Are we there yet? Sacramento has played a long game to attain major league sports status.
Sacramento’s biggest sporting event once was the Pig Bowl, an annual football game between police officers and sheriff’s deputies. The first one was played in 1974, long before anyone cared about luring millennials to California’s capital city in the 2020s.
More than 20,000 people would fill Hughes Stadium at Sacramento City College early in the year to watch local cops lay down the law on the gridiron. Families cheered their fathers, sons, brothers and uncles, many of whom hadn’t suited up since high school.
“The Pig Bowl was an absolute sensation,” said Sacramento native Greg Van Dusen, 69, “For some reason, it just clicked and captured the public’s imagination.”
Van Dusen and Sacramento developer Gregg Lukenbill became part of a new generation of dreamers coming of age in Sacramento then. They landed an NBA basketball team, thus starting the love affair between this city and its Kings.
Lukenbill and Van Dusen had big ideas that would challenge the political establishment and forever change the city’s sports landscape. They started a transformation that is still underway today as Sacramento inches away from the Bay Area’s shadow to establish its identity as a sports and entertainment destination.
They may have whiffed on bringing an MLB team, or the Raiders, here, but you can see their success on the hardwood in a downtown arena. The Kings are celebrating their 35th NBA season in Sacramento and their fourth at Golden 1 Center, a majestic $558-million downtown arena in the heart of the city. Republic FC is building a $252-million stadium in the downtown railyards in preparation for the club’s move to Major League Soccer in 2022, a project that will create thousands of jobs and decades of economic development.
The arena has already sparked growth and development in the Downtown Commons area with the addition of new hotels, bars, restaurants and retail businesses. The stadium project will offer more of the same just a mile away, right across the river from Raley Field and the Sacramento River Cats, turning one of the city’s most vast, most barren eyesores into another gleaming jewel in the Crown Downtown movement.
Barry Broome, president and CEO of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council, believes the MLS stadium will be valuable to the city and a “wonderful asset for the region.” He noted the 244-acre development – featuring the stadium, a Kaiser Permanente medical complex, a $490 million Superior Courthouse, housing projects, office buildings, restaurants and more – will greet more than 1 million travelers who pass through the Sacramento Valley Station each year on trains and buses.
“That’s the No. 2 transit location in California and No. 7 in the U.S.,” Broome said. “Think about all the people who dump out of that train. Imagine you’re getting off that train and you hear soccer cheers and you see the buzz of restaurants and bars and the atmosphere around them. You’re going to say, ‘Wow, Sacramento is pretty cool. Sacramento is a city on the rise.’”
Roots of rise in sports
This 21st-century renaissance has been sparked by a new era of visionaries such as Vivek Ranadive, Kevin Nagle and Ron Burkle, but its origins can be traced to the lobby restaurant at the Westin Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1982. That’s where Lukenbill and Van Dusen met with Kansas City Kings owner Leon Karosen to finalize an agreement to purchase the team, which moved to Sacramento in 1985.
“The last point on the deal was a million dollars in depreciation recapture, because in major-league sports player contracts are depreciable. Most people don’t know that,” Van Dusen said. “Lukenbill said ‘no.’ Mr. Karosen said, ‘Well boys,’ and we were just kids then, ‘I guess we can’t do business.’ He got up and walked away. We stopped him and made a deal. From that point on, Sacramento was destined to be a major league city.”
Gary Gerould, the longtime radio voice of the Kings, came to Sacramento in 1965 in the early stages of his broadcast career. He called several Pig Bowls. He remembers boxing promoter Don Chargin bringing major cards to Sacramento and a few exhibition games between professional teams, but the city didn’t have a sports identity and few people in power were interested in changing that.
“I called it the think-small mentality of Sacramento,” Gerould said. “It drove me crazy because it seemed to me that there was so much potential that could be realized here, whether it was in the sports world, the world of the arts or academics. Sacramento had government and agriculture and that was it. People seemed to be very content with that.”
Van Dusen remembers that, too.
“We had leadership that wanted Sacramento to never change,” Van Dusen said.
