Patrons dined on chilaquiles and sipped margaritas as a DJ entertained the brunch crowd at downtown Sacramento’s La Cosecha on Sunday morning. A block away, yellow crime scene tape blocked off 10th Street. Blue evidence markers covered the pavement.

Around the same time, five people stood on the edge of Capitol Park holding signs protesting the war in Ukraine. Couples drank coffees from a hotel Starbucks as they walked their dogs on a warm spring morning, passing runners doing laps around the park after finishing a race.

Across L Street, a crowd of stunned and distraught family members huddled together, waiting for news about their loved ones. The bodies were still there.

The hours after the most violent mass shooting in the city’s history were full of signs that Sacramento’s past, present and future are often at odds. It is a city clawing its way out of a two-year pandemic. The recovery is fragile.

And nowhere is that tension felt more strongly than downtown. The COVID restrictions are gone and the crowds are back to the restaurants and the nightclubs. The night six people were shot to death and another dozen injured, both Golden 1 Center and the Crest Theatre hosted concerts. “Wicked,” the Broadway hit, was starting a run at the newly renovated SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center.

But violent crime is also on the rise in the central city. Some downtown office workers – at least those who have returned – talk about feeling unsafe at times. K Street, that five-block tapestry of empty buildings and Michelin-rated restaurants, remains a puzzle, even after millions of dollars of investment.

Why do we fight so hard for a part of our city that sometimes doesn’t love us back?

“Communities are known by the souls of their urban centers and what the heart of a city looks like,” said Michael Ault, head of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, “and we are not backing away.”

Bullet holes, boarded up windows

Bullet holes mark the lampposts on 10th Street.

Some of the windows that were boarded up during the social justice protests of 2020 are covered again, this time as bandages from a shootout. Large, diamond-shaped shards of glass covered the floor Monday inside Sharif Jewelers at 10th and K streets, and a sheet of plywood covered a window at the Grange restaurant.

The area cordoned off by the crime-scene tape was pockmarked with bullet casings and evidence pylons. The investigation continues, and police have made arrests. The city still is reeling from the early-morning shooting and what has preceded it.

On some buildings, you really can’t tell which boards were a result of Sunday’s mayhem and which remained from the protests. The stains on the pavement pose a similar dilemma; is that blood or soda?

Ross Rojek and his wife, Heidi, own Capital Books on K Street. Ross stood at 10th and K on Monday morning as TV crews fixed their cameras on what just a few hours before had been an active crime scene. By then, however, it was quiet and some stores remained closed. But Ross opened the doors to his shop.

“I believe in normal,” he said. “I’m going to be open, just to be back.”

This is the city’s crossroads, the busiest intersection for foot traffic in all of downtown, Ault said. City Hall. The state Capitol. Golden 1 Center and the Sacramento Convention Center. The corner of 10th and K is right in the middle.

In recent weeks, with people returning to the area to both work and play, downtown officials and City Hall had been developing plans to add lighting, security officers and cameras. Ault wants to appoint a “mayor” for the district tasked with serving as a liaison between the police and business owners.

“It’s a personal mission for us to get back on track,” Ault said.

‘It’s a love-hate relationship’

Ibrahim Abukhdair grew up coming to Rodney’s Cigar & Liquor Store, his father’s corner store at 10th and J streets, back in the 1990s and 2000s. Abukhdair now owns The Blue Ox work clothing store at 10th and K, as well as empty buildings on either side.

Those empty buildings once housed Skip’s Fish & Chicken and Darna Mediterranean Kitchen, the latter owned by Abukhdair as well. Skip’s opened in January 2020, while Darna rebranded as Holy Slice halal pizzeria that November.

Both were permanently closed by August 2021.

If Abukhdair didn’t own those properties, he wouldn’t be in Sacramento. Certainly not downtown, where the “glory days” of 2018 and 2019 have been replaced by one crisis after another.

