Sacramento Proposal/Approval/Construction Thread - III

[Phillip]

How does "Blue Diamond Theater" sound?

[cozmoose]

Originally Posted by urban_encounter

I'll believe it when i see it.

Still looks like a bunker, but at least we have a mayor, who wont hold 4 years worth of community workshops on the matter.

"If the project is approved by the Council, design work would start
in fall 2009 with construction beginning in 2013 and completion in 2015."

Wow...it takes 4 years to come up with a design on a partial renovation????
Only in Suckramento.

[LandofFrost]

I sort of like the Soviet-Concrete-Block style community center theatre. It’s so dated that it has almost become fashionable again. No joke. Some world class architects are building things that look just like this.

Some easy interior fixes would make it look much more modern.

1. Remove the carpet, replace with stone in lobby, on stairs.
2. Remove all the gold chrome.
3. Some people I know actually like the lights, but you could replace them
with something more elegant, crystal rods.. err many possibilities.
4. Get rid of the tinted-glass Carport overhang.


Pretty easy fixes really.

[ozone]

I sort of agree with you. Brutalism can be interesting and human but I'm pretty sure CCT is neither. I guess the interior fixes would be easy but I don't know. Does the theater itself have good sound and sight lines?

The redo screams -"Community Theater"! They could do something really interesting for not much more money. Why doesn't the city shop around -contact several qualified architects and say to them -"Design us something functional and cool for this much money." Cuz even a little bit of money in order to do a whole lot of nothing is a big waste.

Or better yet let's open up K Street between 13th and 14th to cars -that'll make the CCT work and look 10X better.

[wburg]

Opening K between 13th and 14th would require demolition of a good chunk of the Convention Center.

[ozone]

Originally Posted by wburg

Opening K between 13th and 14th would require demolition of a good chunk of the Convention Center.

I was joking.

[doriankage]

Must be a slow news week because I swear they did this story before recently!
By Tony Bizjak

Published: Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008 | Page 1A

Capitol Mall could use a makeover, city officials are saying. They're thinking … Paris.

"We can make it our own Champs-Elysées!" said an enthusiastic Sacramento City Councilman Steve Cohn.

Cohn, who's pushed the idea for years, is part of a city-sponsored group looking at enlivening what many say is a beautiful, yet oddly bland boulevard.

"It has beautiful vistas, but there's hardly anybody on it," said Cohn.

He envisions cafes and restaurants on extra-wide, tree-shaded sidewalks, clanging trolley cars and a big fountain at the west end to mirror the one in front of the state Capitol.

It would mean getting rid of those do-nothing grass medians in the middle of the street, he said.

Others are talking about a museum, new art and performance spaces, and even some stores.

In 2009, the public will be invited to offer ideas. Officials then hope to launch an international design competition, inviting architects to create visions of what Capitol Mall could become.

"We have one crack at this," said John Packowski, a downtown architect championing the idea. He calls it a grand public arts project. "People's jaws should drop when they drive onto it for the first time."

For now, however, the scheme is really more of a dream – and may draw smirks from downtown denizens accustomed to hearing big talk but seeing little action.

Indeed, neither the city nor state have money to spare, and may not for some time. And property owners along Capitol Mall will think twice before committing private money to what could be a $10 million-plus face-lift.

Meanwhile, the city has other front-burner issues.

Nearby K Street Mall maintains its status as downtown's fix-it priority. It's due for its own $4 million face-lift, starting this spring, but needs plenty more work to bring stores and housing back to several nearly barren blocks.

And the city continues its seemingly slow-motion chug to build a new train station, add streets and pave the way for development in the downtown railyard.

"We are making certain not to lose our focus there," Assistant City Manager John Dangberg said.

But Dangberg and others believe the time is good to think about what Capitol Mall could become.

New Mayor Kevin Johnson may throw his weight behind the effort.

