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Of course there were nice looking buildings there! It's a large neighborhood and 30,000 people lived there. There are nice buildings in Oak Park also but that doesn't make it a nice neighborhood. I'm sure there are many pictures of slums from that era in that neighborhood as well as rundown row houses with no running water etc etc.
I also agree with the sentiment that the poorest neighborhoods of the city should not be located in the heart of downtown. I think downtown should be an impressive place where people feel safe and want to spend time. The slums should be located elsewhere.
See, that's just it--you don't see many pictures of slums from that era, because even documents from the time admit they weren't slums, just "blighted" areas that had the potential to become slums. The rough part, the Labor Market, was a small portion of the neighborhood--but, ironically, about the only portion of the greater West End that survived, and the last portion to be redeveloped. They got rid of the "nice" parts, Japantown along Capitol Avenue, first. A lot of the photos of run-down buildings you see are from the Labor Market during the Depression, or in the late 1960s/early 1970s period after the neighborhood's population had been driven out and the buildings allowed to deteriorate for years. Or they show a photo of Capitol Mall after it was demolished and redeveloped in the mid-1960s but before Highway 50, and claim it's a pre-redevelopment photo. But that's exactly what Capitol Mall was supposed to be--a grand automotive entrance to the city.
Sacramento was a lot smaller in 1950--only about 12 square miles--and they were only the poorest, again, because they were nonwhite, and nonwhites had less economic opportunity. But calling it "poor" doesn't accurately portray a neighborhood of working poor in a heavy industrial district with thousands of working-class jobs within walking distance. Nor was it strictly industrial--there were multiple commercial districts, all focused on the main shopping area on K. In the 1950s, 75% of the sales tax in Sacramento County was generated in this neighborhood within 2 blocks of K Street, and the streets were so crowded with shoppers the city installed a "scramble" system at street corners to facilitate all the pedestrian traffic and autos passing through. Things didn't start going downhill in a big way until the Chamber of Commerce decided just what you did--that the heart of downtown should only be for the wealthy, and kicked everyone out. Downtown folded up like a house of cards in a stiff breeze without its real economic strength--the people who lived there--and we're still dealing with the consequences, and the excuses of those who still think it's the only way to go.
Oak Park turned out the way it did because those who planned redevelopment made no plans at all for where those displaced by their efforts would go. The result was the creation of new ghettos, more segregated and less visible than the West End, cut off from economic opportunity by displacement from job centers. Oak Park, like downtown, is still reeling from the effects--but Oak Park is also a community, strong in its own way, and these days its regeneration is coming from its residents and activists, while those in power seem kind of indifferent. It's also a lot nicer place than it was 20 years ago, and I'm still quite confident that Oak Park is going to be the new Midtown--like Midtown, it is still a neighborhood where people live, and have invested their lives in the community.
I have high hopes for downtown, but if we keep trying the "downtown is only for business and attractions for rich people to visit" model (instead of a viable, mixed-income and mixed-use neighborhood where people live) I worry that K Street will still look pretty pathetic in 20 years when articles in national magazines talk about how Broadway in Oak Park is the hottest business address in the city.
And I'd argue that a lot of those 30,000 people were in the space between "not poor" and "wealthy." Cannery workers made enough money to buy their own homes in Southside and the West End, skilled railroad workers made more than that, and even lowly migrant farm workers spent pretty much their whole paychecks in the neighborhood restaurants, bars, pool halls and burlesque clubs of the Labor Market, with a couple of bucks left over for a boarding-house room or dormitory with a bathroom down the hall. That added up to a lot of money, and filled in the gaps between the other, bigger businesses. Sure, there were the very poor, just as there are today in downtown San Francisco around Union Square, downtown Los Angeles around Broadway, and downtown San Diego in the shadow of the Gaslamp (all three still have SRO hotels providing a minimal amount of housing, and homeless sleeping in the crevices of office buildings at night.) But the folks who were displaced weren't necessarily the poorest--and some were starting to enter the middle class. They got the boot, not based on their salary, but their ethnicity--and the overriding priority to get people out of downtown.
Nope, simply not true. West end was a hard scrabble ghetto with tons of poor. Blacks with money were moving south of the airport and up around del paso and strawberry manor in the fifties. These were new neighborhoods with ou racial covenants. West end was slumed about by the time ike was at the white house.
West end had always been bad.
Good luck NorCal Dude. You are dealing with "people of color" dogma and a romantic view of a rather tawdry place. To say nothing of an illusion that certain now defunct industries would never decline.
