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Yes, i know this building now, just a couple of weeks ago I noticed it and I was impressed. Great location if you work downtown. I personally would not like the lack of light, the idea of jail behind me is kind of weird, sercurity camera from the Fed Courthouse might detour street thief though. Interesting history, definitely should be saved.
It's shaded in the morning but in the afternoon it gets a lot of sun, and the big windows on the back wall (it's a modern metal and glass framework following the design cues of the original building) help let in more light. With suitable insulation (and the natural advantages of a stone/terra cotta building designed to resist gunfire) the noise from the jail shouldn't be too bad. And it's a nice piece of architecture.
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I suspect some type of exterior changes occurred throughout its history, love the size and silhouette and the ivy growing on it. Does it have an interesting history? It should be saved, but who will pay for it?
Exterior changes on commercial buildings happen all the time. I'm not sure whether the exterior was originally stucco or not, but it wasn't uncommon to treat a building exterior that way. It's already being paid for by the developer, so that question has already been answered--a combination of low-income housing tax credits and private financing.
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Who wants to live in 400sq feet?
Lots of singles and even young couples who live a downtown/urban lifestyle. You have noted the comparative urbanity of Sacramento's past in other posts--the folks who lived in small efficiency apartments were the young and ambitious who wanted direct access to city amenities but more privacy and comforts than a working-class residential hotel. Sure, your apartment is small, but you probably don't spend much time there. Suburban houses are huge with huge yards because they are designed to be totally self-contained and isolated. Urban housing doesn't need nearly as much space because it's so much easier to spend time in the neighborhood. Instead of backyard barbecues and having friends over for dinner and drinks, you hang out with your friends at local restaurants and bars. You don't need a big garage filled with power tools if you don't have a lawn and house to maintain. Young ambitious professionals tend to spend a lot of time advancing their careers, so home is just a place to hang your hat between business deals. Young aimless lounge lizards don't spend much time at home--the Marc Almond song "The Bedsitter" tells it best, but the archetypal club kid spends as little time at home as possible, and as little time at work as possible. A cheap, minimal apartment is ideal because rent and maintenance are both very low. The rest of the time is spent going out to clubs, hanging out at parties and cafes, and generally being that "vibrant street life" that people talk about. If everyone in your downtown sits at home and never goes out, there isn't much pedestrian activity. But people don't move downtown to take it easy.
That's as true now as it was 100 years ago, or 20 years ago, in downtown Sacramento. Another recent proposal for 15th and I Street (on the far edge of the CBD) is for a 7-story residential tower consisting entirely of ~500 sf apartments. They will have bike lockers downstairs but no parking structure. The developer is arranging entirely private financing.
And 400-500 square feet is pretty generous compared to recent developments in San Francisco, where the city recently approved "micro-apartments" as small as 250 sf.
Nightmare situation of why people think Sacramento can't get anything done. Why are you so big on low income housing? Big heart? Yes, limited income folks need a place to live, a nice decent place to live.
But how do you answer to the folks who live in the same building who have to pay 35% more for the same place and have to live with (some) folks who don't work and live off the cheap in the same place as you or I would live.
It's not exclusive to Sacramento, the end of redevelopment agencies and resulting political fallout has resulted in stalled projects all throughout the state.
As to low-income housing, that's the nice thing about smaller apartments: they are inherently cheaper than bigger apartments. That allows affordability by design. Mixed-income housing is important because the jobs in downtown Sacramento are equally "mixed-income": you can make six-figure salaries working for a tech company or bank, mid-range income as a professional working for the state or a bank or the nonprofit sector, or lower incomes working in a boutique or restaurant but enough to get by. If the housing in a neighborhood reflects the available incomes, then you don't end up with the ridiculous situation of people who work in a yogurt shop commuting downtown from Carmichael because it's the only place where they can afford the rent--but spending a lot more money on a car, gas and parking than a professional who lives above the yogurt shop and bikes to her office. It's also better from an environmental perspective--more mixed-income housing equals shorter commutes and less energy consumption (the #1 thing you can do to lower your carbon footprint is a shorter commute. The #2 thing is live in a smaller house. Energy-efficient cars and "green" suburban houses are a distant #3 and #4.)
