the city overpaid developer Thomas Enterprises by more than $2.5 million for railyards land next to the historic train depot, it was announced Wednesday.

The land is at the center of current discussions to build a new arena and regional transit center adjacent to downtown.

Arbitrator William Bettinelli, a retired Sonoma judge, set the value of nearly 33 acres of land at $52.35 million, the city manager's office announced at 4:29 p.m. In 2006, the city paid Thomas Enterprises $55 million for the parcel after the developer bought the 244-acre former railyards site from Union Pacific.

However, a city appraiser later valued the land at $8 million, while an appraiser hired by Thomas Enterprises set the value at more than $87 million.

The land, which holds historic value as the western start of the first transcontinental railroad, starts at the Sacramento Valley Station train depot and stretches north to the historic Southern Pacific railroad shops being redeveloped by Thomas Enterprises.

Bettinelli considered two weeks of expert testimony that were held last month to determine the price. He has worked as an arbitrator since 1991.

The 32.68-acre parcel includes 16 to 17 acres of railroad easement, according to the city.
The Kamilos group, led by developer Gerry Kamilos as the Sacramento Convergence Holdings LLC, has entered into talks with the city to build a new arena. The group is asking the city to donate 9.5 acres of the railyards land next to the historic train depot for the arena.

Under the development agreement with Thomas, the city has the right to a parcel of land, at no cost to the city, to build the 5th Street Garage north of the relocated tracks, between what will be the extended 5th and 6th streets.

Photos by Eric Whalen.

Mayor Johnson Criticizes Councilman McCarty's Press Conference

2010-04-14T05:16:58Z

Mayor Kevin Johnson criticized City Councilman Kevin McCarty Tuesday morning for holding a Friday press conference on the tax situation of the developers of the downtown railyards.

McCarty held a press conference Friday morning outside the Amtrak station on I Street. He announced that if Thomas Enterprises did not pay its taxes, the city should try to block as much as $47 million in state funding to the railyards. The company paid the property taxes that day, according to Suheil Totah, vice president of Thomas Enterprises.

Cynthia Gibbs, acting assistant tax collector, confirmed that the county received the payment from the company Tuesday.

"I don't feel that (holding the press conference) was the way to go about it," Johnson said during his Tuesday press conference. "There's ways we can do it that get the point across."

He said that the city should have been proactive and called the company to ask about the situation rather than hold a public press conference, "because you don't know the whole story."

Johnson stated that McCarty's press conference could endanger positive perceptions of Sacramento as a place to do business and as a business partner.

Senior Deputy City Attorney Sheryl Patterson said Friday that the city does not have the authority to block payments on amounts other than the $17 million from the California Transportation Commission's Proposition 1B funds.

"At the end of the day, we have to be very careful and smart with the way we go about these things," Johnson said.

Staff reporter Kathleen Haley contributed to this story. Agnus-Dei Farrant is an intern for The Sacramento Press.

Railyards developer pays back taxes

2010-04-10T04:50:55Z

The developer of the downtown Railyards paid Sacramento County about $218,000 in current and back taxes and penalties Friday, said Suheil Totah, vice president of Thomas Enterprises.

Funds were sent from the company's Atlanta headquarters to the county's assessor office via overnight mail, Totah said.

But Thomas Enterprises did not pay the property taxes in time to prevent city officials from publicly criticizing the company earlier Friday.

The city had moved to cut off state grant payments to the company, according to an April 9 letter from city officials to the state’s housing and development department.

A letter from Assistant City Manager John Dangberg said that as long as the taxes were unpaid, Sacramento would not sign off on funds to Thomas Enterprises from a $17 million state grant.

The company owed as much as $114,000 in back taxes that were not paid in December, according to the letter.

Now, Senior Deputy City Attorney Sheryl Patterson said Sacramento will be "back in business" with Thomas Enterprises after the city verifies Monday that the company has paid its taxes.

City Councilman Kevin McCarty held a press conference Friday morning to announce that if the company did not pay its taxes, the city should try to block as much as $47 million in state funding to the Railyards.

But Patterson said the city did not have the authority to block payments on amounts other than the $17 million from the grant.

The city could have written a letter asking the state’s Housing and Community Development Department to stop payments on additional state funds for the Railyards, she added.

Photo by Sacramento Press Staff Reporter Suzanne Hurt.

Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

City considering K Street developers

2010-03-23T06:04:32Z

Not everyone can agree on what the future K Street should look like when it comes to putting hammer to nail.

Four development teams vying for work and the chance to make their mark on this key piece of downtown real estate have at least one thing in common: they all recognize the possibility of using federal low-income housing tax credits and historic tax credits to create a mixed-use neighborhood integrating the street's historic architecture.

"That's a major opportunity," said Sacramento developer David Taylor, a team leader for the group 700-800 K Street, LLC, at a presentation hearing scheduled by the city of Sacramento Monday night. "It's a major headache as well."

Each team wants to build housing, retail and office space. But plan details and team philosophies differ.

For instance, Rubicon Partners Inc., St. Anton Partners and Preferred Capital Advisors want to build a neighborhood around a 35,000-square-foot farmer's market, 2,000-seat entertainment venue, a 22,000-square-foot grocery store and an artisan alley with artists' apartments over their ground-floor work spaces. The plan calls for 100,000 square feet of retail — far larger than the three other plans.

"We're looking for a game-changer on K Street," said Kipp Blewett, co-founder of Rubicon Partners and chairman of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership. The team believes the project will draw people downtown again after other plans have failed.

The farmer's market and sizeable entertainment venue would not be located far from a mixed-use redevelopment under way in the railyards downtown, where the city appears likely to build a future sports and entertainment arena. Thomas Enterprises is in the midst of a $5 million cleanup of the railyards' historic "Central Shops" and restoration of a 56,000-square-foot historic building that will house an open-air public market at the heart of the 244-acre development.

The K Street development team members see themselves as supporters, rather than competitors with Thomas or the arena developer. However, this team's farmer's market could be built within three to five years, while Thomas' might not be built for seven to 10, Blewett said.

"We're ready to go on K Street," he added. "We're ready to go now."

Thomas Enterprises could not be reached for comment.

Another team — Bridge Housing, Saca Development and Bagatelos Development LLC — wants to build "sustainable" market rate and low-income housing that blend into one another, interspersed with 34,000 square feet of open-space terraces and courtyards. The plan would incorporate such things as photovoltaic roof canopies and healthy building materials.

The team is excited about integrating new housing and existing historical properties, including the Bel-Vue Apartments, to create "more of a neighborhood," said Brad Wiblin, vice president of Bridge Housing.

"We're in a situation which really calls for a change in dynamics on the ground," he added.

Following models that have worked in San Diego and Old Pasadena, Taylor's group — which includes Z Gallerie owner Joe Zeiden — wants to start with retail and finish construction within two years, constructing a mixed-use project that is needed in this economy while allowing room for future growth.

Zeiden helped revive Old Pasadena by building one of his stores there, before there was housing. That started the district's redevelopment, said Zieiden. He now plans to move his store out of Westfield Downtown Plaza and onto the 700 block of K Street in an effort to kick-start a similar revival in Sacramento.

"I've been doing this for 30 years now. I've seen what works. I've seen what doesn't," he said. "I think the street has amazing potential."

D&S Development, Inc., and CFY Development Inc. — led by Cyrus Youssefi — want to reduce the size of 160-foot-deep retail spaces on the 700 block of K Street and use the 66-foot-deep leftover space to create alley-fronting housing and a garage.

They envision a flower shop, restaurants and sidewalk cafes and vendors' sidewalk kiosks in a block of mainly restored historic storefront. They also plan to restore the mural on the original Tower Records storefront and commission other murals from local artists. The goal is to draw retail energy out of storefronts and create the kind of vitality found on Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade or Berkeley's Fourth Street, said architect Bob Kuchman.

