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Sacramento is a poorly ran city like others have said.
They built SMF out in the fields. There is only one access point for travelers to enter the airport and that's through Interstate 5. The airport should have been built where the old Sleep Train Arena was at, right at the crossroads where I-5 and Business 80 meet, so there would have been multiple entrances. Maybe if the airport was closer we probably have light rail to the airport by now.
The Railyards is barely seeing development after decades of nothingness. Still waiting on the new I street bridge to break ground. Sacramento lost its chance at an MLS team, which means no new stadium. Really a black eye for the city.
The new Science Center is nice but does little to activate the area. There isn't any public transportation to get there. Plus not very walkable friendly if you want to go to the museum from downtown. They could have built it on one of those vacant lots on Capitol Mall near the Crocker Art Museum. There was a larger proposal for the museum but got downsized. The modern side of the museum looks tacky.
CSUS's location doesn't bother me much but I wish we had a UC Sacramento in the urban core. Or a private University like a USC, Stanford or USF type of school here.
K Street Mall still looks underwhelming. Boarded up storefronts, homelessness, hole in the ground parcels, etc.
The New Sacramento Convention Center renovation is half baked. Yes, big improvement on the K st and 15th St side, but the architect did very little to improve the look on the J St and 13 St side. It's an architectural disaster. Sacramento should demand the same standards and quality that SF, Denver or even Portland have. We shouldn't settle for sub par designs just because its Sacramento -- just look at all the 5- story residential projects popping up all over the central City. They all look the same.
And now the Sac Zoo is exploring moving to Elk Grove. You don't let a civic amenity move to the suburbs!
Anyway, at least the arena is nice.
Last edited by pistola916; 10-04-2021 at 12:00 AM..
OP, please make sure you see my Sacramento Standouts post on the first page. I'm a huge critic of the city but I'm also a booster because there is plenty to do in Sacramento and it a great area to live despite our recent problems, we, the citizens are as much of a problem with this "dysfunctional" system as the leaders because we keep voting in the same type of "leaders" year after year, decade after decade, and its getting worse.
There is plenty to do in Sacramento, just as much to do as you will find in the other cities the OP listed. You will meet some "jacky" characters and genuinely pleasant folks that you will enjoy.
Sacramento compared to:
Milwaukee - no Lake Michigan, no lake views or sailing on an ocean-like lake, no "urban" riverfront on the scale of the Milwaukees rivers. No unique big draw like the Harley-Davidson museum. But, in place of the Harley-Davidson museum and the Saarinen designed Milwaukee Art Museum, Sacramento has the Crocker Art Museum, Railroad Museum and a Science Center. Unfortunately, these museums have some homeless nearby that can dampen the experience to and fro.
And there is water-skiing and boating on the Sacramento River and suburban Folsom Lake. Rafting, Kayaking on the American River.
Sacramento does have a very small "urban" riverfront that is underdeveloped with great potential - Go into the Delta King Steamboat, have a drink at the bar. In December, you likely will see California Sea Lions on the Riverfront, that traveled 100 miles from the Ocean, up the Sacramento River to Sacramento. If you go at night directly across the Sacramento River is the Ziggurat Pyramid, hopefully lite.
Sacramento has very nice "suburban" bike trails on both the American and Sacramento Rivers, again the homeless can have an impact. Start east of Watt Ave on the American River, no homeless or very little.
"Visitors to California may not have Sacramento on their itinerary, but this hidden gem of a state capital has something to offer the entire family. The heart of the action is in Old Sacramento. There you will find great views of the river and can stroll down the boardwalk to partake in tasty eateries. Stop by galleries and museums like the California State Railroad Museum. Lovers of history can head downtown to check out Sutter's Fort, which is just a nugget’s throw away from the site of the discovery of gold that started the California gold rush.
If you are looking for excitement, then Midtown is the go-to place for you. It is home to a lively arts scene, with trendy galleries and clubs featuring live local musicians. Wine lovers will be in vino heaven. To find the right vintage for your taste, check out the Sacramento Wine Guide and head for a tour and a glass of the local fruit of the vine. If you need a family-friendly activity, the Sacramento Zoo and Fairytale Town are just around the corner."
Sacramento is a poorly ran city like others have said.
They built SMF out in the fields. There is only one access point for travelers to enter the airport and that's through Interstate 5. The airport should have been built where the old Sleep Train Arena was at, right at the crossroads where I-5 and Business 80 meet, so there would have been multiple entrances. Maybe if the airport was closer we probably have light rail to the airport by now.
THIS actually *was* a wise move on the part of the City of Sacramento.
