Why are some areas of Sacramento litterally left for dead? (Fremont: middle-class, neighborhoods)
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Del Paso Heights, Foothill Farms and North Highlands were the areas that were hit the hardest by the closure of McClellan AFB.
The McClellan Business Park has a different employment base than the former AFB. When McClellan was an AFB it had a lot more blue collar jobs. One of McClellan AFB's tasks was repairing air planes which created a huge demand for aircraft mechanics. A lot of those people lived in Del Paso Heights. The major tenants McClellan today include SureWest telecommunications. SureWest formerly was part of Roseville Telephone. When Surewest moved to McClellan AFB, most of its employees continued to live in Roseville. So the paychecks at McClellan are recirculating now in Roseville and not as much in Del Paso Heights.
As the blue collar workforce in Del Paso Heights departed, alot more of the tenants filling those buildings were Hmong and Laotian. In Laos this population had no written language. The traditional culture and culture norms were based on a tribal agricultural community. Before coming to the US, this population had confronted the killing fields in Cambodia. This is a population with boatloads of families with PTSD.
When they got to the US, traditional family norms were upset because the kids learned how to read and write at school. The old world customs and skills of the adults didn't have much economic value in Sacramento. In many respects the kids were better adapted to succeed in the US, which upset family normals of parental respect. Old customs like selling daughter off for marriage just weren't useful here. So pre-established social norms collapsed.
These kids weren't really succeeding academically. No one would confuse them for model minorities. As these populations hit puberty, they formed or joined existing gangs. Their poverty and cultural failure of this population to succeed in the US created tremendous amounts of alienation.
The bright note for the community is that immigration from Loas is leveling off. Future immigrants to Sacramento are probably more likely to come from Mexico. The Mexican immigrants come from families that are semi-literate in Spanish. The Mexican immigrants experienced poverty in rural Mexico but generally didn't deal with the killing fields. When the Mexicans come to this area, they don't have the same levels of family disintegration.
The Mexican kids will probably still form gangs, but a lower rate.
There was a city-based push to turn Del Paso Boulevard into an arts district, but as I mentioned above, top-down efforts to gentrify a neighborhood generally don't work. The intent was to draw the middle class from the suburbs to move to Del Paso. They may have come down to Del Paso for Second Saturday for gallery openings, but they didn't come down for anything else, and they certainly didn't move there. The people who actually lived in the neighborhood didn't much care for the gentrification attempt, because it was predicated on the idea that they would be priced out of their own neighborhood, so they didn't really support the efforts. And, ironically, some galleries like the Horse Cow were chased out of their Del Paso locations because what they were doing was a little too weird for the city's idea of what constituted art.
In Midtown and the central city in general, the people involved in the local music and arts scene also moved into the neighborhood--or their parents were part of the early generation that moved to the central city in the 1970s and 1980s. Of course, plenty of people who come to the central city to see shows or eat dinner don't live there, but part of why they feel comfortable visiting is because they see other folks they identify with in the neighborhood. They might not feel comfortable enough to move, because there are also homeless and poorer folks in the central city, but they are part of a diverse residential mix. While Midtown rents have gone up, it is still an economically diverse place--the previous residents were not necessarily displaced. That process took 20-30 years, and came mostly from individuals who moved to the central city, starting their own organizations and making grassroots efforts to fix up neighborhoods. The top-down approach hasn't worked very well, because it wasn't based on people moving to those neighborhoods and, more importantly, on the participation of the people who already lived in those neighborhoods.
I am not sure you can make the argument that top down solutions don't work. I think the stronger argument is that the top down approach really has been tried much in Del Paso Heights/North Sac. In Del Paso Heights, the momentum for change in Del Paso Heights changed when Serna left office.
But the top down approach has been much more successful in the downtown grid. More redevelopment money flowed to downtown and continues to flow to downtown. More money from CADA flows downtown. Anywhere near light rail in the grid is the opportunity for another transit orientated development and subsidy to support that project. In the grid you have a tremendous number of government agencies pulling together to shift money to the grid from the rest of the city.
The projects downtown have the juice. This is true with the railyards, its true with grocery stores subsidies, its true with Township 9.
What you don't have in Del Paso Heights or North Sac is sustained effort to turn things around. In the grid things can fail for years, but there is always money available for another subsidy for downtown projects and more top down approaches. How many times has the K Street Mall been redeveloped and re-imagined? They turned it into a mall, the turned it into a pedestrian mall, they turned it into a light rail corridor and there currently multiple competing plans with requisite redevelopment subsidy to try to turn it around again.
