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The land-use map shows the concepts that will drive zoning in Sacramento for the next 20-25 years. The central city features a lot of different land uses in close proximity, including housing that is quite dense compared to suburban neighborhoods on the outer perimeters, aside from some high-density "opportunity areas" like Folsom & 65th Street and Swanston.
That DOES look good.
What is that 'employment center midrise' in dark purple seemingly along a major road. Is that like office building...or is that more like wal-mart type places and such?
There is still way too much suburban low density on that map. And why is there only 3 urban center high density areas? I know South Sacramento and Arden are blacked out but both of those areas definitely need a urban center high density area. Also the entire Stockton Blvd corridor should be at least urban center low density. That plan needs a serious overhaul.
What is that 'employment center midrise' in dark purple seemingly along a major road. Is that like office building...or is that more like wal-mart type places and such?
Which one? The dark blue "employment center midrise" to the right, along Folsom near Power Inn, is currently a short string of industrial buildings, some mid-rise office, and a Home Depot/Office Depot. Behind there are some existing industrial businesses; they are still industrial by right, but if they ever go out of business the land use will revert to commercial or even residential use.
The "employment center midrise" along Interstate 5 is several things: there is a giant wal-mart type place "lifestyle center" (so many big-box stores with huge parking lots that you literally can't walk from one end to the other) along part of it, a reasonably high office building on part of it (with pretty much zero transit access so it also has a huge parking lot) and a bunch of low/mid-rise office campus type buildings (the sort of thing you see in the south bay.) There are still some open fields along that corridor (much of the area north of Interstate 80 was farmland until a decade ago, until the levees were re-certified...and recently de-certified, resulting in a building moratorium.) I think the big red stretch is the current Arco Arena site; eventually that may become a new "downtown" of sorts for Natomas...and hopefully light rail will run out that far before it gets built out, or it will never get dense enough to deserve that land designation.
majin: South Sacramento and Arden-Arcade aren't within the Sacramento city limits, so the city of Sacramento has no land use authority over them. If we ever annex them, they will be made part of the maps and assigned projected densities.
And yeah, a lot of the maps don't reflect what is actually on the ground. There are blocks in Land Park, East Sacramento and Curtis Park that are far denser than 8 units/acre, but the neighborhoods there had enough pull to get them down-zoned. One side effect of that is that those neighborhoods will get less dense; if an apartment building is demolished there, they have to get a special permit to re-construct apartments of the same density because the area is zoned for single-family homes.
The "traditional neighborhood medium" is part of a compromise designed to protect existing historic homes while still allowing high-density apartments to maintain their by-right status; the idea is to incentivize maintaining or rebuilding apartments in the central city while making the demolition of single-family homes less appealing. Some neighborhood activists spent a lot of time working with city staff on this; they were kind of amazed that we actually wanted to live in neighborhoods that had both apartments and single-family homes and neighborhood serving businesses, unlike outer neighborhoods that wanted the apartments (and their less-affluent inhabitants) and retail uses gone. It makes the central city map a bit more complex, but that's deliberate: one of the defining features of Sacramento's old city is its eclectic nature.
Zoning allows cities to direct growth where they think it is most needed and most justified. The current plan calls for selected growth areas, both downtown and in a couple of outer "satellite" areas, allowing for pockets of density amid less-dense suburban areas. Because we do still have cheap gas, I don't think we are ever going to return to a heavily transit/foot based 19th century city model, or even an expensive-gas European city model; a multi-nodal postmodern city, on the order of Los Angeles or Chicago or San Francisco, with one major node and several regional semi-independent sub-nodes, seems more likely, with transit linking nodes and cars wandering out into the nonlinear suburbs.
The reason I disagree with wburg's conclusions is that I think his arguments are based upon false premises.
He argues that the high density of rental units in the area means that the area is ungentrifiable. But if newer wealthier renters are displacing older poorer renters, the neighborhod gentrifies. More than 60% of the housing stock in the city of SF are rental units, yet few areas of the country have gentrified more than the city of SF. Rent control was introduced and then strengthened several times in SF because the existing renters were afraid they would be gentrified out of the city by ever increasing rents. The primary reason SF has failed to further densify and has less people today than during the 1950's is an alliance between rent control activists who fear the destruction of rent controlled units and neighbor housing associations dominated by local land owners like the Telegraph Hill Dwellers association, who fear new housing in their area might increase the supply of housing and lower property values.
If you look at the data midtown clearly is gentrifying. There was a time when midtown looked a lot like North Sac or Oak Park. There were similiar income levels, lots of minority members, street prostitution and lots of people below the poverty line. If you look at the census data in 1980, all of these areas were pretty comparable.
That is no longer the case today. The most recent census figures show than in the 95816 zipcode , only 12.7% of individuals are living below the poverty line. Why most of those remaing poor people can continue to live there is that they are living in various publicly subsidized housing programs. But the poor who didn't manage to live in publicly subsidized housing have been forced out of the neighborhood by higher rents. This is also why midtown has become so white. Most of poor minority folks have been priced out of the neighborhood. Compare that with Oak Park (95817) where 31.4% of the population still lives below the poverty line or North Sacramento (95815) where 32.9% still lives below the poverty line.