Remember that back in 1967, when SMF opened, Supersonic passenger transport aircraft (SSTs) were still seen as economically feasible, and I suspect that is why SMF was put further out. (If only the Soviet Empire had collapsed sooner, Sacramento could have inherited McLellan and/or Mather for a song. Mather actually IS getting some use as a cargo airport).
If an airport is located too close to a city downtown, the kind of denser and taller developments downtowns often want are essentially blocked. See SAN Airport (Lindbergh Field) and SJC (Mineta Field) as
examples.
In fact, for noise abatement, San Jose had to remove a whole neighborhood under the SJC Airport approach zone; the area now contains U-Store-It warehouses and "The Guadalupe River Park and Gardens". These were numerous little cottage homes not unlike those in the midtown Sacramento area. And this in an area with some of the most expensive homes in the country already.
Denver moved its airport to the outskirts (and completely removed the old Stapleton Field) for just such a reason.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pistola916
The new Science Center is nice but does little to activate the area. There isn't any public transportation to get there. Plus not very walkable friendly if you want to go to the museum from downtown. They could have built it on one of those vacant lots on Capitol Mall near the Crocker Art Museum. There was a larger proposal for the museum but got downsized. The modern side of the museum looks tacky.
Grafting a modern building onto a relatively ancient one is always hard, but for the record, I like the expanded Crocker Museum.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pistola916
CSUS's location doesn't bother me much but I wish we had a UC Sacramento in the urban core. Or a private University like a USC, Stanford or USF type of school here.
CSUS's location actually DOES bother me a lot in retrospect. This actually was a mistake. It would have been ideal for the campus to have been expanded Post WW2 in the downtown area, as young adult students aren't looking for single family homes with yards and nice kiddie parks and school districts. See also Fresno State for a similar blunder.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pistola916
K Street Mall still looks underwhelming. Boarded up storefronts, homelessness, hole in the ground parcels, etc.
See above - K Street and vicinity could have been a swell site for CSUS buildings. Now I can't see anything working there other than maybe state office buildings, and for that matter 801 K ("The Darth Vader Building") can't seem to get tenants.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pistola916
And now the Sac Zoo is exploring moving to Elk Grove. You don't let a civic amenity move to the suburbs!
A modest proposal:
1. DON'T move the Zoo - move the golf course, and eliminate underutilized portions of Land Park. Then expand the Zoo or remodel it onto said areas. In this situation, there might also be room for Funderland or Fairytale Town improvements / expansions.
2. For the streetcar / trolley / electric rail enthuisasts, replace the Steam Train out of Old Sacramento with a historical streetcar or other electric railway, which would go between the Zoo and Old Sacramento. Could this be done in conjunction with the Western Electric Railway museum? http://www.wrm.org/
Well first off, there is stuff to do here. Problem is, most of it is stuff you could easily do in your hometown. Go out to a nice restaurant, go to a live music venue, a brewery, catch an NBA game, take a historic tour, a comedy show, check out some museums, etc. And like the majority of cities that are state capitals, we are kind of a one trick pony. I think our biggest mistake was not putting Sac State at the old fair grounds site where the med center now stands.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Valley Boy
Part of the problem is that Sacramento city and metro, until recently, was fairly small. In 1950 the entire county had a population of 277,000 people, with the city 137,000 people. So we were not a big city at all, and thus did not have much in the way of big city amenities. We did not even have a public university in town until 1947 - the vibrancy life-blood of many downtowns in capital cities.
Another drawback is that we sit in a flat valley between coastal areas and the Sierras. So we don't really have that stunning nature factor. If you get bored because San Diego lacks big city sunsets, you can still go for hike or have an epic day at the beach.
Some places are just like that, they are better places to live than they are to visit as a tourist.
I think the above is broadly accurate.
I will also add say you were in charge of a company building amusement parks and you were scouting a place in Northern California. There is roughly 10 million people in the Greater Bay Area and probably somewhere close to 2.5 million in the Greater Sacramento region depending on how you draw the lines. A larger chunck of your potential market is in the Bay Area vs Sacramento, during the peak summer season the climate is better closer to the ocean than to Sacramento. So if you look at where these amusement parks get built, it tends to be in places closer to the bay like Santa Clara and Vallejo then Sacramento. When amusement parks do get built in Sacramento they tend to just serve Sacramento and not all of Northern California, here I am thinking of Raging Waters/Golfland Sunsplash. They aren't trying to lure people in from the Bay Area as much as just give someone an opportunity to shop locallly. But I would say that this is the reason a place like Sacramento isn't getting all of the amusement parks that say San Antonio gets even though the San Antonio region and the Sacramento region are pretty comparable in population.