That said, there will always be a "skid row" somewhere, and if you think government can "redevelop it away", it will only emerge somewhere else in the area, be it homeless camps or the next lowest neighborhood. And certain people will get their hands in the till and make out like bandits. That is the ultimate lesson of government sponsored "redevelopment".
The Roseville Galleria was built decades after the K Street mall, so it's tough to blame its failure (which started almost immediately) on a mall that wasn't built yet. The only real effect that Roseville Galleria had on Downtown Plaza was being owned by the same company, operating DTP as a loss leader to avoid competing with Roseville. The local economy and housing bubble barely got a chance to participate in the mall's collapse. Arden Fair Plaza, on the other hand, was built before Downtown Plaza opened--it (along with Florin Mall and Country Club Center/Plaza) were what lured shoppers away from K Street in the first place, before DTP existed.
Downtown Plaza was built in 1971. Originally for a while when it had I Magnin, Weinstocks and Macys, it was a relatively upscale Mall downtown that was probably the place you went if you were an executive looking for a new suit. But when the Arden Fair Mall was remodeled in 1989, when it added a second level and most importantly when it opened the regions first Nordstrom, the high end trade niche that Downtown Plaza tried to occupy was snatched by Arden Fair and Downtown Plaza got in trouble. But Downtown Plaza was remodeled itself in 1993 and while the economy was strong, that remodel worked, both the first and second stories of the mall were mostly occupied. The primary complaint at that time wasn't that the remodel didn't work in terms of filling up the spaces in Downtown Plaza but that unlike in Santa Monica Place which helped get the 3rd Street Promenade to fill and unlike Horton Plaza which helped to activate San Diego's Gas Lamp District, Downtown Plaza really didn't do much to stimulate leases along the parts of K Street that weren't inside Downtown Plaza. But as far as the remodel of Downtown Plaza was considered a success because the mall itself had a fairly low vacancy rate.
But malls are a highly competitive industry. Country Club Plaza was remodeled. The City of Citrus Heights created a new Sunrise Market Place business improvement district. Money was spent on landscaping that area. The former Birdcage Mall was remodeled. Sunrise Mall itself underwent a minor update/remodel. Country Club Plaza was remodeled in the 2000's and then the Galleria was opened in 2000 and expanded in 2004. The Fountains opened in 2008.
The competition in this market didn't just kill Downtown Plaza. Country Club Plaza is pretty sick right now as well. Town and Country Village lost William Glen, its intended replacement anchor Goores, and that mall might have gone under if it didn't get the major remodel that it is undergoing right now.
Downtown Sacramento had a Weinstocks for literally three years short of a century before Downtown Plaza was built--before there were malls, downtown Sacramento was the most "upscale" shopping district between Oakland and Denver, and the first Weinstock-Lubin cash store opened on K Street in 1874. But there were also Weinstock stores in the suburban malls by the mid-1950s and early 1960s, so the stores programmed into the rebooted Downtown Plaza were essentially the same stores offering the same merchandise as Arden Fair, Florin Mall or the new Sunrise Mall that also opened in 1971. The whole idea of Downtown Plaza was to simulate the atmosphere of a suburban mall, which failed miserably because they didn't offer products that were significantly different from those available in the suburbs--plus there were not winos and porno theaters within eyeshot of the suburban malls.
Suburbs are as disposable as the paper cups you get from Starbuck's. All of them are subject to the sucking effects of new developments that draw the wealth to new greenfields, leaving vacant malls and poorly-maintained suburban tract homes in their wake. Often these old suburbs become nonwhite neighborhoods, encouraging many to describe neighborhoods of single-family homes and shopping center like those along Florin Road as "urban inner city ghettoes." Once the profits are made on one suburban development, the next is in the planning stages, advertising wide-open spaces, uncrowded freeways, and shiny new strip malls.
Town & Country Village lost William Glen--but their children have opened new stores selling kitchenwares and holiday decorations in Old Sacramento--the worst part of the old West End! The younger generation is already interested in cities, and plenty are willing to take the plunge into city life if there is a place for them to live. Right now the main limitation on the future of downtown is an artificially created shortage of housing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NickB1967
Good luck NorCal Dude. You are dealing with "people of color" dogma and a romantic view of a rather tawdry place. To say nothing of an illusion that certain now defunct industries would never decline.
That said, there will always be a "skid row" somewhere, and if you think government can "redevelop it away", it will only emerge somewhere else in the area, be it homeless camps or the next lowest neighborhood. And certain people will get their hands in the till and make out like bandits. That is the ultimate lesson of government sponsored "redevelopment".