Why midtown can gentrify and not yet face much organized resistance is that as the wealthier and middle class flee older suburban ares like South Natomas for newer suburbs like Folsom or central city locations like midtown it creates semi abandoned neighborhoods for the poor to be displaced into. Sprawl currently is mitigating some of the adverse effects of the gentrification and densification in midtown and downtown. But if you were somehow to actually successfully stop sprawl in the region, I am sure there would be an organized resistance to new development and probably some movement toward rent control. People would prefer to not be gentrified out of their neighborhood and really hate to be gentrified out of the entire community.
While the overall region doesn't have enough funds to use redevelopment funds to successfully subsidize densification throughout the region or even throughout the city, midtown and downtown are comparatively small areas. Midtown is just 2.6 sq miles and the entire downtown grid is just over 6 sq miles. Compare that to the 99 sq miles in the city overall. Theses areas are close enough to powerful interests in city hall to capture a lot of the redevelopment funds to make it work in those locations and small enough where that funding has a big impact on those neighborhoods. It has primarily been in midtown and downtown where developers were able to get subsidies to not just to build low income housing, but to get subsidies to build well above market housing like lofts. The neighborhood has also been really effective in getting subsidies for quality of life prizes like to building new supermarkets well before the more ethnically diverse and poorer North Sacramento.
If every neighborhood and community in this region had access to the levels of redevelopment funds and government aid, then we could densify this enire region without increasing the gas tax. But I doubt that is likely or realistic.
Going forward are these regions going to continue to be able to capture so much redevelopment of the redevelopment funds? Kevin Johnson was elected in a coalition of wealthy business interests who wanted less regulation at city hall as well as minority members who assumed an African American was more likely to shift redevelopment funds to poorer minority neighborhoods like Meadowview, and Del Paso Heights. Up until now he hasn't been able to get much done in part because of budget problems but also just really low levels of professional competitence.
A more adroit politician from that coalition in a better budget climate probably could get something done for those neighborhoods, but downtown developers are probably always going to be over-represented at city hall.
As for densification, I think their are two real questions. The first is what do you mean by dense urban living and second how much and where do you think growth will follow the long term plan? Right now midtown has 6574 people per mile. A community built to that level of density would be a little less dense than Glendale which has 6700 people per mile. Compare that with say Berkeley at 9823 per mile or SF at 17,323 a mile.
If Glendale is your idea of dense urban living, then wburg is right and no one will need to scrape any part of midtown. But if your notion of dense urban living is something closer to Berkeley or San Fransico, I think you are going to need to scape some stuff to attain those levels of density.
But the second issue is will the plan be followed? The reason I am skeptical is that in the past we have failed to follow the plan. The plan itself creates perverse incentives to undercut it.
If development had followed past plans, there would still be rice fields in the flood plains of Natomas and we would have a lot of high rises along the K. Street Mall.
According to the plan, Natomas was never supposed to be developed. The area provides a vast natural floodplain for waters to spill onto whenever there were really high waters on either the Sacramento or American Rivers. Before the Europeans came, there was a huge seasonal lake in the middle of Natomas. The reason the current airport is located where it is was the idea that no sane planner would ever permit growth in this floodplain, so there should be no conflicts between expanding air operations at the airport and complaints of people living below the flight path of the planes. On paper its a brilliant plan, so why are their approved plans for 60,000 homes in Natomas in this floodplain?
In the mid 80's people wanted professional sports in this area, but no one wanted to raise taxes to buy a team or pay for a stadium. A developer solved this impass by agreeing to buy and build an arena if the city would rezone a bunch of agricultural land that he had bought options on.
In this area, plans are regularly undercut in this fashion. Placer County agreed to permitt housing in an area that would supposed to be open space in exchange for a developer agreeing to provide seed money to attract a private university to the region.
this type of stuff is going to keep happening.
When a plan says land is off limits to new development, that means the land is cheap to aquire and the creates strong incentives for developers to buy it and come up with some reason to rezone it to a more intensive land use.
A big reason Angelo Tsakapolis is a billionare today is that he is really good at these rezoning land in exchange for him giving the community something taxpayers want but don't want to raise their taxes to pay for. Given most politicians in the region need funds from developers to pay for their campaign
Along the K Street Mall you have the opposite problem. There land is already zoned to permit high density offices. As a result the price of land is very expensive to aquire. Developers are reluctant to buy and build a high rise there because most of the increase in land values from building highrises have already been captured by the existing land owners. Once the land is zoned for high density uses, there is little incentive to actually build something with high density on that land. As a result K street has been mostly empty for the past 20 years.
If high density growth happens in midtown I think its likely going to occur in the areas were its not actually permitted under the plan because those are the areas were its most profitable for a developer to do so.
The reason, I have little confidence in the general plan is that past plans generally haven't been followed. We have had a long list of neighborhoods that were supposed to be smart growth communities like Laguna West and Natomas. Both neighborhoods were sold as newer versions of East Sac or McKinley Park. But after the regions get built out, they are viewed as more urban sprawl.
Always you have the same problems. The plans themselves create huge economic incentives for developers to undercut them. This is why I don't think these highly detailed plans are worth the paper they are written on.
