Where did 1950's Sacramento redevelopment go wrong vs other large CA cities? (Los Angeles: credit, houses)

[Mr. Ozo]

Originally Posted by Malloric

It took decades for Fillmore to recover.

I don't think it really ever recovered. It remains an island of drab, lame and poverty surrounded by increasingly great neighborhoods. This is largely attributable to poor quality redevelopment building stock and destruction of the street grid.

So no redevelopment did work in San Francisco.

[Malloric]

Originally Posted by wburg

Redevelopment "worked" in that it removed the element that the business communities wanted removed (most of the nonwhite residential populations) and resulted in expanded business districts and increased property values. Redevelopment was not intended to solve social problems, it was meant to make money--and it did. Sacramento's experiment was one of the earliest, and other cities' redevelopment projects were modeled after ours, sometimes literally called the "Sacramento model."

Seen what the mall on Welfare Street sold for? It didn't really work so well for property values.

It'll be interesting to see how much money the Ed Hardy Pizza building sells for.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by Malloric

Seen what the mall on Welfare Street sold for? It didn't really work so well for property values.

It'll be interesting to see how much money the Ed Hardy Pizza building sells for.

Read the title of the thread: "Where did 1950's Sacramento redevelopment go wrong vs other large CA cities?" The fiscal result of 1950s redevelopment was a 75-fold increase in property values, plus the business community got a square mile or so of downtown Sacramento to play with, and a new freeway to their front door. They also got rid of 20,000 people that they didn't feel were contributing to the economic well-being of downtown. I'd argue that it was successful, for the people behind it, for the purposes they intended. K Street is the perfect cash cow--they got another bale of money every 20 years to rebuild K Street a different way.

[Malloric]

Originally Posted by wburg

Read the title of the thread: "Where did 1950's Sacramento redevelopment go wrong vs other large CA cities?" The fiscal result of 1950s redevelopment was a 75-fold increase in property values, plus the business community got a square mile or so of downtown Sacramento to play with, and a new freeway to their front door. They also got rid of 20,000 people that they didn't feel were contributing to the economic well-being of downtown. I'd argue that it was successful, for the people behind it, for the purposes they intended. K Street is the perfect cash cow--they got another bale of money every 20 years to rebuild K Street a different way.

Source?

I don't doubt it was a lot. Simply inflation was a lot. And that's also why I said it would be interested to see what the Ed Hardy building ends up selling for. If you take something worth $1,000,000, invest $10,000,000 of "free money" (not free, came from CA's general fund, but free to the Redevelopment agencies), and it ends up being worth $8,000,000.... well, that's not very impressive. If you take Welfare Street which gets bales full of money every few years and is worth less than a rundown strip mall (which is what the Welfare Street Mall sold for), then that's really unimpressive.

[wburg]

Source: Sacramento City Redevelopment Agency, Housing and Redevelopment Pgorams, 1980, p. 54, as cited in a Master's thesis by Ken Lastufka, "Redevelopment of Sacramento's West End, 1950-1970: A Historical Overview with an Analysis of the Relocation," 1985, California State University, Sacramento. "In 1979, the $369 million market value of West End property was seventy-five times the 1950 value."

[Malloric]

Originally Posted by wburg

Source: Sacramento City Redevelopment Agency, Housing and Redevelopment Pgorams, 1980, p. 54, as cited in a Master's thesis by Ken Lastufka, "Redevelopment of Sacramento's West End, 1950-1970: A Historical Overview with an Analysis of the Relocation," 1985, California State University, Sacramento. "In 1979, the $369 million market value of West End property was seventy-five times the 1950 value."

And how much was invested during that span.

Eg, Downtown Plaza was originally built in that time period (not sure how much). Then it was face-lifted to the tune of $170 million after that time period before being sold for $20 million last year.

Hotel Berry: Purchased by Redevelopment for $5 million, then redeveloped for another $19 million and change. What's it worth today? Worth the $24 million and change put into it? Unlikely. Per square foot that comes out to over $1,200, that's top of the market San Francisco pricing. It might be worth 1/3rd of that. So you have something that was purchased for more than it was worth in 2007 ($5 million) and then had another $19.5 million invested in it and it's maybe worth $8 million now. Sure, you increased the property value of that one property by $3 million... but you invested more than six times that much into it. That's a pretty awful investment. Now, maybe they weren't so stupid back in the '50s-'80s. It's hard to imagine they were, frankly.

[wburg]

Redevelopment in the 1950s did not include any housing. Again, you're talking about 21st century redevelopment, not redevelopment in the 1950s/60s. The redevelopment area identified in the OP was what is now Capitol Mall west of 7th Street, not K Street Mall/Downtown Plaza, which didn't happen until 1969.

[BeauCharles]

Compared to Fresno's attempt at revitalizing its downtown since the early 1960s Sacramento is a roaring success. Any of you familiar with the Fulton Mall? What a mess now and a missed opportunity.

[wburg]

Downtown malls generally didn't work in any cities, unless they were either "a mall that happens to be donwtown" (vs. "turn main street into a mall") or pedestrian malls in smaller suburban towns (vs. the downtown of the region's biggest city.)

[Malloric]

Originally Posted by wburg

Downtown malls generally didn't work in any cities, unless they were either "a mall that happens to be donwtown" (vs. "turn main street into a mall") or pedestrian malls in smaller suburban towns (vs. the downtown of the region's biggest city.)

Westlake Center in Seattle does quite well.