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The water level at Folsom Damn puts financial limits on widespread development above that water line. For properties below the water level at Folsom, you can rely on gravity from Folsom to supply water fairly cheaply to those areas. But for land above the water level at Folsom you need to either pump the water uphill which is expensive the further uphill you pump it or you have to rely on surface supplies (which are much less reliable) and/or wells to insure water supply for new development. This is why John Doolittle was pushing so hard for an Auburn Damn. If a damn was ever built in Auburn lots of land that currently is pasture for cows instantly becomes much more valuable agricultural land. Moreover, lots of that land could also be turned into cities. Water pricing is also why development has pushed out along the highway 65 corridor instead of continuing along 80 up through Loomis/Newcastle.
What limits growth in El Dorado County is the cost of water. El Dorado County and even Granite Bay probably won't get much tract housing because of cost of pumping water above water level at Folsom.
Back to the Railyards: Maybe you're not there the same time I am. The vehicles constantly parked in back of the Paint Shop aren't using it as a commuter parking lot, they are working inside the buildings doing toxics abatement and the first steps of rehab/preservation. That work is going on right now, but obviously it's a bit hard to see, because it is mostly indoors. I don't expect to see many new buildings built in the next 5 years, but then I didn't say there would be. Streets, relocated track, and water/sewer/electrical infrastructure, yes.
I hope you're right, I'd really like to see the project come off. However, I have a lot of concerns when I read Railyards articles and I see these types of comments:
- Thomas' local representative Totah described the failure to pay December's bill as nothing more than an oversight.
- Thomas initially appealed the reassessment but has withdrawn the appeal, Totah said. A contract company for Thomas mistakenly filed the appeal, he said.
Sacramento railyard developer says it has check for tax bill - Sacramento City News - sacbee.com (http://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/10/2668576/sacramento-railyard-developer.html?storylink=lingospot_top2#ixzz0koTBt DLa - broken link)
For a company that has major projects going bankrupt, and is generally down to a single major project, those are pretty significant "mistakes".
The Railyards Developer Files for Bankruptcy Protection on Three Projects - Sacramento Bankruptcy Lawyer Blog (http://www.sacramentobankruptcylawyerblog.com/2010/01/the-railyards-developer-files.html - broken link)
Construction costs are higher when building at higher densities. If land costs are high enough what you save by utilizing land at higher intensities makes up for the higher construction costs. This is why at the peak of the housing bubble developers were introducing plans for 60 story skyscrapers.
But the high real estate prices during that period weren't sustainable and they are big part of the reason the region is has been hit so hard by the most recent recession.
The question to me that I don't think anyone really knows is when we come out of this recession what is the new stable equilibrium in housing prices levels to income. Right now the cost of buildable lots is getting really cheap and we still aren't seeing that much new home construction even at these price levels.
Tim Lewis communities just paid 3.7 million for 226 lots thats $16,000 per lot.
In Roseville the month before, Westpark Associates paid $10 million for land approved to build 4,000 homes that is roughly $2500 a lot.
In past recessions one of the things that pulled down the unemployment rate was when housing prices got cheap enough where employers decided to start relocating from outside of the region to Sacramento where when housing prices were cheap, there employees could then afford to buy a home. At the peak of the housing boom, the opposite thing was occurring, the big local employers like HP and Intel were putting up caps on the size of there Sacramento area facilities, saying they wanted to direct internal growth to cheaper locations outside of California.
Mortgage rates are going up right now even though unemployment in Sacramento is still well north of 12%. So I think that means continued weakness in the local housing market for the foreseeable future and I suspect housing prices are going to have to fall further to bring down the local unemployment rate.
As prices hit this new equilibrium rate, I wonder if it will still pencil out for the developers to build in the railyards at the densities they were previously talking about or whether Thomas Enterprises need to see some sort of return on their investment and city managers desire to see something get built out on in the railyards means that the city manager starts permitting amending the plan the way the city manager started allowing amendments to the Natomas plan.