Wburg argues the reason homes in midtown are expensive not because of their locations (their land value) but because they are older homes loaded with character. The reason I disagree with him is because its quite possible to find homes of a similiar age and style in neighborhoods like North Sac, Oak Park, Freeport and Iselton and none of these older homes are selling for anywhere near what similiar homes are selling for in Midtown. Most of these homes aren't even selling for replacement value. These houses are nice, but the value is captured in the land.
Overall, why I don't think there will be further increases in density absent large subsidies or dramatic increases in the gas tax is that there are huge incentives to sprawl.
In 1980, Roseville was mostly a blue collar railroad town filled with biker bars. Because it was a small county, it was easy for developers to throw a lot of weight around. People in that area didn't fear new growth because they had to little to lose from it and it offered the prospect of very improved fortunes for the community if nothing else from the construction jobs it would create.
In this region for sprawl to happen, you just need to tempt the people in charge of the most desperate city or county. My hunch is the next area to really sprawl will be Sutter county. The place is small and poor and with the unemployment rate above 18%, wburgs argument that new growth should be concentrated in existing regions is going to carry no water. I am not sure if it will happen along 65 from out of Roseville or off the 99 corridor, but I think its going to happen there. I could easily see another Natomas sized instant suburb along either freeway.
Already you have people willing to commuting in from Yuba City to take advantage of cheaper housing prices there.
With gas prices as cheap as they are today, building out there is incredibly lucrative to do and it becomes progressively more lucrative as housing prices rise in Sacramento County.
As for densification, I think their are two real questions. The first is what do you mean by dense urban living and second how much and where do you think growth will follow the long term plan? Right now midtown has 6574 people per mile. A community built to that level of density would be a little less dense than Glendale which has 6700 people per mile. Compare that with say Berkeley at 9823 per mile or SF at 17,323 a mile.
Based on the 2030 general plan, the number of housing units in the central city will roughly double. That would mean density of about 10,000-13,000 per mile: somewhere between Berkeley and San Francisco. Where will they go? In the aforementioned areas: the Railyards, the Docks, the R Street corridor, the CBD, and infill sites in the central city. I also expect to see more use of alleys and conversion of current retail/office space into residential units (some of them were converted from residential to office when everyone was moving to the suburbs.)
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More than 60% of the housing stock in the city of SF are rental units, yet few areas of the country have gentrified more than the city of SF.
More than 90% of housing in the central city is multi-unit. Almost all of that is rental housing.
I won't argue that midtown Sacramento has improved--having lived here since the early 1990s, I have been witness to dramatic changes (back then, it did in fact look a lot like Oak Park is now, a fact I have pointed out here before.) But what we have seen is not the complete gentrification of a neighborhood, at best it is something more gradual. Yes, there are a lot more well-off people in the central city than 20 years ago, and rents are higher. But there are still a lot of people in the central city who aren't wealthy, and while for-sale housing can be out of reach for many, there is still a lot of attainable rental housing. It's not quite the same as gentrification--it's BETTER than that. We clean up the houses, chase out the drug dealers, but don't turn the place into an exclusively wealthy enclave.
I'm going to question your ZIP code checking. Only the eastern 25% of the central city is in the 95816 ZIP code; most of 95816 is East Sacramento, a very different place from Midtown. Take a look at the 95814 ZIP code, which covers the western two-thirds of the central city. 95816 is 78% white, 15% Latino, 4% Asian, 4% Black. 95814 is 61% white, 19% Latino, 9% Asian, 12% Black. Now, that's a little whiter than Sacramento as a whole (49%) but hardly a lily-white outlier. 95818 includes the central city's southern edge (south of U Street), the Broadway corridor, and northern Land Park/Curtis Park, and is 17% Asian. (Note: There was recently a 95811 ZIP code added, split from 95814, but stats were not available on the website cited above.)
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Going forward are these regions going to continue to be able to capture so much redevelopment of the redevelopment funds? Kevin Johnson was elected in a coalition of wealthy business interests who wanted less regulation at city hall as well as minority members who assumed an African American was more likely to shift redevelopment funds to poorer minority neighborhoods like Meadowview, and Del Paso Heights. Up until now he hasn't been able to get much done in part because of budget problems but also just really low levels of professional competitence.
A more adroit politician from that coalition in a better budget climate probably could get something done for those neighborhoods, but downtown developers are probably always going to be over-represented at city hall.
Okay, no argument whatsoever there.
It was my grumpiness over the influence of developers in the central city, not fears about "densification," that prompted my rather bitter-sounding post about the future of Sacramento on July 18. Basically, if the city follows its own rules, they can build tall skyscrapers downtown, cool industrial lofts in the brownfield areas, and maintain the beautiful and popular central city residential neighborhoods with a little infill. But instead they seem dead-set on letting downtown rot, bulldozing the central city residential neighborhoods, and demolishing buildings in the brownfields that would make great lofts.
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Along the K Street Mall you have the opposite problem. There land is already zoned to permit high density offices. As a result the price of land is very expensive to aquire. Developers are reluctant to buy and build a high rise there because most of the increase in land values from building highrises have already been captured by the existing land owners. Once the land is zoned for high density uses, there is little incentive to actually build something with high density on that land. As a result K street has been mostly empty for the past 20 years.
