For today, instead of dwelling on failure in Sacramento, we focus instead on what is working.

Success here is too often overlooked in the daily drumbeat of negative news related to double-digit unemployment and political discord.

But success and progress are here and growing.

This week, after years of trying, Sacramento will celebrate moving the Greyhound bus station out of downtown and to a new location on Richards Boulevard.

The positive effect of this move cannot be understated. The bus depot has anchored a blighted stretch on L Street, which for years has seemed connected to a blighted stretch of K Street – the heart of downtown Sacramento.

Now the depot will be gone and hopefully replaced by a vibrant tenant. Within months, cars will return to K Street, and work is under way to finally begin redevelopment on the avenue's shuttered 700 block.

The 24-Hour Fitness right across from the 700 block of K Street will soon double in size, growing into the space once occupied by the Hard Rock Cafe. A brick exterior will be replaced with glass, which could transform a dead space into an intersection of new development facing a glass wall of people exercising inside a revamped fitness club.

Clearly, the withering of the Westfield Downtown Plaza must be addressed. But with every new project, momentum and energy build toward replacing boarded buildings with new entrepreneurs.

Sacramento now boasts an exciting culture of foodies. We grow food, we love food and wine. Corporate-run restaurants like the Hard Rock Cafe and California Pizza Kitchen were eaten alive by the furious food competition in urban Sacramento.

It's not just the restaurants: Ella, Grange, de Vere's, Kru, Red Lotus, Hot Italian and Zocalo, just to name a few. The restaurants and the names behind them – Randall Selland, Henry de Vere White, Andrea Lepore, Patrick Mulvaney and many others – are constantly hosting events and promoting the idea of life celebrated in food and drink. This movement is also in organic farms in West Sacramento, Davis and other nearby communities promoting the idea of sustainable, locally grown food.

This movement is all over the Internet in the foodie blogs, such as "Poor Girl Eats Well," by Kimberly Morales. It's in the mobile food trucks trying to secure their rights in Sacramento and in the hole-in-the-wall wonder of Chando's, the North Sacramento taqueria as good as any in old Mexico.

This movement has been inspiring because it has grown despite the recession and its accompanying negativity. It's been about local investment and innovation.

And it's brought fun to Sacramento when we needed it most. This weekend, let's raise a toast to progress.

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Call The Bee's Marcos Breton, (916) 321-1096.

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