Randy Paragary has been particularly adept at capturing redevelopment funding to help build his restaurants. There are very few large projects in the grid that aren't getting help from the city.
Its not that the top down approach doesn't work outside the grid it just isn't tried as much outside the grid. When the city subsidizes stuff outside the grid, it can make that stuff happen there too.
There is a Food Source at Broadway and Stockton Blvd because the city subsidized the construction of the mini mall, with the Food Source and Walgreens.
To the extent the city is willing to subsidize it, you can put lofts in Oak Park or North Sac/Del Paso Heights to change the demographics of those neighborhoods. From what I have seen very little redevelopment isn't subsidized from the top down.
The top-down approach's weaknesses are far more clearly shown in downtown Sacramento. Yes, the government spends more money there than anywhere else, but the end result is mediocre at best. It "works" in the sense that developers get lots of cash to build prestige projects, but one can hardly say it has "worked" in the sense that it has effectively drawn people to live and spend a lot of time in those neighborhoods. But making a neighborhood culturally interesting generally doesn't have anything to do with redevelopment. Redevelopment is a bulldozer approach that destroys the things about a neighborhood that make it interesting.
Midtown's draw, for example, was based on its walkable scale, its built environment, and the fact that, unlike downtown Sacramento, its neighborhoods were NOT bulldozed by redevelopment.
Township 9 received lots of money, but so far the main result of their project has been the demolition of cannery buildings that would make killer lofts, to be replaced by new buildings that will look like fake-ass cannery buildings. Meanwhile, in the Alhambra Triangle on the other side of Midtown, a transit-oriented development project that received no public subsidy whatsoever just had its grand opening party--270 or so apartments, two blocks from light rail, NO city subsidy, because people moving to the neighborhood drove demand instead of city subsidies.
Even in downtown Sacramento, the success stories tend to be in spite of redevelopment efforts, rather than because of them.
Look at all of the projects done in midtown by just CADA. If CADA was buying and refurbishing apartment older apartments as well as subsidizing the construction of as new housing in Del Paso Heights instead of midtown at the rate it has done in just midtown, not to mention the stuff it has done downtown, that I didn't list. I am quite confident that we would be talking about a resurgence in Del Paso Heights and not really talking about a resurgence in Midtown. Lots of government money concentrated in a small area can really jump start something.
But this argument that redevelopment happened in midtown as a consquence of bottom up development is absurd. If the bottom up approach was working in the grid, there would have been no need to form CADA and no need for it to be so active and no need for it to collect and use tax increment financing.
Why, thank you for the lovely ad hominem, x15! It adds greatly to the strength of your arguments!
CADA is often a different story, simply because they don't have the slash-and-burn mentality of SHRA. Most of the projects cited above are adaptive reuse projects, whereas most SHRA projects treat existing buildings as inconvenient obstacles to be bulldozed. They are also far more collaborative with the neighborhoods--the first project you mentioned is one some friends of mine were involved with--a team effort between a public/private partnership and neighborhood residents. Thus, rather than being top-down, a mutually beneficial relationship emerged.
However, CADA only operates within their sphere of influence, which is almost entirely within the "downtown" portion of the central city (3rd Street to 16th Street, N to R Street) rather than "midtown" (roughly east of Capitol Park.)
X15 only three of those projects are in Midtown. There has been far more private money invested in Midtown than the government's. Downtown is another story.
CADA's main goal is to provide State worker housing. That's who live in the nether region between 3rd, 16th, N and S. That's not Midtown.
Why, thank you for the lovely ad hominem, x15! It adds greatly to the strength of your arguments!
I aim to please!
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
CADA is often a different story, simply because they don't have the slash-and-burn mentality of SHRA. Most of the projects cited above are adaptive reuse projects, whereas most SHRA projects treat existing buildings as inconvenient obstacles to be bulldozed. They are also far more collaborative with the neighborhoods--the first project you mentioned is one some friends of mine were involved with--a team effort between a public/private partnership and neighborhood residents. Thus, rather than being top-down, a mutually beneficial relationship emerged.
However, CADA only operates within their sphere of influence, which is almost entirely within the "downtown" portion of the central city (3rd Street to 16th Street, N to R Street) rather than "midtown" (roughly east of Capitol Park.)
CADA operates in midtown. Look again at its boundaries.
CADA lists 3 pgs of completely projects in these boundaries. By no means did I list every project CADA has done in this area. I listed the ones that are claimed for midtown.
CADA is also not the only government agency working in the area. But when you have this much money being concentrated on this small of an area, you are going to get different results than in Del Paso Heights, which doesn't have its own CADA type of agency at work.