If high density growth happens in midtown I think its likely going to occur in the areas were its not actually permitted under the plan because those are the areas were its most profitable for a developer to do so.
Once again, I have no argument with your reasoning, other than I find it infuriating that land zoned for skyscrapers is the hardest place to build a skyscraper, and land zoned for medium-density residential neighborhoods is the easiest place to build high-density projects. It seems to defeat the whole purpose of land use planning. In fact, it seems to defeat any sort of logic or reasoning, other than to the "if it makes money, it makes sense" crowd.
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Wburg argues the reason homes in midtown are expensive not because of their locations (their land value) but because they are older homes loaded with character. The reason I disagree with him is because its quite possible to find homes of a similiar age and style in neighborhoods like North Sac, Oak Park, Freeport and Iselton and none of these older homes are selling for anywhere near what similiar homes are selling for in Midtown. Most of these homes aren't even selling for replacement value. These houses are nice, but the value is captured in the land.
Part of the value of the building is the location, because of its proximity to the central business district, but significant portion of the value is in the historic value of the building itself. But part of that value is also tied into location: many neighborhoods in the central city are located in designated historic districts. Buildings in historic districts tend to retain their value more than buildings not in historic districts, because design review rules tend to ensure that these districts maintain greater integrity as a neighborhood.
In the 1970s and 1980s, they were cheaper because they generally needed a lot of repair, and the neighborhood was less desirable. By the early 1990s they demanded a premium price. Today, restored historic homes in historic neighborhoods command a price comparable to much larger homes on larger lots in other neighborhoods, and sell faster than new properties in the central city. Even condo units built in restored brick buildings sell fast--while faux-condo "loft" buildings linger on the marketplace.
Historic buildings in Oak Park cost less than those in Midtown for several reasons: they are not yet part of a historic district, they are often in severe disrepair, and the neighborhood around them is generally not as safe or as desirable as those in Midtown. Proximity to the central city is a comparatively minor factor. I have a strong feeling that in 10-20 years, Oak Park historic homes will command much higher prices, as the housing stock is repaired, historic districts are designated (one hopes) and the musicians and students moving into Oak Park become homeowners. But even now, a particularly nice Oak Park Craftsman bungalow or Neoclassic row house will fetch a better price than a 1950s stucco ranch house in the same neighborhood.
Also, because the central city neighborhoods are older than Oak Park or other outlying neighborhoods, the historic housing stock is comparatively older and rarer, and often includes larger and more elaborate examples. There are cute little 1920s bungalows in North Sac, and a few cute little 1890s Queen Annes in Oak Park, but no elaborate Italianates or mansard-roofed Second Empire mansions (admittedly, there are only about six left in Midtown, half of which are state property, so they are definitely a premium item!)
(I have to say I am enjoying this exchange, kim racer: I admit I am kind of a starry-eyed idealist, and you strike me as more of a pragmatist. I do appreciate talking about this stuff with someone who obviously has the knowledge to back it up.)
Based on the 2030 general plan, the number of housing units in the central city will roughly double. That would mean density of about 10,000-13,000 per mile: somewhere between Berkeley and San Francisco. Where will they go? In the aforementioned areas: the Railyards, the Docks, the R Street corridor, the CBD, and infill sites in the central city. I also expect to see more use of alleys and conversion of current retail/office space into residential units (some of them were converted from residential to office when everyone was moving to the suburbs.)
For reasons I will go into below I don't think the plan is likely to be followed. I think there will be some infill in the railyards, but given the fact that the first and so far only tenant that I am aware of being signed to the project is a big box sportings goods retailer, I even have my doubts about that project.
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Originally Posted by wburg
More than 90% of housing in the central city is multi-unit. Almost all of that is rental housing.
I won't argue that midtown Sacramento has improved--having lived here since the early 1990s, I have been witness to dramatic changes (back then, it did in fact look a lot like Oak Park is now, a fact I have pointed out here before.) But what we have seen is not the complete gentrification of a neighborhood, at best it is something more gradual. Yes, there are a lot more well-off people in the central city than 20 years ago, and rents are higher. But there are still a lot of people in the central city who aren't wealthy, and while for-sale housing can be out of reach for many, there is still a lot of attainable rental housing. It's not quite the same as gentrification--it's BETTER than that. We clean up the houses, chase out the drug dealers, but don't turn the place into an exclusively wealthy enclave.
I'm going to question your ZIP code checking. Only the eastern 25% of the central city is in the 95816 ZIP code; most of 95816 is East Sacramento, a very different place from Midtown. Take a look at the 95814 ZIP code, which covers the western two-thirds of the central city. 95816 is 78% white, 15% Latino, 4% Asian, 4% Black. 95814 is 61% white, 19% Latino, 9% Asian, 12% Black. Now, that's a little whiter than Sacramento as a whole (49%) but hardly a lily-white outlier. 95818 includes the central city's southern edge (south of U Street), the Broadway corridor, and northern Land Park/Curtis Park, and is 17% Asian. (Note: There was recently a 95811 ZIP code added, split from 95814, but stats were not available on the website cited above.)
