Sacramento Proposal/Approval/Construction Thread - III

[wburg]

Originally Posted by Mr. Ozo

It should be noted that the State did manage to build one site on R street. Between 15th and 16th, Q and S is a state complex. It does inject some employment into the area, but like most State buildings it is devoid of street life.

There were clearly planning on demoing the ICE Blocks site for more State buildings. I believe this complex being built is what promoted the current R street plan to preserve the industrial character. .

The State didn't build that building, it was built by the Benvenuti family. It's called Benvenuti Plaza, and it is leased to the state.

The Crystal Ice plant was owned by AKT, who wanted to build tall office buildings on the site. Here's what the developer had to say about the idea of housing in his vision for the Crystal Ice property:

Originally Posted by The Sacramento Bee - January 28, 1996

Tsakopoulos was able to get a special City Council exemption for his proposal to build two office buildings at 16th and R streets, winning the right to have the project evaluated before an overall plan for the area is established.

He insists that office development - not housing - belongs next to light rail stops. Housing should be at least a few blocks away, he said, and he has proposed providing a site for housing on land he owns on L Street.

"Because of its location on the light rail stop," Tsakopoulos said, "it would be a crime to put housing on that property. The whole idea of light rail is to bring people into downtown for their jobs. The housing can be two or three blocks away. We are basing our policy on sound planning procedures."

The current Ice Blocks plan, restoring the Crystal Ice plant with a half-block of new midrise housing and a half-block of office/retail, is the end result of that shift in focus by the city from office blocks that went dead at 5 PM to a mixed-use urban neighborhood, brought on by a bunch of community activists whose ideas about urban planning and development were a couple of decades ahead of the local builder community. Thankfully, today a new generation of developers has caught on, and are turning those visions into a reality--instead of a reality of R Street as boring office-tower canyon that empties out at 5 PM like its neighboring office zones to the north. Instead, people call R Street "the new Midtown"--the neighborhood that was revitalized by, guess who, that same bunch of community activists!

[innov8]

Originally Posted by wburg

Where do you get this stuff? Between I-5 and 8th Street, in addition to the surface parking and two warehouses, there's a block of office buildings at 3rd and R, two blocks of CalPERS office buildings between 3rd and 5th, another couple of office buildings between 4th and 6th, SoCap Lofts between 6th and 7th. The offices that did get built along the R Street corridor are about as "vibrant" as the rest of Capitol Mall, but the stuff that's drawing lots of attention today is focused farther east

And I notice your line is drawn in the sand at 8th Street...wonder why you don't bother mentioning anything east of that point, which (again, as I was told) was where a lot of the focus of R Street was, between 8th and 16th and points east--and where the bulk of the projects I mentioned, recent and forthcoming, are located.

Well, as I said, I wasn't there at the time, nor was I interested in the subject back then, so I don't have the direct experience of older folks like you, most of what I know is what I have heard from much older activists who were involved in the effort. So, I should perform my due diligence and take a look at the Bee archives to see if what I was told reconciles what you're saying here.

Okay, so the project didn't actually include any housing--it was assumed that it would create the need for nearby housing units, but no housing was planned for the project itself. That has been the downtown developer party line for a long time--if they just build enough office buildings, someone will get around to building lots of residential units nearby, at some indeterminate future point. If it's happening somewhere else and the developer building the offices isn't building the housing, it's not part of the project. So, this puts your claim that the project was to include 4300-7500 "nearby" housing units squarely into the "making stuff up" category.

As to this River Tower, well, I stand corrected. A two-story apartment building on top of a 32 story office building. So, not 100% office. Just, oh, 94% office. 20 apartments, 400 or so feet off the ground. I suppose it fits the 1980s idea of keeping the wealthy people as far as possible from the dangerous lumpenproletariat of the streets, but that little housing in such a big project wouldn't exactly do much to liven up the pedestrian experience.

