Let's Demolish the Renaissance Tower (Sacramento, Arden-Arcade: rent, neighborhood, tenants)

[wburg]

Originally Posted by CeJeH

That reminds me of the idea to put a Super Wal-Mart in Downtown Plaza that floated around a few years back. That **** doesn't belong in the middle of a vibrant, urban metropolitan downtown. Put that **** in the ghetto or the suburbs.

You know who stopped that plan to put a Wal-Mart in Downtown Plaza? Heather Fargo.

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento...tent?oid=35789

On the TV show South Park, the townspeople burned the new Wal-Mart to the ground. In real-life Sacramento, Mayor Heather Fargo and her city-council cohorts simply badgered the giant retailer into submission.

You know who removed the city's ordinance putting modest limits on big-box stores like Wal-Mart? Kevin Johnson.

Sacramento City Council Eases Rules On Big-Box Stores « CBS Sacramento

The Sacramento City Council voted to make it easier for big-box stores to build inside Sacramento’s city limits. Reaction to the vote to repeal what some call a ban on the massive grocery retailers is fiery...The council vote came amid a call by one group for Mayor Kevin Johnson to recuse himself of the vote. Eric Sunderland filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission alleging Johnson has a conflict of interest in the vote after his charities received an alleged $600,000 from Walmart last year.

The mayor’s spokesman said the complaint has no merit and the mayor would not comment. Johnson voted to lift the ordinance against big-box stores. The new ordinance means superstores will not need to submit to an economic-impact analysis if they are part of a planned-unit development, if they are expanding to an already existing store, or if they are in an area called a food desert—where people have no options for groceries currently.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by Zeigzalar

In agreement with those who say we fill it (with something more reputable than a 99c store lol). Fully opposed to demolishing it. I love it. It's very distinct; one of the few predominantly glass buildings in our skyline.

Anyone who thinks I seriously want to demolish it is thinking too hard. I'm riffing on the posts being left by others here talking about "demolishing" things outright when what they really need is smarter use, not demolition. And in the case of the Renaissance Tower, a ground floor tenant would have important symbolic value. The status quo of the past decade, a cheesy supergraphic instead of a tenant, is unacceptable. If the owner and property management company had any interest in the health of downtown Sacramento, they would have made serious efforts to put a tenant there--like lowering the ground floor unit rent. If they're really 85% full they could afford to lower their overhead on that space in the interest of pedestrian activity and not making such a notable building look like a blank wall.

A food store is a worthwhile idea, but as I mentioned it might be logistically difficult. I imagine some use that serves the building as well as the neighborhood would be best, such as a restaurant, might be the simplest answer. The little third retail space on 8th Street seems like a good spot for a 24 hour convenience/sundries shop, something more like Famima!! than a 7-11 (now that we have a functioning 7-11 and people use it, the CVB and other downtown business groups may have loosened up their fear of late-night retail uses) but on K itself, something a bit more upscale seems in order--and a restaurant can also spill out onto the sidewalk, increasing pedestrian interest.

Out of curiosity, is the lobby open to the public? The Wells Fargo Building is open to anyone, but the CalEPA Building (my building), requires a state id card to enter, for instance. I want to see this 'utter disaster' for myself next week

I haven't been inside in a long time, but the lobby was public last time I checked. When KWOD was on the top floor I'd occasionally talk my way past the lobby guy by saying I had won tickets at the station as an excuse to ride the elevator up and enjoy the view from a vacant suite across the hall from the radio station. If you're wearing a suit and look halfway professional you can generally just walk on into any private building (and a lot of public ones) if you want to check out the sights from an altitude--but it's a shame that we have to go to such lengths. People assume that the view of Sacramento from that height isn't worth seeing, but it's quite the opposite--something like a skydeck or upper-floor bar/restaurant would go a long way toward encouraging that civic pride, at a low cost.

[Chimérique]

Originally Posted by CeJeH

Stores like Goodwill and Dollar Stores have no business being on the grid, especially not on K Street. 99 cent store in a high rise?!? That's the most backwater cow town thing I've ever heard.

I hear ya I was only being half-serious/joking. I was coming from the point-of-view that it's been vacant for the last 10yrs according to Burg, so I threw out what everyone in this "cowtown" seems to love - Dollar Stores and Goodwill!

However, your response is a bit extreme, I've seen all kinds of low-end retail stores in ground floor retail of highrises in the most sophisticated cities across the world; it's not backwater cowtown. Not all dollar stores look horrible, look at the one on S Street.

If K street was fully vibrant and leased out with a good mixture of mid-range retail, a few high-end retail, a clean well kept dollar store would not be such a bad thing. But, as it stands now, a dollar store would just add to the low class/ghetto look.