When you say the neighborhood has improved, the issue is improved for whom? If you used to live there and no longer can afford to live there, the neighborhood hasn't improved for you. That is the crux of the issue with gentrification. People like gentrification when it brings in more people into a neighborhood like them, but strongly dislike it when it prices them out of their homes and the community they used to be a part of. If you look at the number of people living below poverty clearly that number has been falling. The neighborhood is gentrifying.
But gentrification is ongoing process which densification tends to accelerate. The reason so much of coastal California has height restrictions going back to the seventies is that when this new construction would come in to these neighborhood, it would bring in much wealthier people to the neighborhood and that would in turn raise rents not just in the new buildings but also in the existing housing stock. That in turn was pricing the existing residents out of the neighborhood. This is why these height restriction referendums were passing with 60 to 70% margins. This is especially true in neighborhoods that were majority renters because they felt they had nothing to gain from fast rising rents or property values. This is also why rent control and growth control measures were so popular in a lot of these communities.
As an abstraction, you might thing further densification is a positive social good because it makes better transit use possible and reduces carbon footprints. But if it also may price you or a lot of your neighbors out of a neighborhood you really like would you still favor it? Would the community still favor it?
One of the big reasons that I am skeptical whether the density in the current plans will actually happen is that any neighborhood in this region unique enough to economically support further densification is also probably a neighborhood unique enough where the existing residents aren't going to want to get priced out of it.
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Originally Posted by wburg
Okay, no argument whatsoever there.
It was my grumpiness over the influence of developers in the central city, not fears about "densification," that prompted my rather bitter-sounding post about the future of Sacramento on July 18. Basically, if the city follows its own rules, they can build tall skyscrapers downtown, cool industrial lofts in the brownfield areas, and maintain the beautiful and popular central city residential neighborhoods with a little infill. But instead they seem dead-set on letting downtown rot, bulldozing the central city residential neighborhoods, and demolishing buildings in the brownfields that would make great lofts.
Once again, I have no argument with your reasoning, other than I find it infuriating that land zoned for skyscrapers is the hardest place to build a skyscraper, and land zoned for medium-density residential neighborhoods is the easiest place to build high-density projects. It seems to defeat the whole purpose of land use planning. In fact, it seems to defeat any sort of logic or reasoning, other than to the "if it makes money, it makes sense" crowd.
I think its important to think about which situations did planning work and in which situations did planning fail and why that occurred.
In this area Davis did a really good job of making that town incredibly well suited for bicycling. No city in America has a higher percentage of people riding their bikes to work than Davis. The city spent some time thinking about how and where people like to ride bicycles. They tried to cover their region with as many bike lanes as possible. But they also realised that people don't like to riding bikes on streets with traffic moving faster than about 30 miles an hour. So on any street with traffic moving faster than that, they made sure there were parallel routes with slower moving traffic and they set up a lot of underpasses or overpasses on the streets where traffic was moving faster than 30 miles an hour. Lastly they tried to build out the community with as few fast moving streets as necessary. They also set up a greenbelt around and through the city where they put a class 1 bike trail.
Why wasn't that plan subverted by developers? When so many plans in Sacramento have been?
The big reason is I think the Davis plan succeeded is that plan didn't propose anything that was inconsistent with economic interests of the developers. In many respects South Davis is a lot like Folsom but with much more thought given to its layout. In both South Davis and Folsom you have schools, park land, bike trails and a lot of suburban style development. But in Davis much more thought was given to how to link all of this stuff up. They took the areas in flood zones for the creeks, put parkland adjacent to it and linked it to the large lots for schools to create a greenbelt to run their class 1 bike trail through. They used the suburban form as means of traffic calming to keep traffic below 30 mph. Yet they made minor fairly inexpensive variations to increase to connectivity bike network through town.
The costs of this was probably no greater than in Folsom, but the design itself was much better. This is why that plan succeeded.
Why I think so many of the plans in Sacramento have failed is that a lot of them over reached. In Sacramento there has been too much who cares if it makes money we want it in the plan. Developers aren't social workers. They are businessmen who will follow a plan if the plan is the easiest and best way to make money, but they will subvert the plan if there is an alternative that is more profitable.
I am a pragmatic idealist. I think ideals are wonderful, but ideals without results are wasted effort. Its not good enough to have good intentions, you need to figure out how to have good results too. My strong committment to raising the gas tax and vehicle license fees comes from idealism. But my pragmatism is that if the best theoretical goal isn't attainable than lets try to impliment the best realistically attainable current goal.
I see the theoretical benefits from increasing density. But I have really strong doubts that its actually possible to pull off right now at current gas prices in this location. We aren't next to the ocean, we are surrounded by open space. We lack the factors driving density elsewhere and even if they to occur here, I am not sure how long they would last.
Why I am drawn to Davis style development is that is has already been demonstrated to be attainable. This region is flat, it rarely rains, bikes use less gas than anything and Davis has demonstrated for comparatively little money they got really excllent results. With half of the the several hundred million we spent building light rail to Folsom we could have retrofitted most of this region with Davis style bike infrastructure.
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Originally Posted by wburg
Part of the value of the building is the location, because of its proximity to the central business district, but significant portion of the value is in the historic value of the building itself. But part of that value is also tied into location: many neighborhoods in the central city are located in designated historic districts. Buildings in historic districts tend to retain their value more than buildings not in historic districts, because design review rules tend to ensure that these districts maintain greater integrity as a neighborhood.