My original conversation with Majin had to do with projects killed by activist,
my examples were the eight towers on R Street, thanks for tossing in
another example on 16th. I never saw any real plans submitted to the city
for proposals above 10th street in the 1980’s… lots of talk but no real action
was taken to submit an application like the proposals I referenced. You had
to go into the mid 90”s back up your assertion.

The conditions for building California Capitol Center + housing had to do with
the high-rise portion subsidizing the new housing to make it “Affordable.”
Land prices back then on the R Street corridor were $30 to $50 per square
foot which was already too high for most residential developers at that time.
If it was profitable and in demand, multiple developers would have been
scrambling to build housing… but they weren’t, even with the real estate
market booming. Therefore, with subsidies paid from the high-rise portion,
housing would be built over several years just like the high-rises portion
of the proposal. Now 27 years later, absolutely nothing has changed from I-5
to 10th street, lots and lots of surface parking lots.

It’s hilarious that the River Tower does not meet your housing criteria for
urban living. Do you feel the same way about the Marriot Residence Inn on
15th Street with 30 condos on the top two floors or the soon to be
completed Downtown Plaza Tower with 69 condos on the top 4 floors?
Are these also filled with same kind of people who are “wealthy people as far
as possible from the dangerous lumpenproletariat of the streets.” The River
Tower was trying something never done in Sacramento (mixed-use
high-rise) and if they would have had a chance to build and succeeded,
more mixed-use towers most likely would have risen. At the time, there
were no similar products in that market so this was a big risk to the
developer. Even as recently as 2001 the failed Metro Place had 114
apartment planned for the top 10 floors of the 31 story tower? Instead the
city had to wait till 2005 and the Marriot Residence Inn mid-rise to finally
succeed in doing the same thing but with a midrise. Housing 30 floors above
the street or one floor above the street is all the same in the end, an
increase in the urban population who tend to spend their money there too.
If you object to mixed-use high-rises but not mixed-use midrise, what does
that say about you?

[Majin]

Finally someone else besides me calling wburg out. I'm enjoying this

[wburg]

"Now 27 years later, absolutely nothing has changed from I-5
to 10th street, lots and lots of surface parking lots" is a false statement. It's simply not true. I'm pretty sure you have been to downtown Sacramento in the past 27 years, how could you make this kind of assertion without knowing it's a lie?

I wasn't in a position to support or object to that particular mixed-use highrise--all I said was that I wasn't particularly impressed by it as an example, especially after your false claims about the other project's nonexistent residential component. Metro Place at 8th & K would have been better at 31 stories, given its location. There are plenty of good places for mixed-use highrises. That doesn't mean that everywhere is a good place for mixed-use highrises, and part of why projects don't get built is because of artificially inflated land prices brought on by speculator-driven market booms. It makes money for real estate guys selling the same block of land over and over to assorted suckers, while whatever buildings are on the land continue to decay or remain underutilized (or remain parking lots) for decades. But the areas that were rezoned to the new R Street plan are looking very different--which bolsters the argument that, perhaps, there are appropriate places for mid-rise mixed use buildings and high-rise mixed use buildings, but not necessarily in the same place, or in every place? It's called having standards--not NIMBY, not YIMBY, but QUIMBY--quality in my backyard. But, of course, the Sacramento pro-development party line is "Anyone who ever opposes any project for any reason is treated as someone who opposes every project for no reason." Using the same logic I could accuse you of wanting to see R Street's parking lots remain parking lots if what is built upon them is anything other than high-rises (such as the buildings that were built on R Street lots in the past 27 years, which you seem to have trouble acknowledging.)

The 1996 quote from AKT is symbolic of developer attitude along that corridor, and was in response to Mr. Ozo's comment about Benvenuti Plaza and AKT's plan for the Crystal Ice property--which, despite the enormous eight year gap between them (I lived in Sacramento by then, but didn't pay any attention to real estate development), seems based on the same sort of "we're building offices here, residential belongs somewhere else" mindset that was portrayed in the 1988 development proposals. Except for those two floors of apartments, of course.