"We're really trying to reinvigorate the street and create a real energy out here," he said.

The city will hold development team interviews March 25 at a time and location not yet disclosed. The Sacramento City Council is expected to choose a development team by mid-May. For more information about the proposals, click on this link.

Council unanimously agrees to begin arena talks with Kamilos

2010-03-17T05:18:54Z

In a win for Mayor Kevin Johnson and his arena task force, the City Council agreed to start talks with Sacramento developer Gerry Kamilos on a plan to build a new sports and entertainment center in the downtown railyards and develop two other sites.

The City Council’s approval to begin talks with the Kamilos Group was unanimous. While an agreement between the city and Kamilos was not completed Tuesday, the council moved closer to a decision to work with Kamilos.

In Kamilos’ multi-layered plan, the downtown railyards would be the location of a new sports and entertainment center. The plan also calls for the creation of a new state fairgrounds at Arco Arena and nearby property.

Kamilos’ team, which includes developer David Taylor, further plans to purchase the state-owned Cal Expo State Fairgrounds. The development team will would then build a mixed-use development at that location.

The NBA and the Maloofs family, which owns the Sacramento Kings, support Kamilos’ proposal.

Johnson said he would like to see the project to focus on environmentally sound elements so that it could be a “world-class showcase” for a green development.

Meanwhile, Councilwoman Sandy Sheedy said that consultants who work with the city on this project should be paid by the developers, not the city. The city needs to be “very, very careful” if it puts any public funds or public land toward the project, she said.

While Councilman Ray Tretheway voted in favor of starting work with Kamilos, he raised concerns about Natomas. He said he wanted to know how the arena’s move to downtown from Natomas would affect Natomas’ businesses.

The City Council tasked staffers with several assignments Tuesday night. Council members decided that city staffers should start working with the Kamilos group and create benchmarks for the negotiations. The City Council also asked staff to study the financial aspects of linking the Kamilos downtown arena project to a downtown intermodal center.

Council members agreed that Johnson could appoint members of a City Council ad hoc committee to work on the effort.

Staff was also asked to inform the council of progress on creating a six-month agreement with Kamilos, as well as the project’s scope, benchmarks and funding sources. The council asked for that information to be presented within 30 days.

Further, staffers will work on a plan to gain feedback from stakeholders and community groups, Johnson said.

The Kamilos plan will need state legislation to advance. Staff will work on that issue with the development team, the council’s ad hoc committee and additional involved parties, according to the council’s decision.

Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Railyards arbitration begins

2010-03-17T02:48:15Z

A dispute over the value of a key parcel of railyards land is getting closer to a resolution. An arbitration hearing began Monday over land likely to become the home of a future arena and a regional transit center.

On Monday, two weeks of witness testimony began to help determine how much the city of Sacramento should pay developer Thomas Enterprises for nearly 33 acres of prime land adjacent to downtown. The land also holds historic value as the western start of the first transcontinental railroad.

The city already paid $55 million for the parcel in 2006 after Thomas Enterprises bought the 244-acre former railyards site.

But the city and the developer have never agreed on the parcel's value. A city appraiser later valued the land at $8 million, while an appraiser hired by Thomas Enterprises set the value at more than $87 million.

The land stretches from the Sacramento Valley Station train depot downtown to the historic Southern Pacific railroad shops currently undergoing redevelopment by Thomas Enterprises.

The 32.68-acre parcel includes more than 17 acres of railroad easement. After factoring out the depot and land being used for public transit, about eight acres of vacant land remain, said Senior Deputy City Attorney Sheryl Patterson.

Thomas Enterprises representatives won't disclose what the company paid Union Pacific for the land or any other information relevant to the arbitration, according to company spokeswoman Leslie Valpey.

Last week, a sports and entertainment arena task force formed by Mayor Kevin Johnson recommended that the Sacramento City Council support a proposal to build a new arena on the city's railyards parcel in connection with a new regional transit center the city already plans to build there.

Court arbitrator William Bettinelli, a retired Sonoma judge, is presiding over the hearing after the city won a coin toss held by Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Robert Hight. Hight helped the two sides winnow their lists of arbitrators down until Bettinelli was chosen. Bettinelli has experience trying, arbitrating and mediating complex, multi-party construction and real estate cases, among others.

Bettinelli must determine the land's value after weighing all the information presented in the hearing. A decision is expected by April 26.

Photo by Eric Whalen.

Kings Fans Optimistic About Team, Arena

2010-02-18T05:25:16Z

The Kings have been having a roller coaster season.

The team is undeniably better than last year, but its recent monthlong collapse has left it with a 18-35 record. This tally has been accompanied off-court by injuries, trade rumors, and uncertainty about a new arena and the Kings' future in Sacramento.

While it's a turbulent time to be a Kings fan, most fans who attended Tuesday's home game remained optimistic and excited about the future.

"They're pretty good," William Yu said. "They're making a lot of progress," added the 38-year-old engineer.

"They play all the way, and they're fun to watch," warehouse operator Jerry Sudderberg said.

Much of the optimism centers around the front-runner for the Rookie of the Year award, Tyreke Evans, and the development of Kevin Martin. Evans has been a welcome surprise, averaging 20.3 points per game and anchoring the team with his performance. Martin, who is back after being injured and missing more than 30 games, has struggled somewhat since his return. He is just starting to show flashes of his former high-scoring self.

Diane Goodman, a counselor and 24-year resident of Sacramento, said both players are key to the team's success.

"Tyreke Evans and Kevin Martin, if they work together, could be a pretty formidable backcourt," she said.

"Don't worry about Kevin, he'll get back in his groove," said light rail operator Ishmael Haqq, 40. "He's a shooter, it's what he does. We love him. Don't go anywhere, K-Mart!"

Throughout the season, there has been much talk and a big push for a new arena for the Kings. The perception of Arco Arena, where the team plays now, seems to be that it's outdated. It was built in 1988, has the second-smallest seating capacity in the NBA and is one of the oldest arenas in use.

To address the issue, Mayor Kevin Johnson has assembled an arena task force; seven proposals for a new arena have been pitched. Johnson said he wants a task-force recommendation by March, which coincides with the NBA application deadline for relocating a team. The last team to relocate was the Seattle SuperSonics, which became the Oklahoma City Thunder for the 2008-2009 season.

Most of the fans appear to be in favor of a downtown arena.

"Hell yeah, I would go a downtown arena," said Haqq. "Arco Arena is OK, but it's served its purpose. We need to move on now."

"They deserve a new arena," said Rhonda Sudderberg, a Sacramento resident of 20 years.

"I like Arco Arena, but I think that putting a new arena downtown is important," Yu said. "This building is outdated."

Longtime Kings fan Debra Nyland-Jarvis has worked in economic development for more than 30 years. She said that the proposal involving a three-way land swap, which is backed by the NBA, is best. The three-way land swap is a proposal that would have the state sell Cal Expo to private developers, move the state fairgrounds to Natomas, and build a new arena in the railyards in downtown Sacramento.

"The deal with the three-way land swap makes awesome economic sense," she said. "Sacramento has been trying to revitalize downtown for decades." Nyland-Jarvis referred to the Pepsi Center in Denver, saying that it perked up that city's downtown.

Not all fans were enthusiastic about a new arena, including Nyland-Jarvis' husband, Lowell Jarvis.

"I think this one is fine," he said.

Retail worker Kyle Bradley, 23, agreed.

"I like the arena where it's at right now. I don't know if moving it downtown would be any better or any worse," he said. "I don't really see what the point would be."

Despite how fans feel about a new arena and last year's season, the worst in franchise history, optimism reigns. Haqq best summed up Sacramento's relationship with the Kings.

"We love them."

Councilman Ray Tretheway's goals for 2010

2010-02-06T20:51:02Z

Councilman Ray Tretheway’s key goals for 2010 are in response to problems caused by the poor economy. He said he plans to concentrate on public safety, jobs and foreclosure.