Going forward, the area has done pretty well promoting the local microbreweries. I don't smoke dope, but I do wonder if there is the possibility of positioning the area for some sort of cannabis related tourism along the same lines post covid where people would visit artisanal marijuana cafes. Davis already has a program for viticulture and enology, I am kind of wondering if one could apply a similar approach for growing and cultivating dope here too.
But I think the opportunity for Sacramento in tourism is going to go after new new industries.
OP,
Go into the "Bank" - downtown Sacramento, "J" Street and 7th street. It is a repurposed 1850's bank, Neo-classical architecture that now a houses a Food Hall, eateries and one really big bar, and an underground tap house where the Vault for the bank was located. The vault used to house Gold Rush era Gold during the 1849 gold rush.
I will also add say you were in charge of a company building amusement parks and you were scouting a place in Northern California. There is roughly 10 million people in the Greater Bay Area and probably somewhere close to 2.5 million in the Greater Sacramento region depending on how you draw the lines. A larger chunck of your potential market is in the Bay Area vs Sacramento, during the peak summer season the climate is better closer to the ocean than to Sacramento. So if you look at where these amusement parks get built, it tends to be in places closer to the bay like Santa Clara and Vallejo then Sacramento. When amusement parks do get built in Sacramento they tend to just serve Sacramento and not all of Northern California, here I am thinking of Raging Waters/Golfland Sunsplash. They aren't trying to lure people in from the Bay Area as much as just give someone an opportunity to shop locallly. But I would say that this is the reason a place like Sacramento isn't getting all of the amusement parks that say San Antonio gets even though the San Antonio region and the Sacramento region are pretty comparable in population.
Going forward, the area has done pretty well promoting the local microbreweries. I don't smoke dope, but I do wonder if there is the possibility of positioning the area for some sort of cannabis related tourism along the same lines post covid where people would visit artisanal marijuana cafes. Davis already has a program for viticulture and enology, I am kind of wondering if one could apply a similar approach for growing and cultivating dope here too.
But I think the opportunity for Sacramento in tourism is going to go after new new industries.
Well the Bay Area is probably more like 8 million, if you include outlying areas in the 209. But yeah, I mean all the stuff is already there in the bay. So from a market perspective, these companies know it is easier to lure Valleys to the Bay, versus Bay Areans to the Valley. It's the same reason you don't see these amenities in San Bernardino or Riverside Counties, despite there being 4 million people. They know these people will just drive into LA,OC,SD.
I think Sac just needs to work with the hand it was dealt. Places like Portland became cool, because they dug within and created their own scene. A big problem is that millennial, techie, work from home types finally arrived to Sacramento. Problem is, the oldest millennials are pushing 40 and most of them are families that came for the suburbs.
Midtown is doing just fine, and downtown still struggling. Don't get me wrong, the project they got going on at Capitol Towers is gonna be great, but everyone will just flock to R street. Much of the traditional west end has issues - there's tons of homeless tweaker/junkie/crack head types wandering around between Alchali Flat and K street that gives the area a sketch feel. J street has issues. There is just a lot of downtown that is just really run down.
In all honesty, I just don't think Sac ever really recovered from the loss of the Air Force bases and the aerospace contracting. That really just took a nasty chunk out of Sacs regional economy and it just never bounced back.
"Visitors to California may not have Sacramento on their itinerary, but this hidden gem of a state capital has something to offer the entire family. The heart of the action is in Old Sacramento. There you will find great views of the river and can stroll down the boardwalk to partake in tasty eateries. Stop by galleries and museums like the California State Railroad Museum. Lovers of history can head downtown to check out Sutter's Fort, which is just a nugget’s throw away from the site of the discovery of gold that started the California gold rush.
If you are looking for excitement, then Midtown is the go-to place for you. It is home to a lively arts scene, with trendy galleries and clubs featuring live local musicians. Wine lovers will be in vino heaven. To find the right vintage for your taste, check out the Sacramento Wine Guide and head for a tour and a glass of the local fruit of the vine. If you need a family-friendly activity, the Sacramento Zoo and Fairytale Town are just around the corner."
Great views of the river from Old Sac? LOL. Of what, the undeveloped bank on the other side? Give me a break. I would rather walk over the Rainbow Bridge in Fair Oaks. Old Sac is small, dumpy, and there is nothing their of particular valuer except the Railroad Museum (which is world class. Kudos! Something Sacto did right.) and the Delta King hotel and restaurant in an old steam boat. I used to love boat rides on the river. I don't remember if that was the Delta King or not.
It is possible the levee train is fun too. I never rode it, so I will leave that to others.
Now Midtown -- I will give you that. Midtown has become really great over the years and Sacto nightlife is massively better than when I was a young man in the 1980s and all we had was the Oasis Ballroom and a few other joints. Midtown is a huge improvement and getting better all the time. Job well done, Sacramento.
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