As to my opinion of the Marriott's upstairs condos, they're nice, and certainly better than no housing component in the building. As to the "Downtown Plaza Tower," that started out with 69 housing units, then when approved it was cut down to 50 housing units, and when it was rebranded "Downtown Commons" or "DoCo Sacramento" last week, the number was "up to" 50 units. That sort of "housing shrinkage" seems commonplace--many segments of the local building community talks a good game about building downtown housing but tend to fall short when it comes to actually building it. Kind of like the "bait & switch" game AKT pulls when building new suburbs--he promises a new private university in return for approval of a new suburb, then once he gets his approval the university drops out of the project. But when he proposes another suburb, there's that university again. It's kind of like the "Peanuts" strip where Lucy promises not to yank away the football.

But back to midrise housing. I like midrise housing, but most of the support for contemporary midrise comes from local developers--they're the ones telling me that the Sacramento market doesn't currently support the economics for high-rise construction, which is why so many of the proposals moving forward (and actually getting built) are midrise. Now, a midrise building that adds 50-100 new units seems preferable to a high-rise office building with 20 units in terms of actually adding population to the central city, especially if the high-rise never actually gets built because the economics didn't work, or if the residential component gets value-engineered out once the project is entitled and it ends up purely office.

[snfenoc]

My question is:
How much did the resistance to high rise development back in the late 80s and early 90s contribute to the 20-25 year gap in development we have seen on R Street? If it was a major contributor, then those people who put up the resistance should be tarred and feathered. I don't care how the nice the Ice Blocks will be IF it ever gets completed. I'd much rather have the high rises that were proposed; and I think it is safe to say those towers would have spurred housing growth in the downtown-midtown area. Those idiot activists may have sentenced Sacramento to 25 years of parking lots, Buzz boxes and underutilized warehouses. They, along with those who defend them, their children, their children's children, and their children's children's children should be forced to work in labor camps.

It's possible that a couple decades ago high rises were cheap enough to build and could have been successful in Sacramento's market had it not been for the silliness of know-it-all historians and anti-business activists. HOWEVER, I just don't believe it. As far as I know, these proposals were nothing more than pie in the sky ideas. They would have never gotten off the ground. Maybe I am wrong about that? On a scale of I-5 deck to The Towers on Crapitol Mall, how close were these proposals to being realized? I mean, really?

[innov8]

Wburg: I’ll admit your right, CalPERS did expand their foot print onto R Steer in 2005
adding two more blocks to their sprawling campus.

And I guess I understand what your saying, high-rises are only good if a midrise is not
an option, but midrise are preferred because they are more appropriate as defined by
you… just like some mixed use midrise buildings are preferred versus high-rise mixed
use. Right?

Reading your posts is like a flood the zone offence, spewing loads of questionable
information with an anti-high-rise slant.

BTW, the 80’s were the strongest decade for private office construction starts in
downtown Sacramento. The Wells Fargo Center and 1201 K Street began construction
in early 1990, so that straddles somewhere in between, so it’s very likely even half of
the proposals could have risen if the city had not imposed the building moratorium in
addition to Capitol View Protection. If you toss in State built towers too, it’s an
impressive construction period. The 90’s had the most State and Federal high-rise built.

89’ Renaissance Tower 28 floors
91’ US Bank Plaza 26 floors
84’ West America Bank Bldg. 18 floors
84’ 770 L Street 14 floors
83’ 925 L Street 13 floors
87’ 915 L Street 13 floors
88’ Hyatt Regency 15 floors

[wburg]

Spare the tar and feathers, snefnoc. If a handful of activists and a young architect can derail a development, the proposal probably wasn't held together with much more than baling wire and string.