I suppose I am a bit dogmatic about the United States Constitution and its assertion that all people are created equal regardless of race, color or economic status, which is why I think poorly of those who think it's okay to deprive poor and nonwhite people of their homes and property because they are bad for property value and make some middle-class white people uncomfortable. What industries are "now defunct"? Agricultural processing is a $36 billion industry in California, and railroads are carrying more tonnage on the rails than at any other point in American history. I suppose the jazz industry is defunct, but only because other forms of music have taken over the jazzman's position in the catbird seat of popular music.
Yes, there will always be a "skid row" somewhere, but redevelopment was never intended to get rid of "skid row"--as you say, it was intended to allow the business community to make out like bandits via the public purse, using the land stolen at bargain-basement prices from the working people who once inhabited downtown and handed to the Chamber of Commerce by their stooges at City Hall. But, of course, just pushing poor people out doesn't make them vanish, it has the unintended consequence of moving the problems to other neighborhoods, necessitating, guess what, new redevelopment zones. In my opinion, a neighborhood of mixed income, where the poor are visible and therefore harder to ignore, is a better solution than just booting them out and hoping they vanish so they don't make Aunt Maisie feel all funny when she comes downtown. Cities always have zones of decline and ascendance--that's just the nature of economies and the nature of cities. And the nature of suburbs, except that suburban decline may be even harder to check because the built environment isn't built well enough to maintain through the period of decline...
East Sacramento and Land Park seem to be doing pretty well, not withstanding their inferior built environment that wasn't built well enough to maintain through a period of decline. Oak Park's built environment is basically disposable trash in comparison, and even that suburb you're waving the pom poms for pretty hard. Unless, of course incorporation magically changes a places built environment which is completely nonsensical. I just don't buy into your argument. Oak Park became Oak Park because of Redevelopment, but Oak Park has some problems beyond Aunt Maisie feeling uncomfortable, and it especially had some problems in the '80s. Skid Row isn't just hardworking non-whites who make Aunt Maisie feel uncomfortable. Irvine is pretty solidly Aunt Maisie approved suburb. It's also full of non-whites.
For all that you champion it, central Sacramento is pretty pasty white these days. That's not uncommon in a lot of inner cities. If you want diversity, try West Sacramento, South Sacramento, South Natomas, or Elk Grove.
East Sacramento and Land Park were pre-WWII streetcar suburbs, not auto suburbs, and they were built about the same time as Oak Park, although Oak Park was never quite as wealthy as the other two neighborhoods. The kind of disposable neighborhoods I'm talking about are primarily the product of the post-WWII era, especially the 1960s and later. During the redevelopment era it became an unofficial depository for many of those displaced from the West End, with the result of increased poverty and lowered property values, because redlining (rules that based credit risk on neighborhood race) was still very much in effect. Poverty in Oak Park became a self-fulfilling prophecy--people's lives and livelihoods were disrupted, resulting in a loss of economic power. Lack of money and ability to reinvest had a negative effect on the built environment--as did redevelopment agencies' idea that demolishing buildings was better than letting them sit vacant, resulting in large vacant zones of bulldozed former buildings, gaping holes in the suburban fabric.
The displacements of redevelopment happened mostly in the 1950s and 1960s. Along with the freeways that cut off Oak Park from wealthier areas and job centers, the neighborhood fell into steeper decline in the 1970s and 80s.
"Skid Row" as you call it was a couple of blocks in the old West End on Second Street, in what is now Old Sacramento--a tiny fraction of the overall redevelopment area, and the last part to be redeveloped. Again, redevelopment didn't solve the problem--the migrant workers left town, but not the retirees, disabled, and the winos. They moved uptown to the remaining residential hotels along the K Street mall--not because the city designated that part of the city a low-income housing zone, but because the private property owners who owned those hotels had to fill beds somehow.
Sacramento's downtown workforce and nightlife zones look pretty pasty white, depending on the club, but most of those folks don't live here--and, of course, most of our suburbs are very white indeed. If you look at the nonwhite percentages via the 2012 American Community Survey or 2010 Census for central city housing tracts, it's about 44% nonwhite. Some folks posting here have thrown around the racial breakdowns for the 95816 ZIP code, which is the eastern third of the central city the "whitest" part) and the western half of lily-white East Sacramento, which gives a distorted picture of the grid.
44% non-white = 56% white, which is more than 20% more white people than the rest of the city. As of 2010 census the city of Sacramento is around 35% white, so if central city is 56% white that is significantly whiter than the rest of the city as a whole.
According to that data, the City of Sacramento had less White residents in 2010 than they did in 1980! There were 200,000 less people in Sacramento in 1980! If the central city is 56% white that means that it is a significantly white neighborhood for this city! And Land Park/East Sacramento are even whiter than that!
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