Some folks don't work, but they are still economic actors: retired seniors and folks on disability still spend money, interact with the neighborhood (that "life on the street") and even spend time hanging out in cafes and participating in cultural events. Midtown is a perfect example of the positives of a mixed-income neighborhood: a high proportion of those in or near the central city also work there, and it's not uncommon for minimum wage workers in studio apartments to live on the same block as highly paid professionals in very expensive houses. If someone really wants to live in a neighborhood where everyone is upper middle class and you never interact socially with poor folk like the kid who works at Starbucks, they can always choose El Dorado Hills or Gold River.
Oh yeah, below is an example of what can happen in a heavy rain year along I-5:
Do you happen to know the year this was taken? I'm squinting a bit at the cars--maybe 60s or 70s? It's also striking that I don't see nearly as much traffic control as I'd expect. Looks like a roadblock on front st, but nothing that seems to control access to the freeway. Also notable is that there isn't much traffic. Closing that section of I-5 would cause unthinkable traffic issues.
It's a pretty amazing shot. That section makes me glad I don't have to drive to work. It really does get bad during storms, even today. My fiance has had a couple sketchy encounters there, like a brief hydroplane, while surrounded by traffic, with windshield wipers barely keeping up with the rain. She's since announced that she plans to work from home during wet weather whenever possible.
Do you happen to know the year this was taken? I'm squinting a bit at the cars--maybe 60s or 70s? It's also striking that I don't see nearly as much traffic control as I'd expect. Looks like a roadblock on front st, but nothing that seems to control access to the freeway. Also notable is that there isn't much traffic. Closing that section of I-5 would cause unthinkable traffic issues.
It's a pretty amazing shot. That section makes me glad I don't have to drive to work. It really does get bad during storms, even today. My fiance has had a couple sketchy encounters there, like a brief hydroplane, while surrounded by traffic, with windshield wipers barely keeping up with the rain. She's since announced that she plans to work from home during wet weather whenever possible.
Great photo find, Burg. I love that photo.
Ryuns, I was wondering the year too, I say early 80's. Notice neither of the two PERS buildings are there, there is a huge building in the space that is now a huge parking lot across from the newer PERS building. Notice the huge oil tank thing what an eyesore.
I'm trying to find the historic tree that the nimby-nazi obstructionist cried about during the Crocker expansion.
Awww, we were getting along so well and Chimerique has to start dropping N-bombs! Invoking Godwin's Law on this thread.
The tank on the right is a PG&E gas storage tank--there were a couple more across Front Street, dating from when "illumination gas" was manufactured on this site to light Sacramento's streetlights and gas lamps. I guess I'm more partial to industrial architecture, it doesn't look any worse than any other large industrial structure to me.
I think the photo is from the late 1970s--the waterfront warehouses on the far left burned down in the early 1980s, and the condos at 2nd and P are under construction, but the mid-1970s "brutalist" extension of the Crocker has already been built. The fact that there is no access control, not even barricades, may indicate that this was taken right as the incident was occurring, perhaps before emergency responders had time to block access.
Awww, we were getting along so well and Chimerique has to start dropping N-bombs! Invoking Godwin's Law on this thread.
I couldn't help myself! Nimby-Socialist, is that better?
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Originally Posted by wburg
The fact that there is no access control, not even barricades, may indicate that this was taken right as the incident was occurring, perhaps before emergency responders had time to block access.
As to low-income housing, that's the nice thing about smaller apartments: they are inherently cheaper than bigger apartments. That allows affordability by design. Mixed-income housing is important because the jobs in downtown Sacramento are equally "mixed-income": you can make six-figure salaries working for a tech company or bank, mid-range income as a professional working for the state or a bank or the nonprofit sector, or lower incomes working in a boutique or restaurant but enough to get by. If the housing in a neighborhood reflects the available incomes, then you don't end up with the ridiculous situation of people who work in a yogurt shop commuting downtown from Carmichael because it's the only place where they can afford the rent--but spending a lot more money on a car, gas and parking than a professional who lives above the yogurt shop and bikes to her office.