As innov8 points out above, we built plenty of office high-rises during the 1980s. But somehow the associated high-rise residential construction that the developers expected to appear nearby never got built. Rows of office buildings of various sizes on J, K, L, Capitol, N, O, P and Q Street, all going dead at 5 PM when the 75,000 or so workforce head home, primarily by automobile to distant suburbs. Was adding one more street of office towers the magic "tipping point" that would have caused residential high-rises to spring up out of the ground like Jack's beanstalk? Unlikely. Despite the passionate insistence of some here, not everywhere is the right place for high-rises. You already know what drives whether or not a high-rise is the right answer, snefnoc: The market. Many here are convinced that when the government zones a piece of land for high-rises, or rather when a developer convinces the government to zone a piece of land for high-rises, the building should just automatically appear, and if it doesn't show up, it's because of deadly NIMBY radiation produced by people living nearby, which is why they think those people should be gotten rid of in order to Move The City Forward. But yes, you and I know, it's the market, not the magic of zoning, that matters most in this regard.

[snfenoc]

Originally Posted by wburg

Spare the tar and feathers, snefnoc. If a handful of activists and a young architect can derail a development, the proposal probably wasn't held together with much more than baling wire and string.

As innov8 points out above, we built plenty of office high-rises during the 1980s. But somehow the associated high-rise residential construction that the developers expected to appear nearby never got built. Rows of office buildings of various sizes on J, K, L, Capitol, N, O, P and Q Street, all going dead at 5 PM when the 75,000 or so workforce head home, primarily by automobile to distant suburbs. Was adding one more street of office towers the magic "tipping point" that would have caused residential high-rises to spring up out of the ground like Jack's beanstalk? Unlikely. Despite the passionate insistence of some here, not everywhere is the right place for high-rises. You already know what drives whether or not a high-rise is the right answer, snefnoc: The market. Many here are convinced that when the government zones a piece of land for high-rises, or rather when a developer convinces the government to zone a piece of land for high-rises, the building should just automatically appear, and if it doesn't show up, it's because of deadly NIMBY radiation produced by people living nearby, which is why they think those people should be gotten rid of in order to Move The City Forward. But yes, you and I know, it's the market, not the magic of zoning, that matters most in this regard.

This.

I think we disagree in one sense: I do see an opportunity for more office space to spur more residential. I'm thinking there are two paths:

1) The addition of new business with new workers who want to live in the city: Of course, simply constructing a new office high rise does not mean increased demand for housing in the central city. However, a company could relocate to downtown Sac, need more office space and its workers demand more housing in the city. Unfortunately, I don't ever recall this happening Years back, when Lot A "needed" a high rise built on it, the city owned the property and offered it for $1 to any company that would relocate its headquarters to Sacramento and build a tower on the site. There were no takers.

2) The conversion of old office space to residential: It seems like most new office buildings simply cannibalize tenants from older buildings. Of course, if the city allowed for the conversion of existing office into residential, that might be a good thing. As someone who lives in DTLA, I can tell you, it has been a godsend.

Regardless, don't worry about me, wburg, I'm thoughtful enough to have invested my money in whiskey and hookers...instead of tar and feathers. I agree with you. Decades ago, those activists may have been annoying and their lack of respect for property rights may have been nearly treasonous, but they didn't kill a damn thing. They were, and have been, merely an excuse for developers who fail to deliver. The sad thing is this: the whole lot, developers and activists, hold Sacramento back. You gotta learn to crawl before you can walk. We don't need developers with pie in the sky proposals that won't succeed in the market, but we don't need activists, who take the blame when those proposals fail, either. If people can say, "Had it not been for Nutbag McGee waving his cane at the city council and complaining about evil towers menacing the Crapitol dome, we'd look like New York City right now," they aren't focusing on the real problem...ridiculous expectations.

