Uneasy Rhetoric

The Sacramento Executive reprints a 2004 story by Andrea Lapore, envisioning a revitalized downtown and calling for a Gehry-esque arena complex to anchor a new Downtown Sacramento. She is right to point out that a revitalized Downtown is essential to reversing Sacramento’s every increasing sprawl. However, her vision of what a revitalized downtown will be leaves much to be desired.

Lapore starts by playing the Wal-Mart card. Remember when a Wal-Mart threatened Downtown? She asks us to imagine a Sacramento with a Wal-Mart, a “Sacramento without Taylor’s or Nugget Markets, East Sac Hardware, any of the new boutiques popping up in Midtown, Pucci’s Pharmacy, or Raley’s and Bel Air.”

What does she propose instead? Lapore envisions a downtown with Bloomingdales, Roy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue. Instead of Wal-Mart bringing in its low-income riff-raff, we’ll have high-priced chains (okay, I’ll say it: bringing in their high-income riff-raff). Where are the local businesses, like the ones she thinks a Wal-Mart-ized downtown will displace? Displaced anyway.

Look at the current debate over the future of Joe Sun, a local business, threatened by desperately needed development. I want that part of K Street revitalized, I’ve said before that I think rebuilding is the only way that will happen, and I think the city is right to do something to force Joe Sun’s hand. However, I’d also like to see the City and the developer make some real concessions (not offering them a spot out by the trash cans, so to speak) to one of Downtown’s oldest businesses.

In addition to Bloomingdales, Lapore thinks a sports and entertainment complex is vital to Downtown. She says, “the only way that picture will be painted is with a downtown arena and entertainment district.” I disagree with two words: “only” and “and.”

There are any number of ways downtown could be revitalized with or without an arena, and while I will agree that a non-sports oriented entertainment district would be helpful, I don’t think that’s required either.

Take Portland, for example (because I know the city, and Lapore already took it). The Rose Garden Arena complex is hardly the kind of “revitalization” we want. Coupled with the nearby convention center, it does bring lots of business to Portland, but it isn’t exactly somewhere you’d want to be caught after dark. There isn’t much to do (except maybe go to the nearby Lloyd Center mall, hoooray), and there’s not much to see. People going to games and events can take light rail, which is a good thing, but after the games they get right back on the train and go home. Or they go back to their hotel rooms, of which there are many.

How do I think Downtown Sacramento should be revitalized? For one thing, we have to get past this idea of Downtown as a “destination.” Destinations imply commuting. That just means people from outside drive Downtown and then drive back out again. That has been Sacramento’s mistake all along. The Westfield Mall was supposed to be a “destination.” But with Arden Fair, Sunrise, Roseville, etc., closer to the suburbanites, why would they come to Westfield to visit the same stores? Answer: they don’t, which is why Westfield is in a never-ending search for tenants.

A revitalized Downtown that also addresses Lapore’s concerns with sprawl will hinge on one thing: housing. Get enough people living downtown, and give them the amenities to stay downtown — everything from movie theaters to restaurants to grocery stores and pharmacies to schools — and Downtown will revitalize.

Fortunately, the amount of available housing in downtown Sacramento is ballooning. Unfortunately, that housing is all of a type: higher-income condo/loft-living. You can’t address sprawl until you address the market that creates sprawl, and a big portion of that market is middle-income families with children. That means housing units need to be bigger and cheaper than the typical high-rise condo. You’ll never be able to have downtown housing that can compete on a per-square foot cost basis with some of the cloned housing out in the ‘burbs, but with the right combination of amenities, you might be able to compete on quality of life.

I have to admit, part of Lapore’s vision is appealing:

Close your eyes and picture a beautiful, smooth, steel structure facing east and an amphitheater stretching out over acres of grass facing west. The arena would be capable of hosting a minimum of 160 events per year, while the outdoor pavilion would create additional opportunities for world-class music festivals ala South By Southwest in Austin or Bumbershoot in Seattle, as well as live theater and dance performances.

But it isn’t the only way. Lapore talks on and on about the money a new arena would bring in, but money is only part of what makes a revitalization. The other is community, and without that, you ain’t got nothing.