Tretheway’s priorities are listed here as part of a series of stories on council members’ top three goals for 2010. Links to the stories are at the end of this article.

The Sacramento Press made repeated requests to interview Councilman Rob Fong, but he was unavailable.

Tretheway represents District 1, which includes North and South Natomas and Alkali Flat. He is running for re-election in June against Efren Guttierrez, a real estate broker, and Angelique Ashby, a partner in a consulting firm that contracts with government agencies and businesses.

When he is not working on city matters, Tretheway is the executive director of Sacramento Tree Foundation.

Tretheway said his top priority for the year is public safety. He puts public safety into three categories: police and fire, levees and youth education.

The councilman said he would like to see a federal jobs bill signed into law. If it passes, then perhaps local police and fire services will receive federal funding to maintain existing jobs and add new positions, he said.

“To that end, hopefully the Obama administration jobs bill will pass.”

At the local level, Tretheway said there will be a groundbreaking next month for a fire station in Natomas that would serve residents on the west side of Interstate 5.

He said he also plans to focus on levee improvements, calling the barriers a public safety issue.

Tretheway noted that his other public safety push will be youth education and services. He cited progress in that area, including two teen clubhouses in Natomas that will open next month; a teen center in the Gardenland/Northgate area that opened last year; and a park affiliated with the Boys and Girls Club that opened in downtown last week.

Tretheway mentioned development in Natomas when he talked about his goal of creating jobs. If the levees were strengthened, then the Federal Emergency Management Agency potentially could release its building moratorium in Natomas, he said.

If FEMA removed its restrictions, there could be “more opportunities for building homes and offices and commercial (buildings)” in Natomas, he said.

Tretheway also said that many jobs will be created as work gets under way on the Township 9 and Railyards development projects.

The councilman said his third goal for the year will be to help residents fight foreclosures. He said he would continue to educate people about the issue at community meetings. “I think that’s going to be something that’s looming over us on the downside,” he said. “But the opportunities are really pretty positive. People have an opportunity to listen ... and find out the avenues for how they can keep their homes.”

Councilman Steve Cohn’s goals are listed here. Read about Councilwoman Lauren Hammond’s priorities here. Councilman Kevin McCarty’s plans are explained here. Learn about Councilwoman Sandy Sheedy’s objectives here. Councilman Robbie Waters’ goals are outlined here. Councilwoman Bonnie Pannell lists her priorities here.

Mayor Kevin Johnson presents his goal for a green initiative here. Johnson announces a goal relating to the building moratorium in Natomas.

Photos by Anthony Bento.

Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Work underway on train station, tracks

2010-01-28T06:12:30Z

Maintenance work began Wednesday on Union Pacific railroad tracks in the Downtown Sacramento railyards, while ongoing upgrades continue at the historic Sacramento Valley Station.

Union Pacific has started rail maintenance work on existing tracks. Rail cars that are part of a track replacement train known as the TRT 909 are pulling up the rail and replacing railroad ties underneath, said Aaron Hunt, public relations director for Union Pacific.

"We have track improvement projects going on throughout the state currently," he said.

The work is not part of the $60 million Downtown track relocation project, said Richard Rich, development director of Thomas Enterprises' Railyards project.

The timing was determined by the amount of train traffic and loads on the tracks, even though those tracks will be ripped out in a year or so, as track relocation work is scheduled to start by May. Railroad track relocation is the first phase of a regional transportation center being built in the 244-acre historic railyards adjacent to the existing station at Fifth and I streets.

The design and location of the future transit hub must still be determined. Two weeks ago, Thomas and another development team proposed incorporating the transportation center into a new Kings arena if the arena were built adjacent to the existing train station.

On Tuesday, the California Department of General Services closed off a dozen parking spaces next to the train station for work expected to begin soon on upgrading the station's electrical system, said Linda Tucker, spokesperson for the city's Department of Transportation.

Those spaces won't be available until May 15. The station's water system is also being updated at this time, she said.

City workers are designing new front-entry canopies for all the doors and strengthening wall and floor connections, she said.

Workers have also secured the building against pests, updated the natural gas system, repaired basement leaks, removed some lead paint and asbestos, and done other work since the city bought the building on behalf of its residents in 2006. Amtrak leases the station from the city.

Sacramento Valley Station sits on a major national trade route, the Central Corridor, whose western junction is the high-volume Port of Oakland. Freight and passenger trains share three tracks in a configuration set up about the time the Sacramento station was built in 1925.

Track relocation work will include building tracks devoted to freight, in order to allow a higher volume of freight trains to move more quickly through Sacramento. Freight and passenger tracks also will be moved at least 300 feet north and straightened to allow for longer trains.

Councilman Steve Cohn announces 2010 goals

2010-01-07T06:04:52Z

While Sacramento City Councilman Steve Cohn expects dismal budget numbers for the city this year, he also thinks the local economy will begin to heal.

In an interview about his goals for 2010, Cohn said the city budget will be his top priority. He said he doesn’t yet know a specific number for the city’s possible budget deficit this year, but he expects the figures to be daunting. The Sacramento City Council made major cuts to services last year to address a $50 million deficit.

“In general, despite the tough economy, I’m actually very optimistic about the future,” Cohn said. “So I feel like we’re going to see things start to turn around in 2010.”

Cohn said he expects job opportunities to appear toward the end of the year. Though he has an optimistic view of what the year will bring, he said city leaders must be “very careful” about how they spend money.

Cohn, whose district includes Downtown, Midtown and East Sacramento, is running for re-election in the June City Council race. Since his term ends in late November, he noted that the re-election outcome would not impede his progress with his goals this year.

Cohn is running against building contractor and former mayoral candidate Shawn Eldredge and real estate businessman Christopher Little.

When budget time comes around in May, Cohn will be looking at public safety.

“Public safety is obviously the most significant thing that we do,” he said.

Cohn noted that the city’s reserves are nearly dried up. The city will need to guarantee that its expenses align with its revenues, he said.

Cohn does not want to lower funding for the police and fire departments: “It’s hard for me to see how we can cut police and fire any more than we already have," he said. "That's not to say that somebody can’t come up with creative suggestions for how to better deploy our resources, and so we look to our police chief and fire chief for ideas.”

After the budget, the transportation project at the Sacramento Valley Station is Cohn’s second highest priority for the year. The outcome of the three-phase project will be a new regional transportation complex. A key part of the first-phase of the project, which will cost an estimated $60 million, is relocating railroad tracks.

The city plans to put construction work out to bid and start building this year, Cohn said.

“The first phase is the most critical because it allows not only for the station to be expanded so it can handle all those different forms of rail and transit that come through there, but also to allow the development to occur in the Railyards,” he said.

The project is being paid for by federal, state and local sales tax revenues that go toward transportation projects. None of the city’s general fund money is going toward the project, Cohn noted.

The councilman’s third goal for the year will be to finish a set of enhancements to Sutter’s Landing Park at 28th and B streets in Midtown. The improvements should make the former dump feel more like a real park, Cohn said.

“Obviously, right now, it still has a little bit of the feel of the city dump that it used to be,” he said.

Cohn’s top three priorities for 2010 are among dozens of goals he laid out in a his 2010 State of the District Report. Read the full list of Cohn’s goals on page three of the report.

Photos by Anthony Bento.

Staff reporter Suzanne Hurt contributed to this story. Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

State turns over $31 million for RR tracks

2009-12-12T07:05:45Z

Helping to save $20 million in local federal stimulus money, the state of California on Thursday ponied up $31 million in Prop. 1B funding for projects connected to Sacramento's future regional transportation center.

The Sacramento Area Council of Governments and the city of Sacramento told the California Transportation Commission this week that the city would lose the federal stimulus funds unless the agency paid out the Prop. 1B money as promised, said Erik Johnson, SACOG spokesman.

