River City, meet your riverfront. Old Sacramento might finally shed the blahs
If you live in the state capital, particularly if you’ve lived here for a decades, you’ve had little reason to go to Old Sacramento. It’s cheesy. It’s tired. It’s supposed to be a historic site where the Pony Express and the Transcontinental Railroad once thrived. But Old Sacramento doesn’t reflect that gravitas of that history.
The California State Railroad Museum is a jewel of the city but beyond its brick exterior, it is surrounded by a whole lot of blah.
If this is truly the front porch of Sacramento, and it should be, then the local curb appeal is strictly dismal.
It’s very Sacramento to avoid stating this truth so bluntly. We don’t wish to wound hardworking people who care about the dusty old spot that is a direct link to Sacramento’s Gold Rush history. But, no offense should be taken by the caretakers of Old Sacramento, or Old Sacramento Waterfront as it is desperately named currently. If you live here, you just call it Old Sac.
Its diminished state is not because people don’t care. It’s because Sacramento is always strapped for money.
The city took decades to secure funding for the Powerhouse Science Center, which only broke ground a short distance from Old Sacramento in January. The old downtown railyards took decades to be ready for urban development. Golden 1 Center took more than a decade of planning. The same goes for J, K and L streets downtown.
All those years of deferred progress created, at least for a time, a negative culture in the state capital. Sacramento was the city that couldn’t, or didn’t. And even when success came, and Golden 1 was approved, some fought it or complained about it even after the arena and surrounding area became a big success.
The false narrative was created that the central city stole from the neighborhoods when, in fact, the central city and its adjoining waterfront could be the gathering spot where community pride is celebrated. That’s the way it is in Portland, Denver, Austin, Indianapolis and other cities that Sacramento covets.
What do those cities have that Sacramento lacks? Investment allocated via political will.
That’s it. It’s no more complicated than that. And, as it happens, Sacramento has reached the intersection of investment and political will.
On Tuesday, the City Council will debate what to do with Old Sacramento and its waterfront.
And it will begin debating how to allocate the money raised through Measure U, the sales tax that Sacramento voters have approved.
Mayor Darrell Steinberg has made clear what he wants: More than $40 million invested in Old Sacramento.
“Great cities use their rivers, they take advantage of their natural assets to grow tourism and jobs, nature spots and nightspots, and create buzz inside and outside their cities. Let us acknowledge that we have never really done that,” Steinberg said Thursday at an Old Sacramento news conference.
His message was clear: The time is now.
The funding is available through the city’s hotel occupancy tax, which can only be spent on city improvements in civic gathering spots. Most of the hotel tax money went to refurbish the Convention Center and Community Center Theater, but Steinberg persuaded the city hoteliers to tax themselves for parts of those projects. That left more than $40 million, which Steinberg now wants to claim for Old Sacramento.
It’s a bold plan. It’s the result of two years of work and lobbying and arm-twisting by the mayor, Councilman Steve Hansen, Michael Ault of the Downtown Partnership, and many others.
As Theresa Clift reported in The Bee: “A key feature of the proposal...would be a long grassy park from J Street to the Old Sacramento Schoolhouse Museum, where people can stroll and concerts can be held. Front Street would still be open to vehicles.”
Existing buildings at Front and K streets would be torn down to allow clear views of the river. Spaces for live music, for restaurants and bars would be created, as would a rooftop deck at the Sacramento History Museum. Sacramento would be reconnected with its waterfront and Old Sacramento would get the facelift it badly needs.
Steinberg is going to pitch this vision at that special City Council meeting Tuesday. Why not adopt it? Why not demonstrate that Sacramento is ready to join other thriving cities which have used political will to invest in their cities?
“People are emotional about the waterfront (and Old Sacramento),” Steinberg said. “There is common knowledge that we have this natural asset that we haven’t taken advantage of.”
The time to revive Old Sacramento and reconnect the River City with its river is finally at hand. We might no have another opportunity like this for a generation. If not now, when?
This story was originally published April 28, 2019 at 2:40 AM.