In the 1970s and 1980s, they were cheaper because they generally needed a lot of repair, and the neighborhood was less desirable. By the early 1990s they demanded a premium price. Today, restored historic homes in historic neighborhoods command a price comparable to much larger homes on larger lots in other neighborhoods, and sell faster than new properties in the central city. Even condo units built in restored brick buildings sell fast--while faux-condo "loft" buildings linger on the marketplace.
Historic buildings in Oak Park cost less than those in Midtown for several reasons: they are not yet part of a historic district, they are often in severe disrepair, and the neighborhood around them is generally not as safe or as desirable as those in Midtown. Proximity to the central city is a comparatively minor factor. I have a strong feeling that in 10-20 years, Oak Park historic homes will command much higher prices, as the housing stock is repaired, historic districts are designated (one hopes) and the musicians and students moving into Oak Park become homeowners. But even now, a particularly nice Oak Park Craftsman bungalow or Neoclassic row house will fetch a better price than a 1950s stucco ranch house in the same neighborhood.
Also, because the central city neighborhoods are older than Oak Park or other outlying neighborhoods, the historic housing stock is comparatively older and rarer, and often includes larger and more elaborate examples. There are cute little 1920s bungalows in North Sac, and a few cute little 1890s Queen Annes in Oak Park, but no elaborate Italianates or mansard-roofed Second Empire mansions (admittedly, there are only about six left in Midtown, half of which are state property, so they are definitely a premium item!)
(I have to say I am enjoying this exchange, kim racer: I admit I am kind of a starry-eyed idealist, and you strike me as more of a pragmatist. I do appreciate talking about this stuff with someone who obviously has the knowledge to back it up.)
One of Kevin Johnson's achievements as a developer was fixing up Victorian mansion on Stockton Blvd. That property is probably fixed up as well as any in midtown. Even so its not going to command the prices of similiar mansion in a similiar condition in midtown. How appraisers figure out the value of land is by comparing similiar homes in similiar condition in different neighborhoods than they attribute the difference in prices to land values. You don't need to do that with just old homes, you can do that with any place that has similiar homes in similiar conditions to figure out the difference in land values.
When you say the neighborhood has improved, the issue is improved for whom? If you used to live there and no longer can afford to live there, the neighborhood hasn't improved for you. That is the crux of the issue with gentrification. People like gentrification when it brings in more people into a neighborhood like them, but strongly dislike it when it prices them out of their homes and the community they used to be a part of. If you look at the number of people living below poverty clearly that number has been falling. The neighborhood is gentrifying.
It has improved in terms of safety and condition of buildings. I won't say that nobody has been been priced out, but there has not been the complete shift of population seen in places like San Francisco.
The change in the percentage below the poverty line doesn't necessarily mean populations are displaced: in many cases, the greater economic opportunities of a healthy neighborhood mean that the original inhabitants (or their economic peers) may still be in the neighborhood, they're just making more money because there are better jobs to be had, and thus are no longer under the poverty line. Neighborhood preservation certainly doesn't mean keeping people in poverty to avoid their displacement.
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But gentrification is ongoing process which densification tends to accelerate. The reason so much of coastal California has height restrictions going back to the seventies is that when this new construction would come in to these neighborhood, it would bring in much wealthier people to the neighborhood and that would in turn raise rents not just in the new buildings but also in the existing housing stock. That in turn was pricing the existing residents out of the neighborhood. This is why these height restriction referendums were passing with 60 to 70% margins. This is especially true in neighborhoods that were majority renters because they felt they had nothing to gain from fast rising rents or property values. This is also why rent control and growth control measures were so popular in a lot of these communities.
Sacramento's central city already has height restrictions, aside from the specific areas that are zoned for taller things. Generally heights in Midtown are limited to 35-45 feet. These were part of city code rather than a public referendum. Of course, any developer worth his checkbook can get an exception to the rule, all the more reason for neighborhood activism and eternal vigilance.
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As an abstraction, you might thing further densification is a positive social good because it makes better transit use possible and reduces carbon footprints. But if it also may price you or a lot of your neighbors out of a neighborhood you really like would you still favor it? Would the community still favor it?
No, which is why it's a better idea to fix up older buildings and do infill than to knock down the same buildings and build dense mid-rise. The result is almost as good from a density perspective, but it's a lot cheaper (and greener too.) It's kind of like restoring old wood windows vs. putting in vinyl: the latter gets all the press, and is technically a little more efficient, but the former maintains the character, is cheaper, and takes less energy.
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One of the big reasons that I am skeptical whether the density in the current plans will actually happen is that any neighborhood in this region unique enough to economically support further densification is also probably a neighborhood unique enough where the existing residents aren't going to want to get priced out of it.
That's why density is a matter of degree--and all the more reason to chase high-rise development where it belongs, to the urban infill areas and downtown. The kind of density increases I'm hoping to see in the central city aren't dramatic--incremental, rather than growing by leaps and bounds.
