Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
The Capitol View Protection Act was a law passed by the state of California, not the city of Sacramento.
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The Capitol View Protection Act is a State law but before it was a state law
the city council placed height restrictions a couple years in advanced, it was
lobbied by the City Council, Mayor Anne Rudin and others in the city to
become a State law shortly after. Source, SacBee Feb. 28 1991.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
I was a teenager living a few hundred miles away at the time, but folks I know who were there talk about the "Battle of R Street" a bit differently. The conflict was between two competing visions, the developer vision of building another row of sterile office buildings that would go dead at 5 PM on R Street, or a mixed-use neighborhood where the old industrial buildings would be used for housing and businesses and art spaces, with new neighborhood buildings to fill in the gaps where older industrial buildings had been leveled already. These weren't planned as downtown residential towers, as the developers were the same folks eagerly building suburbs in South Natomas and Rancho Cordova. These R Street highrises were planned as pure office development, with the people who worked in those offices driving out to the suburbs every night. If the developers had won, R Street might have some more beige office buildings, but they'd go as dead after office hours as the rest of the office buildings north of R Street and Capitol Mall. And who thinks Capitol Mall and the O Street office building district between 7th-12th is a rousing success of urban vitality?
25 years later, the city of Sacramento and local developers are all quite eager to take credit for the success of the R Street corridor, with the success of projects like SoCap Lofts, WAL, 2500 R, Perfection Bakery, and forthcoming projects at Ice Blocks, B&G Building and more on the way. And in many ways, it is a younger and more creative generation of developers and architects who can take much of the credit for a lot of the new development that their predecessors thought was a waste of money--and some of those architects were leaders of the groups opposing the office buildings! But it was really the plan and vision of those activists back in 1988, who were calling for a return to downtown living, neighborhood commerical and entertainment, mixed use neighborhoods, independence from the automobile, and all the stuff ULI and AIA crow about today, a quarter-century late to the party, but eager to say it was their idea all along.
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Where do you get this stuff wburg? Much of what you said is purely made up
about the R Street towers proposals between I-5 and 8th streets… all of
which are still surface parking and two warehouses today. The California
Capitol Center had four towers on two blocks between 3rd & 5th from 29 to
39 floors. The project included a 1.5 million sf office, 400 room hotel and
4,300 to 7,500 nearby housing units. My source for this info is the The
SacBee Oct. 19, 1988. The true reason activates focused on this project is
explained by this June 29, 1989 SacBee story called “Offices would cast tall
shadow”. Two other proposals for R Street were the River Tower at Q & 2nd
was to be 460ft 34 story tower with 20 apartments on the top two floors.
The site for River Tower today is still surface parking lot and warehouse, just
like it was back then. The 8th high-rise proposal was the Golden State
Tower on the corner of 7th & 8th on Q Street 32 floors. This site today is
also still a surface parking lot and Tom’s Automotive. As I have
demonstrated, this was not “pure office development” as you claimed, very
much the opposite. Much of what you’re talking about accruing 25 years
later has happen on R Street is from 10th street on up while the above
proposals would have filled mostly surface parking lots the State created
back in the 50’s and 60’s by clearing neighborhood for future state office development.
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