Riverside and Broadway (Sacramento, Oak Park: real estate, 2013, apartments)

[Majin]

Does anybody have any explanation for the shenanigans at this corner? Why is there a target there with a parking lot the size of Kansas? How in the world did this suburban monstrosity get approved at this intersection (ib4wburg) and was this during Fargo's watch (I'm going to guess yes). What was there before target or in previous decades?

There is nothing on the Broadway stretch that even remotely resembles this, as nearly everything else on Broadway from Seavey Circle to Oak Park has no parking/no setback or a relatively small parking lot (except for the DMV headquarters, which the city has no control over).

Is it possible to get this Suburban Trash ED'ed and leveled? I could see some midrise condos and ground floor retail there while breaking up the superblock and re-gridding it into land park to add more through streets.

[NickB1967]

Nope, a shopping center here dates from 1960, long before Heather Fargo. As for "re-gridding it into Land Park", it never *was* part of that grid.

Before 1960, it was a minor league ball team's park, the Sacramento Solons, before the RiverCats, no less:

Sacramento Then and Now: Four Videos on Sacramento History

Baseball Sacramento - Corner_Sacramento_Ballparks

Sacramento Solons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Once again, perhaps you ought to direct your hopes toward lots that are vacant, right now, before trying to raze a parcel that actually is a productive and thriving store.

[cb73]

That was Gemco. Everybody went there for everything. They even had a little office in the back where you could write a check for cash--long before ATM's.

That store was so busy I remember driving up and down the aisles on Saturday morning looking for a place to park and complaining that the parking lot should have been bigger.

[ryuns]

I hate to admit it, but it's definitely an area that's otherwise underserved by something like Target, even though the grocery section is fairly small. I do agree that the parking lot is monstrously oversized. Would rather see them closer to the intersection with parking behind or below. Broadway, in general, is fairly unwelcoming to anyone outside of a car. (And I don't mean this just in terms of non-drivers. I mean, it's just not a pleasant street to walk or bike down or across, however you end up getting there.) There are proposals to make it more pedestrian-friendly, but it's hard to do that without stripping out a traffic lane, and Broadway does get heavy traffic, so they'll probably be met with plenty of resistance.

As for condos, there are plenty of blighted properties that seem like much lower hanging fruit. There's also a finite amount of demand, and the NW Land Park project will be eating up a lot of it.

[Majin]

Originally Posted by ryuns

I mean, it's just not a pleasant street to walk or bike down or across, however you end up getting there.) There are proposals to make it more pedestrian-friendly, but it's hard to do that without stripping out a traffic lane, and Broadway does get heavy traffic, so they'll probably be met with plenty of resistance.

Agreed. Although Broadway is lined with zero setback shops and small/no parking lots, it somehow still manages to be extremely pedestrian/bike friendly with it's crappy sidewalks and high speed car traffic.

Do you have a link to any of the proposals? I haven't seen any.

And traffic be-damned, they they need to do is get rid of one lane of traffic in each direction, widen the sidewalks and give them vertical curbs, and add a bike line in both directions, with separate paint like they have on Capitol mall. If the car drivers don't like it, they can go to Natomas.

Originally Posted by ryuns

As for condos, there are plenty of blighted properties that seem like much lower hanging fruit. There's also a finite amount of demand, and the NW Land Park project will be eating up a lot of it.

Any suburban development is a "blighted property" in my opinion. Tear it down. Midrise condos are not the same market as anything built in Land Park.

[xeney]

And then everyone in the central city can drive to Natomas when they need to buy towels. I'm not a huge fan of Target but I do shop at that one fairly often, and it's consistently very busy.

I am with you on resistance to suburbanizing downtown, but not everything needs to be condos or a music venue or a place to drink beer. People live here, we need to buy stuff, and not everything we need to buy is going to come from a cute little storefront on J Street.

[Majin]

Originally Posted by xeney

And then everyone in the central city can drive to Natomas when they need to buy towels. I'm not a huge fan of Target but I do shop at that one fairly often, and it's consistently very busy.

I am with you on resistance to suburbanizing downtown, but not everything needs to be condos or a music venue or a place to drink beer. People live here, we need to buy stuff, and not everything we need to buy is going to come from a cute little storefront on J Street.

You don't need a huge suburban store to meet daily needs such as paper towels, but I wouldn't opposse 1 or two big grocery/utilities stores in the central city. They development just needs to be urban in design and not built on a superblock with a suburban parking lot.

[wburg]

What's with all this "ib4wburg" stuff? You're the original poster, nobody is in before you--do you suffer from premature recapitulation?

As already mentioned above, before it was a Target, this location was a Gemco, and before that it was a baseball field where the Solons played. It didn't need a parking lot when it was a baseball field because there were a bunch of streetcar lines that ran there. But because we don't have a streetcar network, or a full-time public transit system, and Sacramento was largely planned (if you can use the term) by real estate developers who thought the car was the perfect way for everyone to get around, places like Target all have gigantic parking lots in front. A lot of central city residents go to Target, but their primary market is Land Park, which is primarily a low-density neighborhood of single-family suburban homes and small apartments, about half the density of Midtown. The lower the density, the less useful public transit is, and the less likely one is to see urban-style design.

There was some talk about rebuilding this location into a street-fronting "urban Target" (which still would have had a parking lot in the back) but the economic downturn put the kibosh on that plan.

[hydro]

Gemco was freaking awesome

[ryuns]

Originally Posted by Majin

Agreed. Although Broadway is lined with zero setback shops and small/no parking lots, it somehow still manages to be extremely pedestrian/bike friendly with it's crappy sidewalks and high speed car traffic.

Do you have a link to any of the proposals? I haven't seen any.

And traffic be-damned, they they need to do is get rid of one lane of traffic in each direction, widen the sidewalks and give them vertical curbs, and add a bike line in both directions, with separate paint like they have on Capitol mall. If the car drivers don't like it, they can go to Natomas.



Any suburban development is a "blighted property" in my opinion. Tear it down. Midrise condos are not the same market as anything built in Land Park.

I guess I wouldn't say "proposals", but Broadway is the subject of a lot of discussions and they have a small grant to do more proper planning and analysis. Broadway Vision Plan Grant - ULI Sacramento

I'm not sure how it will shake out on traffic, but the city is occasionally willing to increase peak-hour traffic to make streets better and safer. The Freeport road diet is going to lead to some minor increases in congestion and push more traffic to Land Park Dr and Franklin Blvd, but they're still doing it. I'd argue that east-west corridor is overbuilt for cars. 2 lanes each way at Broadway, 3 lanes for each W and X, plus the W-X freeway. I hate the idea that we should put up with an unpleasant urban environment 24 hours a day, simply because people have to work in one strict window of time, pushing all the traffic to rush hours.