Sacramento will fix deck of a riverfront restaurant. Better late than never | Opinion
A long-time riverfront restaurant in Sacramento’s historic district closed last August after 30 years because the city would not fix its deteriorating deck for diners.
The site of the former Rio City Cafe is vacant, as just across the Sacramento River, professional baseball teams prepare to play more than 160 home games this year.
Now the city says it has found the money to fix the deck.
“OMG!!!!!!,” said Stephanie Miller, one of the owners of the former restaurant.
OMG is right.
On April 1, the Sacramento City Council is expected to consider a proposal to spend about $3 million of state funds so that some new restaurant can anchor this historic district riverfront property.
The unaddressed decay of the Rio City deck is a metaphor for the Sacramento city government’s broader fiscal state. Unfunded pension obligations and unfunded maintenance projects like this one are approaching $3 billion, just about double the city budget.
The city is functionally broke, although its elected leaders don’t like to describe the city’s fiscal reality that way.
The staff report to the city council about the decayed Old Sacramento deck is more than 700 pages, yet the tome manages to miss some embarrassing details. Even though it says that a consultant told the city six years ago that a replacement of the deck was required, it doesn’t explain why the city, year after year, sat on its hands.
A public records act last summer request by The Bee of city emails relating to this deck only provided, months later, some clues.
One city staffer privately suggested finding the money to fix the deck back in January 2024 when the Rio City was still in business and feared dire consequences of inaction. But he apparently got shot down, and any emails that explain who killed the idea of fixing the deck, and why, weren’t provided.
Dustin Hollingsworth, an assistant director for the city’s department of convention and cultural services, emailed then-Assistant City Manager Leyne Milstein about the deck on Jan. 4, 2024. “To stay on track for construction during the (summer) window that we can work over water, we are planning to take the item to council on February 20th,” Hollingsworth wrote. “Delaying another year would most likely expose the repair to further escalation and potentially risk a structural failure of the deck. From my discussions with facilities, it seems clear that if we are not going to fund the repairs that we should explore demo which does carry with it other considerations. We are looking to the City Manager’s Office to provide direction.”
But no email provided by the city comes close to explaining why Hollingsworth’s proposal went nowhere. In one email that April, Milstein (who is now interim city manager) wondered if the city’s hotel tax revenue could underwrite the project. But by then, it was too late to fix the deck in 2024. And it was that month that the city shut down the deck for safety reasons. Given how the riverfront deck experience generated an estimated 70% of the restaurant’s revenues, Miller and other restaurant owners announced plans in July to close.
News of the restaurant’s closure seemed to catch the city by surprise at the time, but why? What good is a riverfront restaurant shut off from the river?
The money to fix the deck, according to the staff report, comes from “$4.6 million in grant funds from the State of California for Riverfront safety and pedestrian improvements.” This is better than nothing. An eyesore on the river is getting the attention it needs. And it was the previous tenants who helped get the ball rolling.
“They will use design, plans, materials, etc. that they were going to use for us,” Miller said. “I’m sure of this.”
It is a stretch to call fixing a deck an improvement. The city had years to take care of its own asset, yet looked the other way.
Come summer, the city is scheduled to select the new restaurant and operator. “Sacramento is seeking expressions of interest from a professional restaurant operator or operators to provide food and beverage service…,” said city spokesperson Jennifer Singer. “At this time, the City anticipates releasing a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) for the waterfront restaurant in April with a submission deadline of six weeks after issuance.”
The Rio City Cafe wanted to be a restaurant longer than the city wanted to care for the facility. A new restaurant that will be a welcome new addition to the historic district is coming. Sacramento’s finances, however, remain in a troubled state. This city continues to struggle to stay above water.
This story was originally published March 25, 2025 at 5:00 AM.