Ya know, I almost wish that the twin towers and other large condo developments had made had been slammed through before the meltdown, even if a good portion of them sat uninhabited afterwards. At least the city would resemble a desitnation from 10 miles away driving West on the 50.
This city is severely lacking in character and is littered with eyesoares. I had high hopes for the Railyards as well, and can still here, "and we can build this dream together" playing on the RY website. But, the meltdown has all but killed that.
We'll be looking at a flat, unihabited rusty yard 5 years from now with the same two bulldozers sitting half rusted in the same spot they are now.
What a shame that a city with a metro area of 2 mil+ people, sitting right on a river, makes a professional basketball team play in a glorified barnyard with an old, dilapodated railyard in the distance.
This the only waterfront city I've ever been to of its' size that does not have a vibrant and developed waterfront/marina area. The city of Petaluma has a better restaurant/marina in its' new theatre district than this city.
And for those that cry about levies and flooding, my response is to go look at the pyramid and 18 story CalStrs building. They didn't seem too concerned about flooding and are doing just fine where they sit.
The Railyards specific plan doesn't call for 100% skyscrapers, nor even a significant percentage. The current plan calls for adaptive reuse of the existing buildings, and the primarily residential areas along the "alley parks" were planned for height maximums of about 75-150 feet. For an idea of how they would look, stop at L Street and 19th. The two SKK projects there (the 1801 L Street apartments and the L Street lofts) are pretty much exactly the kind of development planned for most of the Railyards.
For the most part the planned development is low to mid-rise multi-unit housing, with densities pretty similar to that seen in parts of Midtown.
And remember, we're not talking about right now--we're talking about 5-25 years from now. Right now is a good time to draw up plans, build infrastructure, and get things ready for the next wave--which is exactly what they're doing in the Railyards right now.
casportsfan: West Sacramento is just as concerned about flooding as we are, if not more so--they are surrounded by water on two sides! The CalSTRS and former Money Store ziggurat (before the Money Store ran out of money) are built well above the flood line, so yes, they did consider that when building out. Both cities have made extensive use of their waterfronts over the past 150 years, we just chose to demolish our waterfront industrial development rather than utilize it (although so did West Sacramento.) Plenty of cities did the same thing during the redevelopment area--they would put freeways on the waterfront, demolish the old industrial buildings, and otherwise pretend that they didn't exist during the era when "city" was a four-letter word.
The city of Sacramento didn't "make" the Kings play in Arco Arena, the owner of the team at the time advocated to allow construction of Arco there in order to force the conversion of that agricultural land into suburbs, thus making money. Nobody's "forcing" them to stay there, but the current owners of the team aren't willing to pay the money to move them to another part of town.
The long-distance view of a city is a lot less important than how it looks on the ground, from the street, especially from the sidewalk. In that sense, Sacramento's central city is a pretty great place.
But...the vast majority of the financial benefits associated with the projects results from the 2 million sq ft of office space and 1.4 million sq ft of retail development. From the project analysis documents (pg 27):
Larger General Fund surpluses are expected during Phases 1B and 2, when the Project's development will consist primarily of regional-serving retail land uses. Starting at Phase 3 through buildout, reduced surpluses are estimated. The reduced surpluses are the result of two main influences, the increased development of residential land uses during Phase 3 and 4, which produces a lower fiscal gain relative to retail land uses, and...the Railyards Fire Station.
I think focusing on the housing and public transportation expansion kind of misses the main justification for the project. Without the office space (2 million ft) and retail (1.4 million ft) the project has no/little economic benefit.
As I stated in an earlier posting, with the current very high office and retail vacancy rates, I see very little current momentum for this project.
Last edited by NewToCA; 04-11-2010 at 04:16 PM..