Some folks don't work, but they are still economic actors: retired seniors and folks on disability still spend money, interact with the neighborhood (that "life on the street") and even spend time hanging out in cafes and participating in cultural events. Midtown is a perfect example of the positives of a mixed-income neighborhood: a high proportion of those in or near the central city also work there, and it's not uncommon for minimum wage workers in studio apartments to live on the same block as highly paid professionals in very expensive houses.
I get it. All well and good. This is one of the reasons why I used to live in San Francisco and West Hollywood & Hollywood, and why we love Manhattan, Brooklyn, and European cities. Yes, Hollywood & West Hollywood are very dense and walkable and when you work 1/8 of a mile from where you live, LA becomes a whole different animal.
West Hollywood is one of my favorite parts of LA County to visit. Their population density is 28 people per acre, about the same as the denser parts of midtown Sacramento today. The Los Angeles region has some nice pockets of density and walkability, but overall, downtown Sacramento actually has a higher rate of people who live in or near downtown and work within the same general neighborhood--around 28%. That's a comparatively high number for the west coast: Los Angeles has multiple major employment nodes, the biggest is downtown where about 20% live and work in the same general area, and other southern California downtowns (and sub-downtown employment centers) go much lower from there--more like 10%. So it can actually be harder in a city like Los Angeles to live and work in a short radius, especially if one is (for example) an entry-level worker whose job is in a very expensive neighborhood, but it also happens for higher-paid professions who get tied into a suburban home because there wasn't enough housing in downtown Los Angeles until the city started making it easier to build condos in vacant office buildings.
Ok confession time: I HATE Old Sacramento. Hate it. Think the places is a worthless old tourist trap. Yes there is some cool stuff there, and I had plenty of fun times there as a kid, but past the age of 12 the place has little to no value.
I really wish that the city would turn Old Sac into a center for nightlife of some kind. Maybe Front Street could be Sacramento's version of Bourbon Street. I like a lot of the architecture that's there and a lot of it wouldn't need to change. Just get rid of or fix up the raised wood plank sidewalks and the cobblestone streets and spruce the place up a bit. Kick out all of those stupid gimmick tourist trap mom and pop ships and make Old Sac the new center for nightlife and we would be much better off.
Now I know people are going to come back with "Oh but Fanny Anne's and that random old Irish Pub are there so there is nightlife!" No. Most of those places are ****, and a couple of old bars doesn't count as nightlife. I'm talking about turning it into a nightlife district like Bourbon Street. Put some housing and more restaurants in there, maybe a small grocery store of some kind, and now we have a neighborhood that locals actually use and want to go to.
Bourbon Street wasn't designed to be a nightlife district--it is first and foremost a neighborhood, and the nightlife appeared organically. While I agree that Old Sacramento could use more housing and stores to serve residents, I don't see much point to tearing out the sidewalks and covering the cobblestones. Old Sacramento succeeds as a tourist destination, whether or not you like it, Chimerique. It also succeeds as a location for all sorts of festivals and public events, all year long. Could it be better? Sure. If you don't like it enough, tough. There are plenty of other places for you to have some nightlife, not every inch of the central city is your personal playground and vomit trough.
There are around half a dozen nightclubs in Old Sacramento right now, not counting Fanny Ann's and the random old Irish pub (and it was a nightclub not too many years ago.) It's not Bourbon Street, but really nowhere else on Earth is Bourbon Street, and Louisiana has very different laws and attitudes about things like mass public drunkenness (they have drive through daquiri places, for crying out loud) and a much greater tolerance for that level of mayhem. There were times over the past 40 years when there were bigger efforts to turn Old Sacramento into a more dedicated nightlife area, but the results were not very successful, in part because a dedicated zone like that turns into a mayhem zone. Case in point: New Year's Eve, 2012.
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