The bulk of the $31 million will be used for a $60 million railroad track relocation, the first phase of the train station and public transit center being built in the 244-acre historic railyards adjacent to the Sacramento Valley Station downtown.

"In order to receive the $20 million, we had to have all of our funds to move forward," Johnson said. "Congress wanted to have the stimulus funding move quickly. They (the state) understood that need."

Darrell Steinberg, state Senate president pro tem, represents Sacramento and helped win state funding for the project. U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui helped land the federal stimulus money, according to SACOG.

The state allocated $25 million in trade corridor improvement funds to the city to help move the tracks and for tunnel work under the new tracks.

The state also allocated nearly $6 million in highway railroad crossing safety funds. The money will go toward the $12 million Sixth Street overpass to be built by Railyards developer Thomas Enterprises, Johnson said. The money was paid to Thomas on behalf of the city, which requested the money in August.

All the funds had been awarded but not turned over, he said.

Reconfiguring and relocating the tracks has been a SACOG priority for years, Johnson said.

The Sacramento Valley Station sits on a major national trade route, the Central Corridor, whose western junction is the high-volume Port of Oakland. Freight and passenger trains share three tracks, a configuration set up about the time the Sacramento station was built in 1925.

Track relocation work will include building tracks devoted to freight, allowing a higher volume of freight trains to move more quickly through Sacramento. Freight and passenger tracks will be moved at least 300 feet north and straightened to allow for longer trains.

SACOG helped the city apply for the Prop. 1B funding. SACOG also is responsible for the regional distribution of about $109 million in federal stimulus funds. The organization earmarked $20 million for the railroad tracks project, the largest single project receiving those funds, Johnson said.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson said he was happy the California Transportation Commission has allocated the funding for the transportation center and the Railyards.

"This project is important to revitalizing our downtown and will be a tremendous regional asset as new residents, visitors and workers come in and out of this area," he said in a prepared statement.

Photos by Suzanne Hurt, a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Prop. 1B money sought for tracks

2009-12-06T05:11:55Z

The city of Sacramento is about to ask the state of California to make good on its promise to award at least $20 million for railroad track relocation so work can start by May.

Unable to sell as many bonds as expected, the state has not disbursed $20 million in trade corridor funds that was awarded last year under state Proposition 1B. Next week, the city will ask the California Transportation Commission to borrow $25 million against the bond money, said Linda Tucker, spokesperson for the city's Department of Transportation.

"We've got to get this going," she said Friday, when the city announced it had met a Dec. 1 deadline for another $20 million in federal stimulus funding.

The city already has gathered $15 million from federal, state and local sources. The state money is needed to fully fund the $60 million track relocation, which is the first phase of building the regional transportation center next to the Sacramento Valley Station downtown.

The city met the deadline by submitting construction authorizations for the final design of phase 1 of the transportation center, and by submitting easements and permits for utility relocation to the California Department of Transportation.

“Last March, we learned the biggest chunk of stimulus money in Sacramento would be going to the Railyards if the project could be ready for construction in 9 months," Mayor Kevin Johnson said in a statement.

"With that looming deadline, city staff have been scrambling to work with multiple federal, state and local agencies, rail operators and utility companies to gain federal environmental clearance and secure project approvals and have everything turned in by Tuesday, Dec. 1," he said. "I am pleased to say, yes, we made it!”

Despite that, construction has been delayed again. The work was targeted to start this fall, then delayed to March. Now, construction has been pushed back to May.

The city delayed the start because of the project's complexity. The extra time will give contractors longer to submit a bid and allow the city more time to award the work, Tucker said.

"It has to meet a lot of criteria to be eligible for funds coming from a myriad of sources," she said.

The city applied for $6 million more for Phase 1 in August but did not win it, Tucker said.

The new tracks are now expected to begin operating in mid-2012.

Railyards lawsuits defeated

2009-11-17T04:56:56Z

Westfield Downtown Plaza and a citizens' group lost legal challenges against the Railyards development, developer Thomas Enterprises and the city announced Monday.

The lawsuits against the city of Sacramento, the city's Redevelopment Agency and developer Thomas Enterprises argued that the poject's two environmental impact reports (EIRs) were inadequate and did not comply with the California Environmental Quality Act known as CEQA. Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connelly ruled in favor of the city and developer on all points raised by the Downtown Plaza and three people represented by attorney Bill Kopper.

Those individuals — Robert Castro Jr., Linda Powers and Chris Rich — filed one lawsuit as the group Sacramento Citizens Concerned About the Railyards, whose acronym is SCCARY. Two are members of labor unions, Kopper said.

"This is good news," Mayor Kevin Johnson said in a statement issued by the city and developer. "We can now focus on the task of creating jobs and developing an area that will play a vital role in making Sacramento a world-class city."

The plaintiffs are not satisfied with the ruling because 10 to 15 issues they raised were not addressed, Kopper said.

"There were many important issues in the case that we feel got short shrift by the court," he said. "I think it was a very cavalier attitude as to what the adverse impacts of the project will be because there is such a desire to advance the success of the Railyards."

For example, questions raised by the California Office of Historic Preservation and the State Water Resources Control Board in draft EIRs weren't answered in the final EIRs, he said. With an EIR stating that 192,000 vehicle trips eventually will be generated by the Railyards daily, the California Department of Transportation requested that the project's impact on the freeways circling the central city be considered, but that was "brushed aside," Kopper said.

The judge also ruled the city does not need to analyze downtown intersections one by one to determine if there should be widening or other improvements to prevent the gridlock predicted by a traffic study, he said.

The city approved the Railyards Specific Plan in December 2007 for the 244-acre site north of downtown between the Sacramento River and the Alkali Flat neighborhood.

The $6-billion project is expected to add more than 12,000 residential units, 2.3 million square feet of office space, 1.4 million square feet of retail, nearly 500,000 square feet of mixed-use space and 46 acres of parks and other open space, all centered around the city's future regional transportation center and a cultural hub in the historic Southern Pacific railroad shops.

Suheil Totah, vice president for Thomas Enterprises, called the decision "another important milestone" for the project.

"We're very pleased the judge found that everything was done in accordance with the law," Totah said by phone. "He found both EIRs did what they were supposed to do."

The Westfield Group could not be reached for comment.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Railyard shops cleanup, preservation underway

2009-11-11T06:25:04Z

Piles are growing at the city's old railyard.

Inside the long-abandoned Southern Pacific railroad shops, there are piles of metal, wood, debris and contaminated junk. Up on roofs, white-suited, specially trained abatement workers are pulling up roofing material and roofing adhesive containing asbestos. Outside one of the shops lies a makeshift salvage yard.

Georgia developer Thomas Enterprises and a contractor, Allied Environmental of Placerville, are three months into a $5 million cleanup of the historic "Central Shops," which will form the centerpiece of a 244-acre mixed-used district dubbed the Railyards.

The developers envision the shops as the cultural heart of a district that will include the future a regional transportation center and retail, office and residential use. The centerpiece will be an open-air market and adjacent plaza. There also has been talk of a $500 million arena/entertainment center, a performing arts center and even a new $500 million county courthouse.

During a tour of the shops Tuesday, Railyards Development Director Richard Rich said workers are setting aside everything connected to Sacramento's railroad history to be recycled and used in the district.

"We want to save every single piece of this," Rich said as he pointed to old metal lockers and train parts inside the former Paint Shop. "Part of our job is to retell the story of the railyards as we rebuild this and bring it back."

Very little remains from the 1930s or earlier, when the shops were the center of the locomotive industry on the West Coast and that industry drove the city, he said. For more railyard photos, go here.

The railroad company took most items of value long ago. Then, squatters and vandals carried off everything they could.