“It’s hard to put into words, my feelings. It’s a love-hate relationship,” Abukhdair said. “I’d be nothing without (downtown Sacramento), but at the same time, I am nothing with it.”

Odd Cookie Bakery Cafe & Bar opened near Ninth and J streets in January 2020, and owner Anna Rodriguez took out multiple loans to keep it afloat during the pandemic. She hired an employee at one point; two days later, she said, he was stabbed downtown in a dispute.

Rodriguez is giving downtown until the end of the summer, she said. If conditions don’t improve significantly by then, she plans to move Odd Cookie to San Diego, or Petaluma, or Colorado, where she said investors have been courting her.

“I really want to stay in Sacramento,” she said. “I like Sacramento. My god kids are close to here.. But with this stuff happening, I don’t know. I have no idea what’s going to happen downtown. I keep saying we’re going to give it until the end of summer, and if we don’t see a good turnaround, we’re done.”

Many forces are at work downtown, and sometimes pulling them apart is difficult.

Hundreds of homeless individuals sought shelter downtown during the pandemic because, with office workers gone and many businesses closed, that’s where they felt safe. Yet the tents remain, and one of the victims of the weekend’s rampage was a 57-year-old woman who lived most of the past decade on the sidewalks of 10th Street.

The city also has spent millions of dollars helping businesses succeed downtown. That success has attracted crowds – sometimes large, unruly crowds – followed by violence.

Said City Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela, who represents the central city: “I wish downtown didn’t need to be so resilient.”

The future of downtown

“This city and its downtown have unending resilience,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said.

It’s always been that way, long before COVID or the protests or last weekend’s shooting.

After a series of devastating floods, and with the future of the city in doubt, most downtown streets were raised as much as 14 feet in the 1860s. That also meant the buildings had to be raised; hundreds of workers lifted the heavy brick buildings of the time, including the 1,900-ton St. George Hotel at the corner of Fourth and J streets.

Valenzuela also thinks of the past.

She sees a model for downtown’s future in the former West End neighborhood, a diverse area along what is now Capitol Mall. It was torn down in the name of redevelopment and its residents, many of them survivors of Japanese internment camps, were displaced.

“The vision for the downtown of the future is one that is more integrated to the rest of the city,” she said. “Something that goes back to its roots, like the cultural hub that the West End was, a thriving, diverse center. I think that’s what we’ve been missing and that’s exactly what makes Sacramento so great.”

But where does it go from here? Will people feel safe returning to downtown offices, let alone the restaurants and bars?

The downtown core has seen a rise in aggravated assaults, weapons offenses and reports of shots fired since the start of the pandemic, reflecting trends seen throughout much of the city, the latest Sacramento Police Department data show. Separately, police dispatchers took 78 reports of shots fired in the downtown core during 2020 and 2021. That’s roughly double the 38 reports in 2018 and 2019.

The increase in crime, combined with a sudden return of crowds and workers, was part of the motivation for the city to set aside roughly $8 million for public safety measures in the district.

“What happened (Sunday) could happen anywhere and has happened anywhere,” the mayor said. “One response is to withdraw and the other is to continue to fight for what we’ve started in the downtown. To go forward, to live, to create, to innovate and to make our downtown the proud center of the city and region.”

Downtown’s biggest booster is Ault. He’s led the Downtown Sacramento Partnership since 1997, helping to navigate the area through a recession, the homelessness crisis and “Furlough Fridays,” a housing boom, the opening of world class restaurants and the construction of Golden 1 Center.

He walked through its streets Monday morning, stopping at 10th and K to speak with one of his organization’s street guides. Ault has been asked the last few days whether he has the energy to continue pushing on, whether downtown is worth it.

“We’ll get it back,” Ault said, “because we believe in it.”

Bee Staff Writers Jason Pohl and Phillip Reese contributed to this story.

This story was originally published April 6, 2022 at 5:00 AM.