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The big reason is I think the Davis plan succeeded is that plan didn't propose anything that was inconsistent with economic interests of the developers. In many respects South Davis is a lot like Folsom but with much more thought given to its layout. In both South Davis and Folsom you have schools, park land, bike trails and a lot of suburban style development. But in Davis much more thought was given to how to link all of this stuff up. They took the areas in flood zones for the creeks, put parkland adjacent to it and linked it to the large lots for schools to create a greenbelt to run their class 1 bike trail through. They used the suburban form as means of traffic calming to keep traffic below 30 mph. Yet they made minor fairly inexpensive variations to increase to connectivity bike network through town.
So a suburban form, but with better connectivity, instead of the cul-de-sac/feeder street metaphor? Sounds a lot like Midtown. Unfortunately, it also sounds a lot like the plans for Laguna and North Natomas, both of which were exceptioned to death by developers.
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Why I am drawn to Davis style development is that is has already been demonstrated to be attainable. This region is flat, it rarely rains, bikes use less gas than anything and Davis has demonstrated for comparatively little money they got really excllent results. With half of the the several hundred million we spent building light rail to Folsom we could have retrofitted most of this region with Davis style bike infrastructure.
The problem is that Davis is a much smaller city than Sacramento, maybe 1/8 the population of Sacramento, occupying about 1/10 the land area. Sacramento is the biggest city in the region, and despite its woes is the focus of the entire metropolitan area. What worked there probably won't work here...sort of.
Sacramento has put a lot of its central city streets on road diets lately: speed limits in the central city are uniformly 25-30 mph, a lot of streets have been changed from 3 to 2 lanes with more bike lanes, more pedestrian crossings, more changes to two-way streets. When the city removed mechanical parking meters from some parts of downtown, they were converted to serve as bicycle racks. There are also several central city organizations promoting bicycling: Bikeramento, the Sacramento Bike Kitchen, just to name a couple--even a bike-based local history tour.
In addition, the CEQA lawsuit against the expansion of HOV lanes on Hwy 50 came to a great compromise: Caltrans will pay for light rail improvements to allow express trains and 15 minute headways to Folsom (by double-tracking) and they will also improve the bicycle path between Folsom and Sacramento to facilitate cycling.
So, in some ways, we're already following the Davis model.
So a suburban form, but with better connectivity, instead of the cul-de-sac/feeder street metaphor? Sounds a lot like Midtown. Unfortunately, it also sounds a lot like the plans for Laguna and North Natomas, both of which were exceptioned to death by developers.
The problem is that Davis is a much smaller city than Sacramento, maybe 1/8 the population of Sacramento, occupying about 1/10 the land area. Sacramento is the biggest city in the region, and despite its woes is the focus of the entire metropolitan area. What worked there probably won't work here...sort of.
Davis did a lot of things right, that Sacramento didn't in Natomas nor in Laguna West and that nobody else in this region has done. The most important thing they did was to link up all of the public uses from the very beginning to create the greenbelt, the schools, public parks, the Putah Creekshed. In Natomas you have public schools, you have public parks, you even have the Natomas Main drain, but there was no coordination of these various public uses. The school district, the flood control district and the park district weren't talking and weren't pulled into the plan early enough. In Natomas, the bike path was an after thought. No one said if we are going to run a bike path along the Natomas Drain, lets make sure that when we build bridges over this drain that there is enough space for someone on a bike to pass under these bridges on that bike path. It wouldn't have been that much more expensive to do and I think the reason it did happen is that drain was seen as in the orbit of the flood control agencies jurisdiction, not something ran both agencies and no one bothered to label the area a green belt to make it seem important to respect this space.. That bike path is an after thought in Natomas because people thought of the drain as sewer instead of viewing as a greenbelt and a prominent feature in the development.
In South Davis the greenbelt was considered highly important, so the residential streets were aligned to converge into the greenbelt. Because the greenbelt itself was all publicly owned property, the developers could screw that component of the plan up.
The American River Bike trail is probably the best designed and best laid out bike path in Sacramento County. Compare it with the Sacramento Northern bike trail which is less well executed. On the American River Bike trail you can go from Folsom to downtown and never really have to stop your bike. On all of the major streets like Sunrise and Watt Avenue, you go under them. Once you get up to cruising speed, you really don't have to slow down unless you choose to. If you want to commute by bike in this region, this is the easiest trail in the area to do so. That bike trail works like a bike freeway. Its limited access with no stop signs. The Sacramento Northern Bike trail isn't limited access. When you come to streets you have to stop and wait for a stop signs and stop lights. Its a lot more difficult to go 5 or 10 miles on that bike trail because you have to do all of this stopping and starting. You also end up waiting a lot for traffic to pass by.
The bike path in the greenbelt in Davis is set up a lot more like the American River Bike Trail. Once you get on it, you rarely need to stop and for the most part you never have to deal with traffic.
The bike lanes in Davis act as a collectors for the greenbelt bike loop. That system is incredibly well thought out and well executed. In Natomas, when you try to ride the path you realise that its an after thought in part because parts still aren't paved, and its not connected yet to other bike paths. So its tough to actually go anywhere on it. Its inexcuseable for the path to not connect into the American River Bike Trail and there probably should be some paths that connect it to Sacramento Northern Bike Trail.