Still, workers have already dug up tons of gnarled, rusted iron during soil remediation. Rich said he would like to hire an artist to create a large sculpture from the salvaged iron. The sculpture would go in the future Market Plaza.

"That's a dream at this point," Rich said. "I don't know where we'd find the money."

Hundreds of heavy locomotive drive wheels and axles were found on the site, which lies next to the Sacramento Valley Station train depot. California State Parks gathered up most of them, and two drive wheels left with the developers may become sculptures. Thomas Enterprises is talking with the parks department about placing drive wheel sculptures at intersections throughout the district.

"I would like every single intersection that we do to have some calling card of rail history there," Rich said.

Central Pacific established the Sacramento railyard during the steam locomotive era. The company, which later became Southern Pacific, built the first shop in 1868 — before Sacramento gained fame as the western start of the first transcontinental railroad with the driving of the last spike on May 10, 1869.

In the 1930s, Southern Pacific slowly began abandoning the railyards. Rail traffic was down because of the Depression.

The company set up maintenance shops for newer diesel locomotives in more rural areas as Sacramento grew, and the shops began falling into disrepair. The shops officially closed in 1999, four years after Union Pacific bought Southern Pacific.

Now, eight Central Shops — seven brick and one metal — are all that remain of what was once at least 243 buildings. The developers are giving the metal Boiler Shop and the Erecting Shop, the largest and grandest, to state parks for its future Railroad Technology Museum. State parks will handle abatement of those.

The buildings' exteriors will be preserved following the Secretary of the Interior's guidelines for rehabbing historic buildings. Abatement work, Phase 1 of shop restoration, is expected to be completed by March.

On Tuesday, 50 workers worked on various abatement projects including removing the badly peeling lead-based interior paint, junk contaminated with heavy metals and polychlorinated biphenyl or PCB, and asbestos sheetrock, floor tiles and pipe insulation. They're also removing extensive graffiti.

"Our job now is to clean these buildings so we can start to do the major work on the renovation," Rich said.

British Environmental Resources Management is providing construction management. The company initially was hired by Southern Pacific and has done all cleanup at the site for 20 years.

"Our primary challenge was to make sure we could abide by California environmental laws to take toxics out but not damage these historic buildings," Rich said. "It's something we have to watch very carefully."

Workers can't remove all the lead-based paint without damaging historic interior bricks. So remaining paint will be encapsulated in new paint, in a process created by the city's environmental office, he said.

The Railyards are the country's largest infill project. Most of the six shops are expected to be filled by restaurants, clubs, retail shops and small museums. Organizations have expressed interest in setting up museums for model railroads, carousels and blacksmithing in the 3,800-square-foot Blacksmith Shop.

The 56,000-square-foot Paint Shop will house an open-air market with Central Valley products including produce, cheese, wine, meat and fish -- similar to San Francisco's Ferry Building. It will be near the extended 5th Street.

An open space next to it, once a turntable that moved locomotives and train cars to the Paint Shop, will be turned into Market Plaza. Plans call for landscaping, water features, public art and a small outdoor performance area.

"That plaza is going to be the cultural living room of this region," Rich said.

On the other side of the plaza, clubs, restaurants and shops are expected to open in the Planing Mill, Car Shop and Machine Shop, where locomotives, passenger cars and flat cars once were built. The first building constructed on the site was a machine shop in 1868. Upper floors could contain art lofts and archive space.

Small shops and restaurants could go into the "Tower of Jewels," a three-story brick craphouse built in 1878. The plaster facade is peeling off the brick building, so the mortar on that and the rest of the brick buildings will be repointed.

The shops are expected to be ready for tenants in two or three years. The city has committed to building a 2,000-space parking garage east of the market. The garage will serve the regional transportation center and the Central Shops, said Suheil Totah, Thomas Enterprises vice president.

The county is considering the site for a new courthouse, said Totah, adding that Thomas Enterprises likes the idea of the city building an arena there as well.

Rich said he expects all electrical cables at the site will be underground. He said he hopes to use a line of old above-ground electrical poles to hold a 30-foot-high, 300-foot-long lighted landmark "Sacramento Railyards" sign.

That's just one of the efforts to preserve as much as possible. Restoring the historic buildings that once played such a large role in Sacramento is the key, Totah and Rich said.

"It would actually be cheaper to knock them down and rebuild them. But there's an ambiance you can't get with a new building," Rich said. "So they're priceless in that way."

Photos by Eric Whalen. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Pile-driving tests begin at Railyards

2009-11-04T04:55:06Z

Test pile-driving began Tuesday at Sacramento's historic railyard as the site's developers prepare for bridge construction.

The sights and sounds were a sample of what's to come in about four months when foundation work starts for bridges on Fifth and Sixth streets.

At that time, the developers at Thomas Enterprises realize some neighbors may be annoyed by the booms of about 400 piles being driven into the earth. But the noise won't be the same to all ears, they said.

"To us, it's the sound of progress," said Leslie Valpey, the project's development coordinator. "And activity at a time when there's not a lot of activity."

That sound also represents the historic Southern Pacific railyards coming to life again after decades of disuse and decay.

Other infrastructure work has already been done elsewhere on the site, where a $6-billion mixed-use district containing a new regional transportation center is expected to be built over the next 20 years.

Infrastructure work includes the initial grading of Railyards Boulevard and northern portions of Fifth and Sixth streets. Abatement inside the historic Central Shops and building up the elevated 10-acre Vista Park with soil has also begun.

The bridges will be built in the section of the 244-acre site that lies closest to downtown. The two bridges will provide a way for extensions of the two streets to travel over new, relocated tracks and into the heart of the Railyards.

Work crews are using a 120-foot crane to drive six test piles there this week. The piles create the bridges' foundations.

"The most important thing is really these (piles), because that's what's holding the bridge when it goes up," said Elias Rashmawi, director of land redevelopment for the project. "It's the foundation work."

Two types of piles — an H pile and a pipe pile — are being driven into the ground at three locations. Crews drive a 60-foot pile into the ground, weld a second of the same length on to that, and drive the entire pile down 115 to 118 feet, he said.

The piles go through sand, then gravel, then a layer of sand and gravel and silty sand, as well as water, because an aquifer starts 20 feet below the ground, he said.

Readings are taken on resistance, load and stress, to show how much capacity the piles can handle. The tests help the designers and installers determine which type of pile to use and at what depths and where. Pile driving for the bridge is expected to take one to two months.

The bridges will be built over the tracks, and two pedestrian tunnels will be built under the tracks. One tunnel will start at the historic Sacramento Valley Station and the other at Old Sacramento. Bridge construction is expected to be finished by next fall.

Track relocation work, which will be overseen by the city of Sacramento, will be done at the same time, according to Thomas Enterprises Vice President Suheil Totah. New tracks will be laid and trains will begin using those before the old tracks are dismantled.

Fifth and Sixth streets are expected to be completed after that.

Thomas Enterprises is handling all the bridge and road work as part of a partnership with the city. The city won a grant to fund construction of the Sixth Street bridge and the developer was awarded Proposition 1C funding for the Fifth Street bridge, Totah said.

Photos by Kati Garner. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Mayor Kevin Johnson introduces "Rules of the Game" for new arena

2009-10-30T03:14:16Z

At a news conference Thursday, Mayor Kevin Johnson introduced his "Rules of the Game" plan to build an arena and entertainment complex in Sacramento. It was held on the 25th floor of the US Bank building downtown, featuring panoramic views of the skyline with Cal Expo and the Sacramento Railyards in the background.

Johnson's "rules" include coming up with a plan that doesn't depend on taxes, making sure the city is not a "stalking horse" for a deal elsewhere and utilizing experienced community members. He also announced that a task force will be established and that there will be an open call for proposals, with guidelines coming in the next few days.

"I think it's time to reinvigorate an arena discussion," Johnson said. "If you look out over Sacramento, it's clear that rebuilding Cal Expo cannot be the only option. We need a new sports and entertainment center."

