Rhonda, the issue is called journalistic integrity.

For riders taking advantage of the "intermodal" nature of the Intermodal, this plan changes nothing. Get off one mode and immediately on to an adjacent mode. Waiting areas, ticketing, baggage, passenger rail, light rail, inter and intracity busses, taxis, bicycle...maybe even streetcars...all converge in one nexus. A careful review of the plans (admittedly hard to do but they are accessible on-line) will reveal that thoughtful people have considered how to make this facility one of the best nationally. Could it be better? Yes, and will improve as the plan matures through constructive input.

Two million people a year attend events at Arco. They (the public) find benefit (value) or they would not pay to go. It's OK that folks profit from that...from the otherwise unemployed parking attendant to the County Assessor. Some profit more than others. That's OK too. What's not ok in my opinion is for an emergent city like Sacramento to endure marginal quality by accepting the easy fix. Arco is a cheap, dysfunctional, unprofitable, tattered shed on a suburban floodplain. What's worse, what's much worse, is that it putting a hundred million dollars into it now would enshrine the unsustainable and discredited notion that the suburban model is ok. The world economy will stick a fork in oil and the urban model will return. Its happening now. And right now, this generation of Sacramentans is about to take a giant step toward that mature city by building an icon of culture, art, entertainment and sport...downtown. It's happening Mr. B. I can hear you snorting and you can wave your clever words at the tide, but it is happening. So the question is what are you going to do? Are you going to sing from the sidelines, heard as you may be by those that read comments, or are you going to use your considerable artistic sensibilities to raise the bar on the PRODUCT and the CONTENT? Five years from now this center will stand as testament to the talents of this City today. Truly, I hope yours are visible.

I'd like to respond to two themes that cycle on the event center issue. First is "we have to watch the public till". Agreed. Not agreed though is that city staff or the electeds are incapable of watching it, or are seduced by the wolfman of the private sector ,or are puppets of developers. Those are trite cartoons of an equation that includes the almost universal desire on the Citys' part to improve this place we live. Critics will dismiss this with reference to a bad apple here or there, but overwhelmingly, the people who work in public service have the public's best interest at heart. The fact you may disagree with an adopted action does not make them incompetent or substantiate accusations of malfeasence. It means you disagree. The second issue is the ball-and-chain "we should not be doing (fill in the blank) because people are hungry/homeless/poor...". People have always been hungry/homeless/poor...and given the bell curve of humans, probably always will be. And even if people are not poor here in Sacramento at a moment, they are in the rural south, or the Sudan, or...yet humanity advances in spite of misfortune. So, do we hold off doing aspirational things? I think most people would say that even though some are poor, as a society, we should do inspirational things. Some may even say that difficult times are when we should do them the most. FDR thought so. So, to the question of a downtown event center. Is that an inspirational thing? If you see it only as a home for the NBA...probably not. If instead you see it as a public event center for big urban events then maybe, yes. Is Sacramento worthy of an icon? Absolutely. Is it ready for one? That remains to be seen.

While great news, polishing this jewel will highlight what a turd the 1000 block of J is. The rock band particing upstairs notwithstanding, its pure, unmitigated blight. Where's guerilla art when you need it?