It was my idea to make it a small size Grocery Store to cater to the potential large influx of new and converted mid-range to high-end high-density residential that is supposed be build in the next 5-10 years.
Something along the lines of a Grocery Outlet, or a mini Safeway/Ralphs, Nugget, Whole Foods.

[wburg]

It has been a couple of years, but one of the tenants D&S was looking for in the 700 block was a small "corner store" type of grocer. For something closer to a full-size grocery store, the ideal might be something like the Safeway across from the San Francisco Caltrain terminal, as the ground floor of a residential condo.

The problem with an office building is that, for the most part, everyone goes home at 5 PM and the doors lock, meaning that even a 100% occupied office building looks just as empty and boring as a vacant building with nobody but bats inside. I suppose that the Darth Vader Building (and personally I think the nickname comes from the large contingent of science fiction fans we have in Sacramento) might want to open up their parking lot to arena visitors in the evening, meaning they have even more reason to put retail uses that are open in the evening into their ground floor. Businesses that stay open in the evening (and not just restaurants and bars, but retail stores) make a street safer by promoting pedestrian activity and just from keeping the lights on.

But there is still no good reason why they haven't even tried to lure a ground floor tenant. They don't have the excuse of being a building controlled by a state agency that doesn't care about Sacramento's street life, it's a private sector building. The only excuse is their unwillingness to participate in downtown Sacramento's pedestrian experience in favor of a tax write-off on the vacant space.

[Malloric]

Uh, that's how the private sector works wburg. It's always how it's worked. I mean, life is easier if you're the state/city and can just throw money in the toilet hoping to make Welfare Street have a vibrant nightlife with one arm while the other requires ID badges, but the private sector generally just don't give away $20 million so an Ed Hardy-themed pizzeria can be bribed to open shop. Welfare Street has tons of vacant stores and empty lots. At least Renaissance Tower is half occupied on the ground floor and serves some purpose. I mean, I fully understand how much cooler it is to throw money at Welfare Street that will never be recovered so you can have an Ed Hardy Pizza than an office building that "creates" a hundred times more jobs and everything, but there's still better targets on Welfare Street. Or maybe not. It is a bank that occupies part of ground floor. Evil corporatist supporters and all that jazz.

[anderscl]

I'm not sure that if you're complaining about dumping $20 million of unrecoverable money into the Pizza Rock on "welfare street" your example of the "private sector" at work in downtown should be a bank that only exists because it was seized by the Federal government and resold to J.P. Morgan Chase for a fraction of its previous value during one of the worst private/public finance meltdowns in American history.

*Edit*--Or maybe that is your point about the bank?

[Malloric]

Should I change "my example" to one that doesn't reflect the facts because it will make a better example? Chase is what occupies the the ground floor of the Renaissance Tower. I don't even know that it's my example. The rest of the building also is mostly government offices, which doesn't particularly suit what I think you perceive is "my example" either. That's just the facts of the situation, however. Downtown Sacramento is a government town with little in the way of private enterprise, and while I'm all for encouraging business. I just don't think throwing money at Welfare Street for an Ed Hardy-themed pizza joint is the best way of doing it. There isn't really a huge need for more Class A office space. It's still a soft market although improved slightly from 2010 which was the weakest the downtown office market got.

Still, not even the government has hundreds of millions of free money from the state to throw at Redevelopment (at least for now), so tearing down a building that actually has a useful purpose (even if it's not a sexy nightlife use which is all that matters to some) is rather stupid when so much of Welfare Street is currently useless and abandoned, much of it owned by the city.

[wburg]

Redevelopment as we knew it doesn't exist anymore, the redevelopment agencies have been dissolved.

[NorCal Dude]

Fargoites like wburg do not understand how the economy works.

Once the mall is bulldozed, an arena put in its place, the adjacant 700 block will be redeveloped, the space will be viable.

No one wants to open a business on wino street. Get a clue and a real vision for downtown.

[wburg]

The redevelopment of the 700 block has nothing to do with arena plan, or with the presence of Renaissance Tower--it's basically the last redevelopment project, the only piece missing was the state's agreement that it was an enforceable obligation. And plenty of other people have opened businesses on K Street and Kay-adjacent over the past few years, without public subsidy: Mother, Darna, Downtown & Vine, Mayahuel, Sharif Jewelers, Blackbird (who closed but reopened already) and the Ruhstaller tap room. The Renaissance Tower's failure to prioritize a ground floor tenant in their feature space (not the bank space, but the highly visible K Street facing) is their own personal failure--the old-fashioned assumption that "the bottom line is the bottom line," that business has no responsibility to their community or their city.