Two weeks ago, after the NCAA deemed ARCO Arena outdated for an NCAA tournament, Johnson declared finding a new arena a "front-burner issue." He also has called a new arena part of a larger plan to revitalize Sacramento's economy.

Johnson said Thursday that the arena, host to more than 190 events last year, was not about the Maloofs or even the Kings.

"We've got to prove that we can build major projects here in Sacramento," he said. "I'm talking about an entertainment complex that lights up the next six blocks right outside of its boundaries, something that works hand in hand with transit, smart growth and green ambitions."

When asked about the Railyards as a potential site, Johnson said, "I have said all along that I would have loved to see an arena downtown and my favorite site was the Railyards. At the end of the day, it all boils down to 'How are you going to pay for it?' "

Johnson said he wants public input, adding that there will be a monthly events to discuss the complex.

"I challenge everyone to think big, and think about what great cities have done over the last 3,000 years," the mayor said. "Think about how we can join that list of great cities."

Please view a transcript of the speech here.

Light rail ground broken Monday

2009-10-13T03:27:13Z

Officials broke ground Monday on the city's newest light-rail line.

The first segment of Sacramento Regional Transit District's "green line" will run just more than a mile, from downtown north to the River District. Eventually, the line will carry public transit riders to Sacramento International Airport.

"It's the first great step to a complete transportation system. This is going to connect everything together," said U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui, standing at the future site of the line's initial terminus, 7th Street and Richards Boulevard. "We have an investment in an expanded airport. We're going to have to have another way to get there — and that's going to be light rail."

The line will start at the Sacramento county courthouse, Eighth and H streets, and head to the future regional transportation center and the Railyards, then head north along Seventh Street before reaching the terminus at Township 9 in the Richards Boulevard Redevelopment Area. The line is expected to begin operating in November 2010.

The line's expansion to the airport isn't expected to be built for eight to 10 years. While local, state and federal funding is expected to be used to build the rest of the line, the first stretch will be financed entirely by local funding, said Mike Wiley, RT General manager.

Measure A sales tax funds will pay for most of the project to build the 1.1 miles of single track and two stations, estimated to cost more than $44 million. The Sacramento Transportation Authority sold bonds for several projects, including this one, and will loan some of the money to RT until the Measure A money becomes available, said Sacramento City Councilman Steve Cohn.

Wiley praised Matsui, Mayor Kevin Johnson, Cohn, Sacramento City Councilman Ray Tretheway and Sacramento County Supervisor Roger Dickinson for their support of public transit and light rail.

The green line is expected to bring more than just riders. The line is expected to bring money through economic development by spurring infill development in the Railyards and the River District, and by eventually connecting downtown to the airport, said Cohn and others.

For that reason, as well as its contribution to clean air and reduced traffic congestion, the line truly will be a "green" line, Cohn said.

A station will be added at the Railyards eventually, where 50,000 people are projected to one day live and work. The terminus will be at Township 9, being built by Steve Goodwin and other developers. His company reportedly will pay part of the cost of the station. When asked about the funding breakdown, RT spokesperson Alane Masui pointed only to board meeting documents on the agency's Web site.

"This really is a dream come true for a lot of us who've worked on this," Goodwin said.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Mayor Kevin Johnson: New arena is a "front-burner" issue

2009-09-30T04:53:15Z

Mayor Kevin Johnson brought up the possibility of a new sports arena in Sacramento at a press conference Tuesday.

Johnson announced his top-three priorities are public safety, education and economic development, the latter of which a new sports arena could positively impact.

Johnson reiterated that a new arena would be crucial not only in keeping the Kings in Sacramento, but also in terms of creating a "world-class" downtown. Currently, Arco Arena holds more than 200 spectator events each year.

"We got a wake up call with the NCAA when they said we are no longer going to hold big-time college basketball in Sacramento because [we] have an outdated arena," Johnson said.

Last week, after learning about the NCAA's decision, Johnson said he became worried that Sacramento might lose the Kings and wanted to see a new proposal for an arena at Cal Expo.

The National Basketball Association is now leading the effort to build a new arena at Cal Expo, according to a recent Sacramento Bee article. However, it has been difficult in the current economic climate to find a developer for the plan, said a Bee editorial.

Johnson, however, seems willing to change turn the conversation away from Cal Expo, still not ruling out downtown as a location for a possible arena.

"Before I was the mayor, I would have always liked to see an arena downtown; and now that I am mayor, I would still like to see an arena downtown," he said.

One possible location would be the Sacramento Railyards, one of the largest infill projects in the country, Johnson said. Though technically not downtown, the city is buying about 33 acres of the 244-acre site, enough room to fit both a planned transportation corridor as well as a new arena.

Johnson said it fits into a larger plan to revitalize Sacramento.

"Part of our overall strategy, [which includes] Westfield Plaza and the J, K and L corridors, is how we revitalize the mall, retail, offices and housing," he said.

Johnson also pointed to his time as an NBA player, which he said he doesn't talk about a whole lot.

"I lived in Phoenix when there was no arena downtown, and I was also part of a team that helped bring an arena downtown," Johnson said. "Phoenix was a ghost town, much worse than Sacramento. If you go to downtown Phoenix now, it's a whole new town because of the catalytic impact that the arena had [on] downtown. I think the year was 1993; if you look at what has transpired over the last 16 years, [it proves] that [an arena] can galvanize a downtown community."

Downtown arenas have a "multiplier effect" in boosting local economies, he added. However, Johnson said a downtown arena could just be "wishful thinking," and still has not mentioned how the project might be financed.

Maloof Sports and Entertainment was contacted for this article but declined to comment.

Agencies plan RR track mitigation

2009-09-17T01:07:56Z

Concerns about historic Southern Pacific railroad shops and other archaeological resources delayed the environmental review process for the future regional transportation center proposed for the Railyards.

A complicated review process also caused delays as federal, state and city planners worked out plans to mitigate environmental and other impacts expected from the future depot, which will connect with the historic Sacramento Valley Station.

Under the National Environmental Protection Act, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) conducted a review of the city's proposal to prevent or offset impacts to wildlife, air and water quality, historic buildings, building occupants and train passengers during construction and operation of the new depot and relocated train tracks. The environmental assessment was approved Aug. 31.

Federal agencies conducted concurrent reviews of the environmental assessment, so the process took less time than it would have in the past, according to the FHWA. The process took more than a year, compared to the average three to five years a linear review usually takes.

Still, the number of agencies involved, the lack of experience some agencies have with environmental reviews and the fact that conducting concurrent environmental reviews is a new procedure postponed a decision the city expected months ago, said Ellie Buford, the city's principal planner for the environmental review of Sacramento's intermodal facility.

"Last-minute" concerns arose over potential impacts to the built environment's historic properties, archaeological resources which are listed or eligible to be listed with the National Register of Historic Places, she said.

Those properties are the Central Shops Historic District, which dates back as far as 1868; the Sixth Street levee, built from 1852 to 1880; the Sacramento Southern Pacific Railroad Station District, built in 1925; and the Southern Pacific Railroad Depot, a national landmark now known as Sacramento Valley Station, built in 1925.

The train tracks will be moved closer to the Central Shops. The future depot will be located between the Central Shops and the Sacramento Valley Station.

The agencies involved want to make sure the four historic properties are protected, according to the FHWA. In the last stage of the review process, a document was added that spells out additional ways these resources will be protected.

According to the new document, known as the Intermodal Built Environment Treatment Plan, the city must assess the current condition of historic properties and monitor the foundation of the historic central railroad shops during construction and operation of the train tracks and depot for vibration and stability. The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) must determine the protective measures required for each phase of the intermodal project.

A detection of harmful vibrations could lead to a stop in construction and the need to use alternative construction methods, as well as reinforce the buildings, Buford said.