Biking really should work much better in this region and not just in Davis. The area is pancake flat. We have one of the better climates year round for the activity, we don't get snow, we rarely get much rain. The thing that is holding that back is bad infrastructure and the cost of this infrastructure is minimal. The big thing is that non bike fanatics don't like to bike in heavy traffic or near fast moving traffic. You just need to provide them with bike lanes to get from where they live to a nearby bike path without them having to deal with fast moving traffic. The area does fairly well on the bike lanes already. It just needs to do a better job of linking them up to bike paths.
I'm not going to make any excuses for North Natomas--just about every public use was an afterthought, and it is pretty much a textbook example for what not to do--and a textbook example of why you shouldn't just let developers run rampant over a project. If they aren't made to stick to a plan by the municipality, they won't bother on their own. The end result is that street connectivity is poor, public spaces and low-income housing were jammed into leftover spaces or ignored entirely.
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The Sacramento Northern Bike trail isn't limited access. When you come to streets you have to stop and wait for a stop signs and stop lights.
The Sacramento Northern bike trail isn't well-planned as a bike trail because it was not originally a bike trail, it was railroad right-of-way converted as a "rails to trails" project. Because the SN was an electric interurban, it crossed streets pretty much at will (they provided commuter service to North Sacamento, Rio Linda and Elverta as well as interurban service between Chico, Sacramento and Oakland.)
With gentrification there are two real issues, is it happening already in midtown, I think we can both agree the answer is yes. But the second issue is can the area densify signficantly with out significantly further gentrification? I would argue that you can't have significant densification without significant further gentrification.
To densify a region, you need to be able to build something new. Unless we are talking about a few single projects being subsidized by the redevelopment agency, building lots of new projects in the area means market prices anticipated in the in all of these projects have to be above the cost of new construction plus they need to be high enough to cover the cost of buying out the existing use and turning a profit for whoever is actually behind the project. Additionally, Sacramento has a mixed income ordinance, which sets aside a certain amount of the project for the poor. That means that anticipated market prices have to be high enough to cover the cost of that subsidy to the poor as well. If all of those things don't happen, we just won't see widespread densification of the area. For that to happen, a lot of fairly wealthy people need to decide to move into the area.
The other thing is that rents in the area affect prices in the neighborhood. In Granite Bay, even old crappy fixer uppers are expensive. So if the new housing in the neighborhood is expensive its going to mean that the rent in the pre-existing established housing stock in the neighborhood will be expensive too.
In older areas the cost of construction has been covered by the previous owners that means its possible in older neighborhoods for housing prices to be well below construction prices. That is the case right now in Oak Park and North Sac. That is also why absent state action the poor tend to live in older neighborhoods. That doesn't mean that there can't be older neighborhoods at near or above the cost of construction. The Fabulous forties is loaded with older buildings. Those homes are probably at or above the price of construction but the neighborhood isn't mixed income either. But to have a mixed income neighborhood generally you need older housing where a lot of the housing cost was covered by past owners. That is what lets the poorer people live there.
You can find high density mixed income neighboods like San Pablo Avenue along the Oakland/Berkely border. But that neighborhood isn't yet densifying. Instead its just wealthier people moving into an older established high density neighborhood and improving the properties and displacing some of the poor.
But for neighborhoods to densify they need to act like new neighborhoods and anticipated housing prices after construction need to be above the cost of construction. Generally those are prices that chase out the poor and some of the middle class.
You can say that the mixed income ordinance will preserve economic diversity and to a limited extent it does. But if midtown is subject to widespread densification it probably will look a lot like Davis does today especially in the non student parts which is a mostly wealthy area with small population of poorer people protected by the mixed income ordinance. If you look at rents in Davis, they aren't particularly affordible so the area really isn't mixed income.
But the last issue is will midtown actually densify signficantly? For that I am not entirely sure one way or the other. During the peak of the housing boom, housing prices were 10 times incomes. At those prices just about all construction anywhere seemed to make sense. The only limit to construction was how fast you could get it built. So while we saw plans for 60 story condo/hotel/office complexes we also saw fairly old and troubled neighborhoods like North Highlands and Meadowview with bad schools, no charm and gangs get significant investment too. A lot of these projects probably seemed to make sense mostly because of the bubble.
But in a non-bubble enviroment will it pencil out to densify midtown? That depends largely on how many people can be convinced to pay a lot for small spaces when there are other areas nearby offering a lot more space for a lot less money. The reason you don't see skyscrappers in Wyoming is that rents just aren't high enough to justify building them, all of the nearby cheap stuff keeps prices down. In this region the question is can you build high density in a region with lots of cheap low density stuff nearby? Or will the demand bleed into those areas instead? The grid is nice, but Woodlake is fairly close by and much more affordible, would I move there instead?
The railyard plan is pretty, but so far the only tenant they could sign was a big box retailer. The developer needs to cover his interest expense on the project or he goes bankrupt, so he will need to sell or lease things on a fairly regular basis just to have enough cashflow to sustain the project. But will his cashflow needs mean he needs to sell property so fast to overwhelm the demand for high density projects at the location?
Think about this when he signed up for this project did he have any clue that worldwide housing market would implode and the local economy and housing market would be this screwed up for this long? What I mean is that he probably is blowing through much more cash that then he set aside for this project and the question is how will he respond? Will he go bankrupt and will another developer be brought in? Will they agree to follow the same plan? Or will the current plan be amended by the current developer?
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