When you go in with large quantities of government money, you can turn an area around.
Remember CADA gets most of its money from tax increment financing. This is a rob Peter to pay Paul policy. Property taxes in this area go to CADA, not to the general funds for the city and the county. Yet the residents of this area continue to receive government services provided by the city and the county. In places like South Sac, Meadowview and Del Paso Heights, part of the reason these areas are being hit so hard by government cutbacks is that tax revenue that would have gone to the general fund in the CADA area got siphoned off to CADA instead.
This is why we don't have a Del Paso Heights Area Development Authority, a Meadowview Area Development Authority or a South Sac Area Development Authority. There are limits on how many different rob Peter to pay Paul strategies you can impliment at any given time.
But substantively, I agree with X15's general argument.
CADA is one of several government agencies that have thrown a lot of money at the grid. Even when there are programs of a general nature, the emphasis is throwing money at the grid.
See SABA here:
"City of Sacramento is offering free bike racks, including installation on city right of way, to businesses. Focus is on the central city. You can ask business owners where you shop to install a rack and refer them to the city's Web site for .more information. (6/3/09)"
When people talk about the resurgence in midtown, they talk often cite events like Chalk it Up! (for which CADA is a sponsor) as though Fremont Park was in midtown. If people are going to use the development in CADA areas to argue for the resurgence of midtown, then again, I think its only fair acknowledge the roll of CADA in that resurgence.
To me there is no question that a big difference in outcomes between Del Paso Heights and midtown was the long term involvement of CADA in the area since the 1970's. Whether it was Shra going into Franklin Villa and turning it into Phoenix Park or CADA going into the grid, the record is quite clear, having the government spend lots of money in an area on a sustained basis will change that area for the better. Having CADA go rehab older buildings, helped to turn the area around. Having CADA going in and subsidizing the construction of new buildings helped turn the area around. The fact that CADA can issue low interest rate bonds and lend the proceeds to developers again is another really big factor in turning things around. One of the big reasons developers generally aren't building much in the region is they don't have access to credit - but CADA because its issuing muni bonds, continues to have access to credit. So again, it can help grease the wheels of development.
If you look at CADA's current projects all of them are in midtown.
One of the big reasons that so little development happens in poor neighborhoods like Del Paso Heights is a lack of lots of government money. In Del Paso Heights property prices are well below replacement cost. Prices are so low, that often it costs more to rehab a building to a legally habitable standard than the building is worth. This is why you find so many boarded up homes and buildings in Del Paso Heights, Meadowview, South Sac or Oak Park. Its cheaper to abandon these property than to fix them up. This is why bottom up development doesn't work there.
Unless the government or Habitat for Humanity type of charity steps in, those neighborhoods will continue to deteriorate.
This is different than a neighborhood like Fair Oaks or Folsom. Because property values are much higher in Folsom, even an old house with lots of dry rot damage will not be abandoned. In Folsom, housing prices are such it makes sense to fix up the properties. Here bottom up works great.
As for The Alexan, remember the only reason it got built was that it was proposed and started at the very peak of the condo boom. Trammel Crow developed the site assuming that they were going to sell high priced condos. The condo project tanked and now it is being renting out as apartments. If the project was proposed today, it would only be built with the help of some type of government subsidies. At the peak of the housing boom, we were seeing unsubsidized projects get built in neighborhoods like Del Paso Heights, Oak Park, Meadowview and South Sac too.
But given that housing price levels in the region are still higher than at any point prior to the the most recent housing boom, I am not sure that we are going to see projects like The Alexan built without subsidies. So again the role of agencies like CADA is critical.
As you pointed out previously, urban infill is just more expensive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
You can't build a Tuff Shed in the backyard of a condo tower. That requires a concrete parking structure, and those are just a bit more pricey than a Tuff Shed. You also can't build condo towers out of OSB and glue the way you can suburban homes--things like concrete and steel cost more.
Suburban homes and downtown homes are difficult to compare apples-to-apples because they exist in very different settings. High-rise condo living isn't the only urban option, though. Commuting costs, for example, are far lower if you live in the central city and can walk to work, shopping and entertainment.
Lastly the other reason that I think CADA's role is so important to midtown is spill over effects. People don't want to live near drive by shootings or live among gang members, especially where there is no strong geographic boundaries between communities. One of the problems people have with the Pocket is proximity to the problems in Meadowview.
When CADA went into the grid, it helped to stabilize the areas it was active in. Unlike the Pocket, there isn't a freeway that cuts off midtown from the rest of the grid. If CADA wasn't taking over these properties what would these properties look like?
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