Johnson aides said the mayor is interested in making the mall a "destination point," and a model of a style of street where pedestrians, bicycles and public transit get equal time with cars.

The boulevard has long been an underachiever.

Once, known as Capitol Avenue, it was a seedy but busy neighborhood. Former Sacramento Mayor Jimmie Yee, whose father ran a grocery store at Fourth and Capitol, fondly remembers the pre-redevelopment days of the 1960s.

"It was what I call a skid row," he said, "but it was a whole community. Redevelopment came in and took whole blocks at a time."

Today, it's stately. It allows for the undisturbed views of the Capitol that state officials demanded. But, said Yee, it's boring.

On weekdays, its street life is minimal. At night and on weekends, it's even quieter. Several parcels remain empty, and the minimalist architecture of some state buildings is uninspiring.

Yet Capitol Mall shares some notable qualities with Paris' famous boulevard.

It is broad, possibly the widest street in Sacramento. It's the elite address for big downtown lobbyists and law firms. Capitol Mall holds an estimated 20,000 offices.

Both are iconic: The Tour de France ends annually on the Champs-Elysées; this year's Tour of California starts on Capitol Mall.

And both are bookended by elegance.

To Capitol Mall's west stands the stout but stylish Tower Bridge, the historic front portal to Sacramento. Nearby, Crocker Museum is undergoing expansion.

To the east, the state Capitol shows its best side, fronted by a fountain somewhat more modest than the one in the Place de la Concorde at the base of the Champs-Elysées.

Councilman Cohn, architect Packowski and others say they don't exactly want to mimic the big Paris boulevard. After all, it has a McDonald's fast-food restaurant plunked down in the middle.

"It's the people, the romance, the street life we want," Packowski said.

There's a whiff of it already on the mall, he said, at the elegant Il Fornaio restaurant and the new Morton's restaurant with outdoor seating.

City officials are talking privately with a developer for a project near Crocker Park – think "families and children," Dangberg said – that could help spotlight the mall's possibilities.

State officials support redevelopment of Capitol Mall, but with a caveat:

"As long as the view of the Capitol is not obstructed in any way," state spokeswoman Liz Gransee said.

Jane Thomson, president of Sacramento's Alliance Francaise culture and language center, offered her own hurrah this week.

"Vive les espaces publiques!" she said.

[wburg]

hm. Actually the street is still known as Capitol Avenue (Capitol Mall is located on Capitol Avenue, just as the K Street Mall is located on K Street) and in the pre-redevelopment era it was known as M Street. The "Capitol Avenue" name was still pretty new in the 1950s when they started tearing out the old neighborhood.

[BrianSac]

Originally Posted by doriankage

Must be a slow news week because I swear they did this story before recently!
By Tony Bizjak

Published: Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008 | Page 1A

Capitol Mall could use a makeover, city officials are saying. They're thinking … Paris.

"We can make it our own Champs-Elysées!" said an enthusiastic Sacramento City Councilman Steve Cohn.

Cohn, who's pushed the idea for years, is part of a city-sponsored group looking at enlivening what many say is a beautiful, yet oddly bland boulevard.

"It has beautiful vistas, but there's hardly anybody on it," said Cohn.

He envisions cafes and restaurants on extra-wide, tree-shaded sidewalks, clanging trolley cars and a big fountain at the west end to mirror the one in front of the state Capitol.

It would mean getting rid of those do-nothing grass medians in the middle of the street, he said.

The boulevard has long been an underachiever.

Once, known as Capitol Avenue, it was a seedy but busy neighborhood.
Yet Capitol Mall shares some notable qualities with Paris' famous boulevard.

It is broad, possibly the widest street in Sacramento. It's the elite address for big downtown lobbyists and law firms. Capitol Mall holds an estimated 20,000 offices.

Both are iconic: The Tour de France ends annually on the Champs-Elysées; this year's Tour of California starts on Capitol Mall.

And both are bookended by elegance.

