The 10 top business openings in the Sacramento region in 2018
The Sacramento region saw plenty of new businesses open in 2018.
Some were well-received or quietly accepted — grocery stores don’t often stir up a fuss. Others were much more controversial. A sex shop in Arden Arcade? Not everyone was on board.
Here were 10 of the most notable business openings, for better or worse, in 2018. This list is presented in no particular order.
The Bank
A food hall with 68 self-service beer taps and 18 TVs in the basement opened last month in the century-old D.O. Mills Bank building at 629 J St.
Serving food from seven kitchens, the 30,000-square-foot building maintains some bank-centric features: gold ceilings, vault doors and more.
Chocolate Fish Coffee, Mama Kim’s, Poke Bros are among the restaurant tenants.
“The hope here is that no matter what your budget is or what you want your experience to be, we can create that here,” spokesman Patrick Harbison told The Bee in November.
Read more about The Bank here.
Regal Delta Shores 14 & IMAX
The new Delta Shores shopping center off Interstate 5 in south Sacramento was anchored by a Walmart supercenter, which opened late last year.
Now Delta Shores houses dozens of businesses, including another big draw: a Regal movie theater.
Regal Delta Shores 14 and IMAX opened in March, with charity events and a sneak preview of “A Wrinkle in Time.”
It’s the third movie theater in the south Sacramento/Elk Grove region, joining Cinemark Laguna 16 and UA Laguna Village 12.
Read more about Regal Delta Shores 14 and IMAX here.
Read more about the Delta Shores shopping center here.
Cracker Barrel
There’s just something about the comfort food chain that gets people amped up.
We even brought in an expert to explain the hype.
Sacramento’s first Cracker Barrel restaurant opened Aug. 20, with long lines quickly forming and stretching out the door and around the corner of the Howe Avenue building.
Country favorites like chicken-fried steak and grits are among goodies on the menu.
Construction delayed the store’s opening for months, to the dismay of many who had awaited the restaurant’s fateful arrival. The Tennessee-based chain has just two locations in Northern California, with the other in Victorville.
Read more about the Arden Arcade Cracker Barrel here.
Quarry Park Adventures
At long last, the ziplining, rock-climbing adventure theme park built in a Rocklin quarry opened to the public in mid-October.
After delays were brought on by construction issues and numerous state inspections, the park celebrated its grand opening ahead of Halloween.
“Before Quarry Park, it really sat dormant for a hundred years,” city spokesman Michael Young said.
Read more about Quarry Park Adventures’ opening here.
Market 5-ONE-5
One of the region’s most recently opened supermarkets is unlike any Raley’s store Sacramento shoppers had experienced.
Market 5-ONE-5 opened on R Street near 10th Street in May. About one-fifth the size of a typical grocery store, it’s a small boutique grocery store and a Raley’s company offshoot, though it is managed separately from the rest of the Raley’s brand.
The “ONE” in the name stands for “Organic, Nutrition, Education.”
With a butcher, a deli and some precooked foods on-hand, the store is meant to provide a healthy grocery option for the roughly 10,000 new residents in the area, including at the Ice Blocks community on the R Street corridor.
Read more about Market 5-ONE-5 here.
West Elm Furniture
Also on R Street, the Ice Blocks development got a new interior decor and furniture store in August.
Offering trendy furnishings, the store has a mostly modern theme.
West Elm also helped outfit studio and one-bedroom apartments at the new Ice House residential development. It shares a building with those apartment units — they’re upstairs from the store.
Read more about West Elm here.
Golden Road Brewing
Opened in May at the corner of L and 19th streets, the outdoor patio has already faced two separate controversies but remains a hotspot in the midtown beer scene.
The more recent of the two issues: There’s too much of a racket, neighbors say. L Street Lofts residents next door issued noise complaints, and in response, Golden Road voluntarily moved its closing time two hours earlier each night. Complaints continued, though.
The other controversy: Local brewers have called Golden Road a “faux” craft beer brand. In 2015, Golden Road was purchased by Budweiser-maker A-B InBev.
“Golden Road, and their parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, owners of Budweiser and other ‘Big Beer’ brands, is the antithesis of local, slow, craft and independent,” the Sacramento Area Brewers Guild said in a statement earlier this year.
Still, Golden Road appears to keep busy when the weather’s nice, and it has maintained above-average ratings on review websites like Yelp and Google.
Hustler Hollywood
Speaking of controversy. More than 100 people lined up for the February opening of Hustler Hollywood, an adult entertainment store on Arden Way that sells lingerie, sex toys and other novelties.
One visitor said it was “tastefully” done, but many others disagreed. Some upset residents launched an ultimately unsuccessful effort to block the store from opening.
“This is not different than selling sex on the street,” Arden Arcade historian Kathy Stricklin told The Bee in February.
It marked the 23rd such store opened under Larry Flynt, publisher of the porn magazine “hustler,” who was present for the grand opening.
Flynt, 75, defended his store.
“We are just a retail operation,” Flynt said in a phone interview with The Bee ahead of the opening. “We are not selling anything we feel is obscene.”
Read more about Hustler Hollywood here.
Costco (Elk Grove)
Discount gas and free samples? That was more than enough for hundreds to line up for the grand opening of a new Costco at the corner of Elk Grove Boulevard and Bruceville Road in September.
The 150,000-square-foot store is bigger than the U.S. chain’s average Costco warehouse. Elk Grove Mayor Steve Ly celebrated the grand opening, which will help launch a shopping center with roughly two dozen tenants over the next couple of years.
The most obvious downside? Located less than 2 miles from Highway 99 on one of the city’s busiest roadways, the new shopping center has created some concerns about traffic congestion.
SeaQuest Folsom
An interactive aquarium with more than 1,000 animals held in tanks and other enclosures opened just before Thanksgiving in Folsom’s Palladio mall.
Hundreds of guests, many of them children, showed up to the grand opening to pet sharks and watch stingrays splash.
However, on the other end of the mall, about a dozen locals protested the store’s opening. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) also condemned the store and SeaQuest’s CEO, Vince Covino.
SeaQuest has faced a slew of controversy since opening its first location in December 2016, in Las Vegas. Complaints have centered around marine animal death rights and the business practices of Covino and his brother, Ammon.
Covino defended himself during the Folsom opening, saying SeaQuest is fun “edutainment” and that the Sacramento region lacked a strong aquarium presence.
About three weeks after the Folsom aquarium’s opening, a stingray died while on display in one of its touch tanks, upsetting some guests and animal advocates. The aquarium said it is still investigating the incident.