Old Sacramento bank building is not historic, council decides. Is Shake Shack on its way?
The Sacramento City Council on Tuesday voted 5-4 against preserving a former Home Savings and Loan building on Arden Way, which could lead to its demolition and the construction of a Shake Shack.
The motion, however, included a stipulation that the building’s owners preserve its mosaic murals, a key to the argument to preserve it and incorporate them into any new project built on the parcel.
“I think it’s our best effort at this stage of the process to try and find that sweet spot,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said during the meeting.
There were 14 speakers during the public commenting period Tuesday who spoke in favor of designating the building as a landmark. The building is located at 1950 Arden Way at the intersection with Exposition Boulevard and across the street from Cal Expo.
Councilman Shoun Thao, who represents the area around Arden Fair mall, as well as North Sacramento, said he was against giving the building historical distinction and created the new motion that passed with Steinberg’s vote.
“My fear is with this designation (as a landmark), we will have a vacant building for the next 10 years,” Thao said. “I really want to look at this and say, ‘yes, let’s preserve this building,’ but I know from a rational point of view that we might not have the investment into preserving the building or keeping it ready to be used for the next couple years.”
Representatives of the owners of the building, Market Street Healthcare Properties, said repairing the bank building would cost between $3 million and $6 million before redevelopment. The building in recent years was broken into, vandalized and had water fixtures stolen, the owners said, leading to water damage.
Armand Vasquez, representing the Newport Beach-based real estate investment firm, said Market Street had been hoping prominent medical companies would agree to occupy the building because such tenants could shoulder the high repair costs. But Vasquez told the City Council Market Street has been unable to find tenants. The company hired a brokerage firm that had a database of 11,000 decision-makers in the medical and office space sector to find a tenant for the building but Vasquez said they, too, were unsuccessful.
That led to Market Street approaching the city about razing the building to build a drive-through restaurant, likely a Shake Shack. Market Street officials said Tuesday they would be open to repurposing the mosaic murals that hang above the building’s prominent front facade, but they said the mural inside the lobby wasn’t suitable for an outdoor preservation.
“A split vote like that, it’s obviously not cut and dry,” said Sean de Courcy, the city’s preservation director who spoke on behalf of making the building a landmark. “You win some, you lose some. The people who showed up tonight to speak on the item, I know they’re disappointed.”
Arguments to preserve the building and make it a landmark revolved around the mosaics and the building’s New Formalist architecture. There was hope from the building’s proponents that it could be repaired and repurposed into a charter school, a market, medical offices or a data center.
Two attendees who spoke before the council cited environmental factors for keeping the building intact rather than building a drive-through restaurant, noting the emissions of idling cars was bad for the air and children with asthma.
The building was designed by noted California artist Millard Sheets, who made his name painting scenes with watercolor before Home Savings and Loan contracted him to design their buildings throughout Southern California in the 1950s. Sheets designed the buildings with large mosaic murals to highlight local culture. The building on Arden Way was the only known building with Sheets mosaics in Sacramento.
De Courcy said any new project on the site would have to be built in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act, which includes the evaluation of historical resources. There was also a chance the building would be nominated on the state or national register for landmarks, which could prolong the building’s wrecking ball.
“We have a lot of evidence on the side of it being eligible,” De Courcy said. “And although the council made a decision on the local register, there is no conclusion on eligibility for the California register.”
Should the building be demolished in favor of a new Shake Shack, it would be the fourth location in the capital region, joining locations at the midtown Ice Blocks, Westfield Galleria mall in Roseville and a new location in Folsom slated to open later this year.
This story was originally published August 28, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