To the east, the state Capitol shows its best side, fronted by a fountain somewhat more modest than the one in the Place de la Concorde at the base of the Champs-Elysées.

"It's the people, the romance, the street life we want," Packowski said.

There's a whiff of it already on the mall, he said, at the elegant Il Fornaio restaurant and the new Morton's restaurant with outdoor seating.

"Vive les espaces publiques!" she said.

Comparing it to les Champs-Elysées.....what a joke, ....Capitol Mall n’est rien moins que les Champs-elysées. Mais, c'est possible, pense grand!

Do they realize the Place de la concorde is where over 1,100 people have been guillotined including Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. Maybe we should start cracking some heads in front of the capital building.

[travis bickle]

Originally Posted by BrianSac

Comparing it to les Champs-Elysées.....what a joke, ....Capitol Mall n’est rien moins que les Champs-elysées. Mais, c'est possible, pense grand!

Do they realize the Place de la concorde is where over 1,100 people have been guillotined including Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. Maybe we should start cracking some heads in front of the capital building.

Hmmm... having a little trouble with the translation Brian, but I think you're saying that if we think big, it is possible to make CM a local version of the famous French Blvd. Or maybe you're saying we should think bigger than that and do something completely different... I'm not sure, my French isn't what it used to be... But I think Council-member Cohn was trying to use imagery that everyone could grasp immediately, hence the Champs-Elysées reference. He could have said "I want to make CM a vibrant street with lots of activity" I suppose, but that doesn't exactly have the same punch.

CM was designed at a time when planners were far more concerned with their colored pens and how pretty things looks on a site plan instead of how things actually lived. That's why you see so many wide, grassy medians on important roads from that era. They look cool on a site plan, but they inevitably are nothing more than green wastelands: sterile, barren and completely unused by people. You still see some examples of this on projects today (I had to remove one at the entrance to a project of mine a few years ago), but more planners are starting to realize how useless they are and that includes much of the present planning staff at the City.

Personally, I commend Council-member Cohn's efforts to make CM a thriving, livable street. Were we to end-up with a West Coast version of the Champs-Elysées, I could live with that.

As far as what happened at the Place de la Concorde? Well, most of that happened well over 200 years ago. Might be time to get over it. But I completely agree that we should start cracking some heads in front of the Capitol, we could start with the legislature and the sooner the better.

Vive la Capitol Mall!

[BrianSac]

travis, it makes me chuckle when people compare Sac with Paris based on trees and the capitol mall.

You were correct with your translation.
Capitol Mall n’est rien moins que les Champs-elysées. Mais, c'est possible, pense grand! (Capitol Mall is anything but the Champs-elysées, but, it's possible, think big!)

Capitol ave lost its neighborhood, as did the area known as the place de la concorde. But history lives, where the guillotine used to stand, now stands a 3,300 yr old egyptian obelisk given to the French in 1832, and before the guillotine, a statue of King Louis stood when the Place de la Concorde was called Place de la Réveloution. The area known as the Place de la Concorde evolved so shall Capitol Mall.

[daverave]

Originally Posted by travis bickle

CM was designed at a time when planners were far more concerned with their colored pens and how pretty things looks on a site plan instead of how things actually lived. That's why you see so many wide, grassy medians on important roads from that era. They look cool on a site plan, but they inevitably are nothing more than green wastelands: sterile, barren and completely unused by people. You still see some examples of this on projects today (I had to remove one at the entrance to a project of mine a few years ago), but more planners are starting to realize how useless they are and that includes much of the present planning staff at the City.

I didn't realize that planners had outgrown their colored pens. Many a plan that looks 🞵🞵🞵🞵 on a sheet of paper never translates to the real world because people never get that pretty view from the ground!