Reason: corrected retail footage to match referenced study (tables A-2 and B-2)
But...the residential component is what is most likely going to be needed to catalyze the office and retail development. Midtown has gone leaps and bounds beyond downtown Sacramento primarily because, in addition to becoming a destination for retail, entertainment and offices, it is also a residential neighborhood. Downtown, on the other hand, has higher height limits but very limited residential options, and has been lagging behind Midtown for decades in the public eye despite its skyscrapers and proximity to the corridors of power. Yes, building residential urban neighborhoods is expensive and less profitable and comes with all sorts of baggage, but it is one of the catalysts that will make a city possible. Midtown's businesses are both neighborhood-serving and regional-serving in nature: residents utilize them, and they are also a regional draw. Get rid of one or the other and it becomes much harder to break even.
There's a difference between straight bottom-line "economic benefit" and what is best for a city's growth and development in the long term. Watching the close-up bottom line but not the big picture is penny-wise and pound-foolish, and is the kind of mindset that created the current economic crisis in the first place.
That is not the full story either. Before the Kings came to town the Sacramento Sports Association made several attempts to bring professional sports to Sacramento, but the problem was there wasn't a strong enough corporate base in the area to make it happen with out government support and the local politicians looked at polling showing that while the locals wanted professional sports in the area, they didn't want to pay taxes for it. But as often is the case in this town, developers and the city came up with a program to make it happen and both sides were more than willing participants. If the city would rezone ag land that Greg Lukenbill had bought options on, then he would buy a team and relocate it to Sacramento. That was exactly what happened. It also happened that most of the local political establishment including Bob Matsui had ownership shares in some of the other investment trusts that had bought up options in the area proposed for rezoning -which greatly greased the wheel.
But Mayor Rudin wanted to pitch this as a completely private sector endeavor with no public involvement, so Lukenbill not only had to buy the team he had to build the original temporary
Arena and then the more permanent Arena which he did and that went up where it was cheapest to do.
Now after this arena was built and the property subdivided and sold off, later this area was once again redeclared a flood zone and an assessment was placed upon households in the area to build new flood protection levies. Moreover the cost of this levee assessment was many times over the cost of just having the city build an arena and even just buying the Kings outright.
I point this history out here, because this history has repeated itself a couple of times. When the Kings were having financial problems and talked about needing to move, Joe Serna stepped in with a city guaranteed no interest loan. The flood protection status of the levies in Natomas has been changed a couple of times to suit the needs of the developers and the financial interests of the politicians who participate as limited partners in these development projects and its never actually clear how adequate flood protection Natomas will ever be. The current deal to build the Kings a new arena in Sacramento is financed by another development scheme. There really isn't an arm's length relationship between the Kings and local government.
Ya know, I almost wish that the twin towers and other large condo developments had made had been slammed through before the meltdown, even if a good portion of them sat uninhabited afterwards. At least the city would resemble a desitnation from 10 miles away driving West on the 50.
If you're talking about the same twin towers we know, they are and have always been office buildings on which the state just spent untold millions getting rid of asbestos and retrofitting so they could remain state office buildings.
As for the skyline, coming into Sacramento from the 5 from the north or from the 80 over the Yolo Causeway, my wife and I always called it "Sacramento's ridiculous excuse for a skyline"
If you're talking about the same twin towers we know, they are and have always been office buildings on which the state just spent untold millions getting rid of asbestos and retrofitting so they could remain state office buildings.
As for the skyline, coming into Sacramento from the 5 from the north or from the 80 over the Yolo Causeway, my wife and I always called it "Sacramento's ridiculous excuse for a skyline"
No, he's talking about the Towers on Capitol Mall, a John Saca project for 3rd & Capitol (where the old Union building was) that started foundation construction but ran into money problems and fell through. They were supposed to be 53 stories each.
I've always kind of liked Sacramento's skyline, even back in the seventies when there was less of it. It's definitely neat to see at night, coming south on I-5 and riding the "boat section" through downtown with lit-up Old Sac and the river on one side and our constantly expanding selection of towers on the other.
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