The worst-scenario is that vibrational impacts from driving pilings into the ground and other construction could cause the shops to fall down, said Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer Stephen Mikesell, who has been heavily involved in the environmental review on behalf of the California Office of Historic Preservation.

While that is "highly unlikely," the possibility has led to the need for monitoring, he said.

Geotechnical studies indicated that no structural damage would occur from the construction or operation of the tracks, Buford said.

The state Office of Historic Preservation signed off on the environmental assessment with full confidence, Mikesell said.

"I feel pretty good that the resources are pretty well-protected," he said. "We're confident the city is prepared to do the right thing."

The document spells out the city's right to enter the Central Shops, which are privately owned by Railyards developer Thomas Enterprises, to conduct the monitoring. That agreement had to be worked out in recognition of the public-private partnership which is simultaneously developing the Railyards and adjacent depot, which is integral to design plans for the Railyards.

In addition, the document requires the city to hire a qualified consultant to prepare historic structure reports for each of the properties, in accordance with Historic American Building Survey/Historic American Engineering Record standards.

If the finding must be registered with the Library of Congress, the FHWA must ensure the Caltrans contacts the National Park Service (NPS) to determine the documentation needed for each resource, according to the document. Then, Caltrans must get NPS approval of at least documentary photographs before any construction can begin that would impact a historic property.

Otherwise, appropriate documentation must be determined by the California State Parks Office of Historic Preservation and Caltrans. The document also requires the city to prepare archival copies of the documentation for federal or state repositories.

The Sixth Street levee is important because it represents three distinct episodes in levee construction, which document residents' struggle with decades of flooding by the American and Sacramento rivers. The levee preserves the technological responses used at the time and may contain artifacts. Settlers built the levee, one of the city's first, using anything they had. Specialists will have to go through a section of it to see if pottery or any other archaeologically valuable items were used, Buford said.

The Native American Heritage Commission told the city its Sacred Lands File contains no record of native American cultural resources in the project area. Four native Americans and a group representing native Americans didn't respond to the city's requests for information about whether the site was believed to contain artifacts or significance.

In the document, standard mitigation measures were outlined to protect the endangered Swainson’s hawk and Valley Elderberry Longhorn beetle, as well as bats and purple martins identified as species of concern, or their habitat.

Elderberry bushes provide critical habitat for the beetle. Three elderberry bushes within 20 feet of existing tracks must be moved to a nature preserve or mitigation bank to prevent disturbance from heavy construction equipment. The other bush, which is more than 20 feet from the site of the future tracks, can be fenced.

A survey will be conducted to determine if Swainson's hawks are nesting in trees during their February to September breeding season. If so, heavy construction equipment won't be used within 2,000 yards, according to Buford.

Purple martins have been nesting under a ramp from the I Street bridge. Biologists have recommended planting pine trees to offset the loss of disturbed nesting space under the ramp, erecting permanent perching wires to offset other utility wires that are coming down and other measures that would protect nesting materials and flight. Biologists also may build bird houses for the species, she said.

Biologists must update information about bats, which include the pallid and Pacific Western big-eared bats. Intermittent roosting but no nesting was observed under I-5 and the I Street ramp. Mitigation measures will be determined based on what a new study finds, she said.

Photos by David Watts Barton. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

New depot gets environmental OK

2009-09-16T02:49:20Z

Sacramento's future regional transportation center has gotten a green light to move on to its final design phase after clearing a federal environmental hurdle, months later than expected.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) on Friday confirmed the city's proposed "intermodal facility" has made it through the federal environmental review process required due to federal funding for the project. Approval was delayed due to the complicated review process and concerns about the impact on historic Southern Pacific railroad shops and other historic properties.

Federal transportation officials, along with other federal and state agency staff, have determined the new depot will not have significant impact on the environment as long as proposed mitigation measures are followed.

The FHWA signed off on the project's environmental assessment by issuing a "finding of no significant impact," or FONSI, for the first two phases of the transportation center, an expansion of the historic Sacramento Valley Station into the 244-acre Railyards development site. The FHWA actually signed off on the FONSI Aug. 31 and then notified the city of Sacramento, the lead agency on the project.

This environmental approval allows the city to submit construction authorizations for phases 1 and 2 to the California Department of Transportation by Dec. 1. Meeting that deadline ensures the project will still get $20 million in stimulus funding for the $56 million track relocation.

"It's a very important milestone for our project," said Hinda Chandler, project manager and a senior architect with the city's Department of Transportation.

Construction of Railyards infrastructure is expected to start within a month after the California Department of Housing and Community Development agreed to begin doling out $47 million in Prop. 1C money awarded in June 2008 to Railyards developer Thomas Enterprises. Following a six-week hiatus, the company will begin building the bridge at Fifth and H streets to extend Fifth Street into the Railyards.

The environmental approval allows the city to get easements and permits for utility relocation and to initiate final design work, in order to show by Dec. 1 that the city is ready to begin construction. The city had expected to get FHWA's approval on the environmental review process months ago, according to Chandler and Linda Tucker, spokesperson for the city's transportation department.

While construction had initially been anticipated for this fall, the delay put off construction for Phase 1 — track relocation — until March 2010, due to the lengthy bidding process that must now be held. Construction of Phase 2 — $30 million in expansions and improvements to the existing depot at Fifth and I streets — is expected to begin once track relocation is complete.

The expansion is expected to equip Sacramento to meet regional transportation needs for freight trains, service operators and passengers until at least 2025.

Sacramento Valley Station sits on a major national trade route called the Central Corridor, whose western junction is the high-volume Port of Oakland. The volume of imports and exports handled by the port via Sacramento has outgrown the 1925 station's current track setup, where freight and passenger trains share three tracks.

This has created a bottleneck for freight trains. As freight rail tonnage is expected to double by 2025, the situation would only get worse, and the Port of Oakland would be unable to handle growing trade.

Building tracks devoted to freight is expected to eliminate the bottleneck and enable a higher volume of freight trains to move more quickly through Sacramento, Tucker said.

In addition, Sacramento's station has not been able to keep up with the increasing number of train passengers. The station is already California's second-busiest train depot and the seventh busiest in the country, with 1.5 million train users each year and a roughly estimated 200,000 others using light rail, taxis, and local and Amtrak buses.

Cities are finding that downtown train stations are easier to access than airports outside cities. Train travel is becoming more popular after a decline that lasted 50 years, Chandler said.

Ridership is especially growing between Sacramento and the Bay Area. Expanding the transportation center to include a bigger, modern terminal and more space for trains, buses and other transportation is expected to draw up to 7.5 million users by 2025, and as many as 15 million if high-speed rail is added, Chandler said.

The station has eight Amtrak bus bays. The new regional center is expected to include 24 local bus bays and 11 for Amtrak and Greyhound buses, plus room for high-speed rail if needed.

In June, the Sacramento City Council voted against its 2007 decision to move the existing station 300 feet north, next to relocated train tracks. Councilmembers changed their minds after discovering an unnecessary station relocation would make the city ineligible to get federal funding for up to 80 percent of the project.

A California Environmental Quality Act review was conducted previously. Under the National Environmental Protection Act, an environmental review must be conducted by the lead federal agency when a project is getting federal funding. The new transportation center will get money from federal highway, transit and railroad programs through the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The FHWA and other agencies have been carefully reviewing the city’s proposal for more than a year. The other agencies include the California Department of Transportation, the state Office of Historic Preservation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the Federal Transit Administration and their state equivalents.

"It's a pretty good-sized project," said FHWA spokesperson Doug Hecox. "It's something we (took) great pains to be careful about."

The agencies worked quickly to make sure the project wouldn't lose the stimulus funding in what FRA spokesperson Warren Flatau described as "choreographed bureaucratic collaboration."

"Everyone (was) committed to doing this in record time," he said.