The McKinley Village project proposed for the old Centrage site will be featuring a grassy median down the middle of the major street there so I guess Peter Calthorpe still has his colored pens. They are referencing the T Street median as a model. Of course the MV median will be a hundred meters or so from Business 80 so it may not be as nice a place to hang out.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by daverave

I didn't realize that planners had outgrown their colored pens. Many a plan that looks 🞵🞵🞵🞵 on a sheet of paper never translates to the real world because people never get that pretty view from the ground!

The McKinley Village project proposed for the old Centrage site will be featuring a grassy median down the middle of the major street there so I guess Peter Calthorpe still has his colored pens. They are referencing the T Street median as a model. Of course the MV median will be a hundred meters or so from Business 80 so it may not be as nice a place to hang out.

Planners don't need colored pens now, they have 3-D rendering software that can stick 3-D rendered photorealistic people into a public plaza that nobody will use in the real world.

In the defense of grassy medians, people actually do use the grassy medians along T Street in Elmhurst, and T Street is also within a hundred meters of a busy highway (Hwy 50.) There are some differences, though: T Street's grassy median in Elmhurst was originally intended as a streetcar line, but for some reason (that I'd love to find out) the tracks and overhead were never built. It is also tree-lined, and the adjacent streets are one lane wide with a 25 MPH speed limit and frequent stop signs. The streets are also residential, with windows facing the street, so people feel safer because there are eyes on the medians.

So, on T Street, a grassy median works: a lot of people live there, the median is visible, it's comfortable because of the trees, and auto traffic is relatively light. People use them for picnics, kids' parties, yard sales, and neighborhood gatherings.

For similar reasons, the grassy and landscaped medians in Boulevard Park are also used. They are narrower, but the street trees and median landscaping provide shade. Folks in the neighborhood sometimes use the median for community gatherings and yard sales, although they're a bit narrow for much recreation--the Elmhurst ones are wider.

A big grassy median on a place like Capitol Avenue, with 2-3 lanes of traffic, surrounded by offices, and with no shade trees, is a whole different story. Nobody is going to set up a bounce house there.

As to whether it will work at McKinley Village: That depends on how well they can block freeway noise/appearance, the maximum speed limit on the adjacent street, how much shade they can put on the median (although there are few substitutes for oaks, elms and a few decades) and how much housing directly faces the street.

The Railyards also has a grassy-median plan, the Boxcar Parks--but they're planning it for the middle of a neighborhood of mid-rise residential buildings, with one lane of traffic on either side of the median, with plans for lots of trees on the grassy areas. That's the way to do it, really, as long as they keep the speed limit at 30 MPH or less.

[Dakotasteve66]

About 4 or 5 years ago I attended a large wine tasting street fair on Capitol Ave. The street was closed to traffic, tents with different vendors were set up in the median, and the street is where people walked between venues. It was very well attended, great views of the Capitol and Tower Bridge. I'm really surprised more events have not been attempted in this same way on Capitol Ave.

[daverave]

Originally Posted by wburg

Planners don't need colored pens now, they have 3-D rendering software that can stick 3-D rendered photorealistic people into a public plaza that nobody will use in the real world.

In the defense of grassy medians, people actually do use the grassy medians along T Street in Elmhurst, and T Street is also within a hundred meters of a busy highway (Hwy 50.)
As to whether it will work at McKinley Village: That depends on how well they can block freeway noise/appearance, the maximum speed limit on the adjacent street, how much shade they can put on the median (although there are few substitutes for oaks, elms and a few decades) and how much housing directly faces the street.

There's still a lot of stock put into pretty 2-D plans.
While I would contend that it is quite a bit more than 100 meters from Hwy 50 to the Elmhurst median, as you know the significant difference is that Hwy 50 is well below the natural grade there which greatly reduces noise impacts. Houses in McKancer Village will all face the median and the traffic on either side will be single lane so that's all good but like you said it will be decades before there is significant shade. And the noise will be overbearing.

Fortunately the houses will be available in three styles, Spanish Mediterranean, Craftsman Bungalow and European Cottage. Something a whole lot edgier and modern would be more appropriate for that site, IMHO, with less emphasis on SFR.

