Quote:
Originally Posted by SacUrbnPlnr
If you to talk to developers of high density urban projects in Sacramento, they will likely tell you that among the factors driving cost and affecting financial feasibility in the Sacramento market are:
1. Land costs--very high in the central city area, in particular
2. Infrastructure costs
3. Labor costs--we compete with the Bay area for construction labor
4. CEQA/Permit process--this can add one to three years to the process compared to communities in states that have few or no environmental or planning laws and little public participation
Also keep in mind that rents/lease rates/prices that can be charged in the Sacramento market are generally less than in the Bay Area, despite our high development costs. This further impacts the financial feasibilty of high density urban projects.
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Those items could describe almost any major metropolis in California. The final item though (market forces), really hinders what can be built here.
As usual, wburg uses a sweeping generality to make a point as there aren't too many nuclear waste sites in downtown SLC. If you're going to use Utah as a comparison, perhaps we should limit the discussion to large urban cores.
Accepting that, we can ask if the CEQA process has produced a greatly superior urban product in Sacramento than it has in Salt Lake City.
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