To expedite the project, the agencies conducted concurrent reviews — a relatively new practice. Until two or three years ago, federal environmental reviews took an average of three to five years, and sometimes up to eight, while each agency took its turn reviewing the environmental assessment document, according to the FHWA.

An environmental review for Phase 3, estimated to cost $252 million, must be done at a later date because the design for that phase is still only conceptual, Chandler said.

That phase could involve major renovation of the historic station building. Phase 3 isn't funded and may not happen for many years, said Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer Stephen Mikesell, who has been heavily involved in the environmental review on behalf of the California Office of Historic Preservation.

A combination of federal, state and local funding is being used to finance the entire project. Last year, the project was awarded another $20 million in trade corridor funds under state Proposition 1B to fund track construction that will eliminate the bottleneck.

The city expects the state to issue bonds and award that funding within six months. If the state is no longer able to provide that funding, the city is confident the funds can be found elsehwere, Tucker said.

The city applied for $6 million more for Phase 1 in August, and on Tuesday, expects to submit an application for $30 million more, mostly for Phase 2.

An engineering consultant is designing the relocation of freight and passenger tracks, which will be moved north by 300 feet at the closest point and 500 feet at the farthest. The tracks will be straightened to allow long platforms and thus, longer trains.

Tracks will no longer be shared upon completion of this project. Four passenger tracks, two passenger platforms and at least two freight tracks will be built. The new configuration should increase passenger safety while no longer requiring freight trains to slow down as much. The tracks and new, longer platforms will allow more and longer trains, Tucker said.

Relocation of the tracks should take about a year. Tracks and signals will then be tested for three to four months. The new tracks are expected to be operating by mid-2011, Chandler said.

The historic rail station became a government facility in 2006, when the city bought that and nine acres of land from Thomas Enterprises. Amtrak leased the station from Union Pacific prior to the developer's purchase of the site.

The city is in arbitration with Thomas Enterprises as the two sides try to agree on the value and price for another 24 acres that the city has an option to buy, Chandler said. Negotiations aren't holding up track relocation.

The existing station will continue to be used as the depot during construction of the first two phases. Improvements to the historic station will include restoring an entrance at Fourth and I streets, which will highlight the station's architecture and allow passengers to enter from the front.

Once the larger facility is built to the north across the tracks, the historic depot will be used as a gateway to the new depot and as one location for baggage and ticketing.

"We feel it'll be a seamless blend of old and new," Chandler said.

However, the long-term use of the existing depot hasn't been settled. That could continue to be used as part of the depot or for an unrelated purpose, Mikesell said.

Photos by Eric Whalen. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Railyards shops cleanup to start

2009-07-02T03:28:08Z

Cleanup of historic Southern Pacific railroad shops is expected to begin late this month as the next phase of the Sacramento Railyards project kicks into gear.

Hazardous materials including lead paint, asbestos, metals and other industrial toxins need to be removed from the shops, which were built starting in 1868. Georgia developer Thomas Enterprises has put the abatement project out to bid and expects to award the contract in the next few weeks, said Richard Rich, development director for the Railyards project.

In its heyday, Southern Pacific practically owned the town. The railyards drove Sacramento's economy, and nearly a third of all the city's residents worked there. The shops lay at the center of the railyards.

The Railyards project, the country's largest infill project, will not only double the size of downtown, but the mixed-use district is being designed to recapture the importance of the former railroad site. The Central Shops being redeveloped near the Sacramento Valley Rail Station depot are the key to that, Rich said.

"Right now, the depot is kind of in a forgotten corner of downtown," he said. ""That'll put enough urban fabric around the depot that it becomes the center of the city again."

On Monday, the city won $55.8 million in Proposition 1C infill redevelopment funds from the California Department of Housing and Community Development. About $30 million will go to the $6 billion Railyards project. The new funding brings the project's state public bond funding to $115-$120 million, although none of that has been received, said Thomas Enterprises Vice President Suheil Totah.

The Railyards project also won $20 million in federal stimulus money this year and another $8 million in federal funds for a freeway connection project. The city and developer are pursuing another $100 million in federal stimulus money to help fund the city's future intermodal transportation facility. Developments are expected soon on the city's bid to get National Enviromental Policy Act approval for the facility.

The city has committed funding to the project and promised to build a city parking garage there as well. Thomas Enterprises has invested $200 million in the project so far. Private investment is expected to total about $5 billion, Totah said.

Central Pacific originally established the railyards during the steam locomotive era. The company later became Southern Pacific. The 244-acre site grew to contain at least 243 buildings.

The shops and other buildings began falling into disrepair in the 1930s when the Depression brought reduced rail traffic.

About the same time, diesel locomotives began to gain favor over steam locomotives. The Sacramento Railyards had been set up to produce and repair steam locomotives. Some diesels were worked on there, but retooling the railyards for diesel proved too difficult.

In addition, Southern Pacific moved most of its maintenance work to rural areas like Roseville as Sacramento grew. The railyard shops officially closed in 1999, four years after Union Pacific bought Southern Pacific.

Seven brick shop buildings were all that remained when Thomas Enterprises bought the site for an undisclosed amount in December 2006. All seven will be preserved and rehabbed for adaptive reuse. The massive Boiler Shop and Erecting Shop will be used for the state's Railroad Technology Museum.

Thomas will rehab the other five shops. The 56,000 former Paint Shop will contain a public market selling Central Valley products including produce, cheese, wine, meat and fish — similar to San Francisco's Ferry Building — near an extended Fifth Street. Other former railyard shops will house restaurants, nightclubs and retail stores. In the center, a football field-sized plaza will be built to hold large city events, a farmers' market or small performances.

"These buildings, which will surround the public open space, will form the nucleus of the cultural district," Rich said.

Hazardous materials abatement work is the first step to rehabbing the shops. About 80 percent of the work will be to remove lead-based paint from interior brick. Ten percent will be to remove sheetrock, floor tiles and pipe insulation containing asbestos. The rest involves other contaminants including heavy metals and polychlorinated biphenyl or PCB, he said.

The "significant" cost of abatement won't be known until crews get into the work. Thomas Enterprises tested methods to remove the paint without damaging the hard, fired surface of the brick. Nothing worked, said Rich.

"That put us in a difficult position of how to do it without damaging the brick," he said.

Standards set by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior dictate that the interiors of historic buildings that were originally covered with paint must likewise be covered with paint during rehab. Workers will gently scrape as much lead paint off the walls as possible and the brick will be encapsulated with lead-free paint, he said.

Thomas Enterprises broke ground on the infrastructure phase last winter. Initial grading of Railyards Boulevard and northern portions of Fifth and Sixth streets has been done. Extending Fifth and Sixth streets into the site will help connect the railyards with downtown, said Totah, adding that more infrastructure work will start once the developer gets the state funding it's been awarded.

Building construction is expected to start next year on 5th, 7th and Camille streets. Construction may include housing, mixed-use and office.

City nabs $56m for redevelopment

2009-07-01T04:18:36Z

The city of Sacramento has won $55.8 million in Proposition 1C funds for infill redevelopment, the city announced late Tuesday.

On Monday, the California Department of Housing and Community Development approved money to help fund infrastructure for four projects: the Railyards, Township 9, Curtis Park Village and Capitol Lofts. Proposition 1C was approved by voters in November 2006.

The $6 billion Railyards project will get about $30 million, said city spokesperson Wendy Klock-Johnson.

The new funding brings the project's total public bond funding to at least $115 million.

“This is a step in the right direction for our city in terms of economic development and creation of employment opportunities in Sacramento,” Mayor Kevin Johnson said. “This is a proactive step towards Sacramento becoming a world-class city.”

Georgia developer Thomas Enterprises broke ground last winter on the infrastructure phase of its effort to transform the historic Union Pacific railyards into a mixed-use district abutting downtown's Sacramento Valley Rail Station.