[innov8]

Bob Shallit: Crystal ball for '08 mostly on the mark
By Bob Shallit
Published: Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008 | Page 1B

Nobody could have predicted the economic calamity that hit the region and country this year.

Nobody.

Still, our crystal ball wasn't too far off the mark in projecting winners, losers and big changes in the local business community.

Here's a look at our predictions from last December. The good, bad and ugly.

Starting with the accurate ones, we suggested that banks would take back at least 12,000 homes in Sacramento County (the actual total was more than 18,000); that Greyhound would finally announce plans to leave downtown (it did so in May and moves to Richards Boulevard next year); and that the region's office vacancy rate would rise at least 1 percent or more (it actually went up 2.5 percent, to 19 percent).

We were prophetic, too, in saying tiny D&S Development of Sacramento would continue its star role in the economy by building more residential condo units (including a building almost completed at 14th and R streets) and that the California Highway Patrol would secure new headquarter digs (though the agency ended up going to the Richards Boulevard area, not West Sac, as we expected).

We were prescient about a December opening for the Citizen Hotel downtown – and about the place immediately setting a new standard for local lodging.

We were on target also with the prediction that the renovation of Downtown Plaza would finally be scheduled (work on the multimillion-dollar face-lift begins next month), and that traffic would slow at Sac International Airport after a decade of rapid growth. (The failures of ExpressJet and Aloha Airlines played heavily into the year's estimated 7 percent decline in passenger volume).

Now to the bad.

We struck out entirely with the prediction that CalPERS and CIM Group would deliver a development proposal for the empty block at Third and Capitol Mall and that Sacramento's berry queen, Shari Fitzpatrick, would land an appearance on Oprah Winfrey's TV show. (Getting a public endorsement from rocker Ted Nugent isn't quite the same thing).

We were wrong in predicting that Folsom-based startup SynapSense Corp. would register $30 million in sales. (But the company did well and may hit that mark next year.)

Pride Industries had a fine year, growing revenues 10 percent to a projected $160 million. But that's short of the $200 million we envisioned.

Contrary to our predictions, no development proposals emerged for the west end of K Street (despite the settlement of the dispute between Moe Mohanna and the city).

The United Kingdom-based Fresh & Easy grocery chain discovered a recession is here and delayed its move into Northern California, even while locking down more future store sites in the region. Another miss.

How about the ugly? Try this one on for size. We predicted at least one local company would test the public markets with a stock offering.

Hah! There were no local IPOs in a year when public markets collapsed. Indeed, there were fewer than 50 initial public stock offerings nationally – down from 272 in 2007.

And given the market's uncertainties, next year will probably be worse.

Our grade?

A solid "B," we figure. Good enough to try this again for 2009.

Check out our business and economic forecast here on Thursday.

http://www.sacbee.com/shallit/story/1505445.html

[snfenoc]

Nobody could have predicted the economic calamity that hit the region and country this year.

Nobody.

Uh, I beg to differ.


Sincerely,

Peter Schiff

Cosigned,

Ron Paul

[brandon12]

Originally Posted by snfenoc

Uh, I beg to differ.


Sincerely,

Peter Schiff

Cosigned,

Ron Paul

I felt compelled to log in after basically a two-year hiatus to say "bravo snfenoc, bravo"

When I read Shallit's words, I thought the EXACT same thing.

ok, bye again...

[snfenoc]

^
Don't be a stranger. I was wondering if you were still alive. Best wishes.

[innov8]

Originally Posted by brandon12

I felt compelled to log in after basically a two-year hiatus to say "bravo snfenoc, bravo"

When I read Shallit's words, I thought the EXACT same thing.

ok, bye again...

Ahhh... Brandon, it hasn’t been that long. Wasn’t it in February you announced running for a city council seat?

Happy New Year buddy