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Originally Posted by ThatDarnSacramentan
It wouldn't be difficult at all, but the fact of the matter is there's no drive, no push, no will even to take these tiny old buildings and remake them into grand new buildings with fresh coats of paint and coffee shops at the base with who knows what on the second floor. Now, in my short time in this city compared to you, I've noticed that it's actually hard for developers and investors to put money into old buildings to refurbish. There are rare exceptions, though, like the Citizen and Elks Lodge. However, there are examples where old, great architecture is just left untouched by investors, like Tower Theater. Now, of course it's still there (thankfully), but Joe's has been sitting empty and burned out for, what, three, four years now? Now, naturally there's difference of opinion, but I like your idea about low-rent, high cultural value refurbishment and development. That would be great . . . in Midtown. I've seen it happen before with those lofts on 21st where Daugherty Chevy used to be. You know, it's also funny you'd mention a farmer's market. I know for a fact that there are plans being made right now to see if the farmer's market at Downtown Plaza can be moved onto Capital Mall for a few hours in the middle of the day when it wouldn't disturb traffic too much.
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Joe Marty's was fixed, but Joe opted to retire and close the business rather than reopen. Tower is currently owned by a New York theater chain who don't invest much in it--but other than Joe Marty's space, I'd hardly call the Tower vacant or underutilized. The Tower Cafe is one of the best-known and best-loved restaurants in the city!
As to "no drive" to reopen old buildings downtown, you're just plain not looking. Look at Temple Coffee and the residences above it, Parlare Euro Lounge, the Cosmopolitan (which used to be a Woolworth's), the Rite-Aid on 9th and K, the Cathedral Building (Ella restaurant and apartments, in a rebuilt old building), Ma Jong's and Cafeteria 15 on 15th and L, the Firestone complex at 16th and L, the Elliot Building (Mikuni/PF Chang's/lofts), the iLofts in Old Sacramento, the 1400 block of R Street, and the many other projects in the central city where that's EXACTLY what is going on--people reusing old buildings, with other uses (including residential) on upper floors. In some cases, these are places where the building never fell out of use, they are the handful of survivors from the era when that's how cities got built.
I mention a farmer's market because one of the K Street proposals includes, among other shiny things intended to distract those of short attention span, a farmer's market called the "Bogueria." The problem is that farmer's markets are typically held in inexpensive, low-overhead structures, or out in the open like our current farmer's markets operate. They can't pay the rent that new buildings demand. Thus, this proposal would essentially require a long-term, permanent city subsidy in order for the farmer's market to remain open in this new building. But the farmer's market could open with minimal investment, which means a low rent that can match the low overhead of a farmer's market. No subsidy required.
While I like the idea of another once-a-week farmer's market on Capitol Mall, the idea of a permanent, open 7 days a week farmer's market is valuable and worthwhile--all we need is a building that won't be too expensive. Personally, my favorite for that would be the portion of the Greyhound depot where buses currently park. It was originally built as a parking garage for the Berry Hotel. It's big, airy, inexpensive, open to the street, close to transit, and will be right next to several hundred new downtown residents if one of the other K Street proposals gets built (one of the three that don't involve demolishing the Greyhound depot.) Give it a coat of paint, scrub off the motor-oil stains, and you've got a great place for an open-air, full-time farmer's market. The Greyhound depot itself would be a great place for a medium-sized market via adaptive reuse. There is a bare patch of land behind the building that could be used for a loading area for the market, but it just as easily might be a narrow residential tower, with the Greyhound depot as its entrance. Washington DC did a similar conversion to their Streamline Moderne Greyhound depot.
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See, I've never assumed that wherever something's knocked down, give it a year, and we'll have some ugly glass box in its place. When it comes to parking, I honestly don't see why we couldn't go underground. If San Francisco can build underground parking garages, surely we can as well. Then, the parking areas along the streets in downtown could be made into wider sidewalks or even bike lanes, which I know I would appreciate. If we're gonna get developers to come back downtown instead of their usual seas of cookie cutter two story offices out in the burbs, we need to show them that there's still people here, and probably shove their noses in the fact that Midtown has a lot of people walking around, especially on Second Saturday. If they started densifying Midtown, I'd imagine that would slowly spread into downtown. For that to happen (now, I'm not really sure since my knowledge of economics comes from family in New York who didn't teach me much at best), we'd have to bring the price of land down, offer tax incentives, etc. Of course, these are just my crazy ideas because I'd really like to see Sacramento at least get denser and not necessarily taller by the time I die, which is a long time from now biologically.
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"Densifying" isn't what happens when prices go down. Lower land prices means lower land uses--surface parking, mini storage, single-family homes, strip malls. The suburbs look like the suburbs BECAUSE land is cheap--you don't need to build much that is impressive in order to recoup your investment. New York and Chicago don't look the way they do because land around the Loop or on Manhattan Island was cheap and easy to get--they were built tall because the land was expensive and valuable.
If there is abundant land in the surrounding region, and taxpayer-subsidized means for suburban expansion, there is no real reason for developers to build tall, impressive things in the central city, or to build residential housing in the central city. Only when building out becomes impractical (either because it is no longer subsidized, it has happened to such great extent that it cannot continue to function, or the region is physically out of space to practically expand) does the pressure to build higher in the city center increase.
The other limiting factor of development is transportation. Cars require a parking space wherever they go: one at home, one at the office, one at school, one at church, one at the supermarket, one at the shopping mall. Any place without a parking spot is a place cars can't go, or can only go with increased difficulty. All these parking spots add to the expense of cities, whether in the form of street parking (limited, not very expensive) or surface lots (less limited, somewhat more expensive) or parking structures (more expensive) or underground parking (very expensive, especially in cities with high water tables on floodplains like ours.) Cars don't work very well in tall, dense cities--they tend to have horrendous traffic problems, and the only way to relieve those problems is with transit and mixed use. If there are alternatives to the car, like efficient public transit, or good bike lanes, or walkable neighborhoods, the car becomes less necessary for every aspect of life and it is possible to save some money by including less parking.
I'd like to see Sacramento denser too, and I am quite sure we can double or triple the population of the central city without having to knock over a single building. We just need to make better use of what we have, remove incentives for regional sprawl, and utilize alternatives to the car.