[wburg]

Another factor to keep in mind is that 1988 also brought Sacramento another architectural edifice of great significance: Arco Arena, our first major-league professional sports facility. It was built by a developer as a trade of sorts--he'd build the city its first arena if the land around it was opened up for residential development. This former (?) floodplain was very close to downtown, thus allowing proximity to central city office jobs but the low prices and low densities of a farther-off suburb. End result: In 20 years from 1990 to 2010, the North Natomas floodplain population goes from 0 to 50,000. The central city's population goes from 32,000 to 30,000. Development pressure is like air in a balloon: without sufficient pressure, the balloon doesn't inflate. New suburban growth is like poking holes in the balloon. Even if there's pressure going in, it goes out the holes. So instead of downtown residential skyscrapers, we got North Natomas landscrapers. I'm not worried about being the target of blame for developers' failures; if they want to attribute their loss as an activist victory, they are free to do so.

The activists showing up at City Hall weren't just there to oppose the developers' vision, they were there to promote and support their own vision, one eventually adopted by the City Council. It has taken a while, long enough for the Natomas basin to fill in with houses, and, in many ways, aided by its recent building moratorium. Not sure when the last time you strolled down R Street, snefnoc, but today there's a lot more than just Fox & Goose. New housing, new retail, new office tenants, new buildings and new rehabs of old buildings, alongside some remaining industrial uses that help give R Street a unique character unlike anything else in the city, but is also uniquely Sacramento. The businesses opening up are overwhelmingly local, and range from shoemakers to a mid-sized music venue that draws acts that previously skipped Sacramento for Bay Area venues. Innov8's contention that absolutely nothing whatsoever has happened on R Street since 1988 is simple denial of reality--you can walk there today and see the difference in activity in the built environment. It's a work in progress to be certain, but it's happening as we speak. The balloon is filling, and will continue doing so, as long as some idiot doesn't go poking more holes in it.

Huge home project is coming back to life in north Natomas

Earlier this month, the city got an application for refinements on the Greenbriar project, which would be southwest of the intersection of Highway 99 and Elkhorn Boulevard. The application requests revisions on larger residential lots, designated park spaces and multifamily parcels in Greenbriar. Originally an AKT project proposed in the 2000s, the project sold to Southern California-based Integral Communities four years ago.

Dagnabbit Angelo, put down that pin!

[innov8]

Originally Posted by wburg

Innov8's contention that absolutely nothing whatsoever has happened on R Street since 1988 is simple denial of reality--you can walk there today and see the difference in activity in the built environment. It's a work in progress to be certain, but it's happening as we speak. The balloon is filling, and will continue doing so, as long as some idiot doesn't go poking more holes in it.

Boy, you sure know how spin and overlook a statement… is this how you
always operate? I did agree that CalPERS expanded there footprint but other
than that, between 10th & 1-5 on R Street, it’s the same as it’s been since
the 8 towers were proposed. Yeah, and win for the city, right? 10th St. and
beyond has changed and improved, that is something I never denied.
Get with it wburg.

Originally Posted by innov8

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.

[wburg]

I operate based on facts. CalPERS isn't the only change to the R Street corridor since 1988, but apparently you consider anything less than a skyscraper to equal nothing.

Just to name a few things: In 1988, the Thomson-Diggs warehouse was vacant, now it's an office building. There was a new office building and parking structure built on the two half-blocks between 4th and 6th in 1989, but the office building boom of the late 80s/early 90s turned into the office glut of the mid 90s. The SoCap Lofts between 6th and 7th provide more housing than that 34-story skyscraper, but the residents have ground floor entrances so they are part of the street life of the neighborhood. SoCap is a partial return on CalPERS' promise to build housing on R Street, although they still have to make good on the rest of that promise--the lawn (now xeriscaped) spaces on the R Street side of the building were supposed to have midrise housing built on top but they haven't made good on those yet.

There are other reuses on the R Street corridor, which stretches from Q to S Street, including some very interesting spaces--the old paint store on 6th and Q was converted to the office of architects Nacht & Lewis by Mike Heller, who is now working on the Ice Blocks. An old "buzz box" at 7th and S is now the Verge Gallery, a huge complex of artist studios, education and exhibit space that also puts on some cutting-edge events. Just a block away is Beatnik Studios, another art/event space. And I hear that Sacramento Bag Company on Q Street has also become artist/fabricator space.