The Kings built the original Arco Arena, a small, temporary venue, on county land in Natomas while fighting the city for years to build a full-size arena on nearby city property. Mayor Anne Rudin opposed building an arena there.
“We had to build the arena with no public money at all,” Van Dusen said. “From a new interchange on I-5 to a new interchange on I-80 all the way in to the arena, we had to build the infrastructure and not one but two new arenas.”
Van Dusen marvels at how attitudes in Sacramento have changed. Former Mayor Kevin Johnson led the fight to build a downtown arena and save the Kings from relocation. Current Mayor Darrell Steinberg was a prominent figure in talks between the Republic and MLS officials.
“If you turn the page from where we started and what we had to overcome, now, instead of our elected leadership being opposed to sports and development, now they have done a complete 180,” Van Dusen said. “They have used the opportunity that professional sports present to turn the Kings and the new arena into a major economic development tool. Look what’s happening downtown as we’re completely changing the landscape of the community with all the DoCo stuff, the development of larger, taller buildings, more cultural activities downtown and a greater ability to draw young companies and major employers.”
Sac, Indomitable City
Punch Bowl Social, Yard House, Sauced BBQ & Spirits and other businesses in the DoCo district have become popular gathering spots for young adults, bringing life to the once-sleepy downtown area.
Broome said the rise of the Republic represents another major step forward for the city, noting that MLS has a younger fan base than other professional sports. Broome said the Republic’s success reflects a strong millennial presence in Sacramento, which, according to a recent study of census data, ranks third nationally with about 6,500 new millennial residents per year, an appealing trend for employers and investors.
“I think MLS, in particular, is a clear indication of millennials,” Broome said. “That’s really important because what industry really evaluates is your young workforce – what your young leaders are doing. MLS is kind of the personification of that draw for millennials.”
The city estimates the Republic’s move to MLS could attract $1 billion in investment in Sacramento. Broome said Sacramento can expect “a lot of exciting announcements at the railyards” in the months ahead.
“People are going to find out very quickly how impactful MLS is to the railyards,” he said.
Broome also believes Sacramento will gain credibility and clout with new Republic owners Ron Burkle and Matt Alvarez. Burkle is a Beverly Hills supermarket tycoon who co-owns the Pittsburgh Penguins and twice tried to buy the Kings. Alvarez is a Los Angeles businessman who has worked with Burkle in the past.
“That’s validation in Los Angeles,” Broome said. “When one of the more admired leaders in L.A. is putting a $550 million commitment into the Sacramento railyards, well, maybe other (investors) in L.A. ought to be doing it, too.”
That’s a far cry from the Pig Bowl. Or the Sacramento Surge of the World League of American Football in the ’90s, later the Gold Miners of the Canadian Football League. Or the Mountain Lions of the United Football League only a few years ago.
Or the indoor soccer Sacramento Knights, owned by the Maloofs, who also at one time owned the Kings and the WNBA’s Sacramento Monarchs. Or the World Team Tennis Sacramento Capitals who played, yes, in the parking lot of Sunrise Mall.
Sports in Sacramento has had its fits and starts in its quest for sports relevance. The Pig Bowl endures as the Guns and Hoses game between law enforcement officers and firefighters. But the city’s sports identity has grown.
“Our owners had unbelievable courage,” Van Dusen said, reminiscing about the Lukenbill group’s work to bring the Kings to Sacramento. “Their legacy is affecting generations in a positive way in terms of how people think about their own community and how people all over the country think about us, but the type of investors we have now in the Kings and the Republic, it’s phenomenal. These people – talk about economic development – these amazing people are investing in Sacramento with so many zeroes I can’t pronounce the words.”
Some have taken to calling Sacramento the Indomitable City. Maybe that’s true.
“Over a seven-year period, you’re going to go from a dead downtown, the threat of losing the Kings and losing hope to having Golden 1 Center, MLS, thousands of jobs at the railyards and a changing reputation around the world,” Broome said. “You need to be able to pull off big things that are strategic and have impact to do that, and both of these sports achievements will do that.”
This story was originally published November 28, 2019 at 5:30 AM.