Farther down S Street at 9th, Beers Books moved into another Buzz-box from its old location at L and 15th, providing another critical creative use--used bookstores, like theaters and art galleries, are the kind of creative use that generally can't afford the high rents of new construction. These unlovely old buildings are creative epicenters, feeders of the arts community, as other buildings on R Street have served since the 1980s, like the R Street Collective and the Stucco Factory. They don't do much for the portfolios of real estate moguls or earn fat commissions for commercial property brokers, but they're invaluable aspects of the creative arts economy, which needs all the spaces it can get in Sacramento in order to foster more artists, entertainment, intellectual life and culture. There are other commercial customers--Crossfit gyms, T-shirt printers, a typography company. And, of course, some of these buildings are still industrial buildings or office spaces. Some would call them "underutilized," others would just call them utilized. What's wrong with useful buildings just because they're old or not tall enough to induce vertigo?

Just west of 10th Street CFY Development, who recently completed the WAL, bought a brick furniture warehouse that was originally a 1920s tire warehouse, and in the interim an art gallery run by the family that later started Fox & Goose across the street. I have a feeling that something interesting and creative will be happening on that block in the near future. So I have hope for R Street west of 10th, even if you're still brooding over skyscrapers that didn't get built during a short-lived office boom that happened when we were teenagers.

[BillSimmons]

You operate based on a lot of things, but facts are generally not one of them.

Unless of course those "facts" happen to fit the narrative of whatever — you happen to be slinging on that particular day.

[wburg]

Do you find any information I have presented above inaccurate, BillSimmons? If so, please let me know what I failed to accurately convey.

[ThatDarnSacramentan]

Not to distract or otherwise take away from this Airing of the Grievances here (that I partially started), but does anyone know what the hell they're doing on Capital Mall and Tower Bridge right now?

[enigma99a]

Originally Posted by ThatDarnSacramentan

Not to distract or otherwise take away from this Airing of the Grievances here (that I partially started), but does anyone know what the hell they're doing on Capital Mall and Tower Bridge right now?

Google Farm to Fork festival Tower Bridge

[wburg]

Exactly. The much-ballyhooed Tower Bridge dinner was the finishing event, I think. Quite a crowd. For all its flaws, Capitol Mall is very handy for festivals. There was even a "Talk Like a Pirate Day" festival happening on the West Sacramento side of the waterfront at the same time. Rode over the I Street bridge on the way back, it certainly would make a nice "High Line Park" type environment once the new bridge from West Sac to the Railyards is done.

[ThatDarnSacramentan]

I knew about the festival. I meant the cranes, road dividers, ripped up grass and concrete. Are they trying to build a new overpass from Old Sac, repaving, what?

[Pistola916]

Originally Posted by ThatDarnSacramentan

I knew about the festival. I meant the cranes, road dividers, ripped up grass and concrete. Are they trying to build a new overpass from Old Sac, repaving, what?

That's right. They are building a new entrance into Old Sac, adding bike lanes and wider sidewalks on capitol mall.

http://portal.cityofsacramento.org/RiverFrontReconnect

[wburg]

Ah, that's right--noticed crews working and part of the bridge blocked off when I rode over it Saturday morning. This is the first phase (2nd Street to Capitol), there will also be another I-5 bridge on N Street. Will be interesting to see how that moves people around, but there still has to be something going on between Embassy Suites and the Auto Museum on Front Street to give people a reason to use those bridges. The 2nd Street access will aid pedestrians and bike access instead of having to loop around the garage.

[innov8]

I get it, wburgs version of improving a stretch of road is reuse and more reuse… I think
that all he dreams about? I really had to laugh when he talked about a 34 story high-rise,
implying how anybody living in one would have to use a different entrance other than the
ground floor? Notice how he also needed to include Q & S streets to validate claim
this is such a great area? Take a stroll via Google street view everyone, it’s still
depressing and has been since the State bulldozed blocks and blocks in the 50’s and 60’s.