Sacramento Proposals of Times Past
Sacramento development and construction proposals that fail to be built.
I figured it would be helpful (and sad) to have a list of past proposals that at one time were going to improve our city. Here's a big one to start it off... Lot A. Feel free to add to the list. August 16, 1989 Sacramanto Bee http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/6...eiled19dh6.jpg http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/9...eiled19nh6.jpg http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/5...eiled19pb3.jpg |
heh.. what an exciting an depressing thread rolled into one!
And goddamn... I never knew the City fielded proposals like that for Lot A! Thanks for posting innov8!!! here's my first contribution with info pulled from sugit's post @ skyscrapercity, on April 15th, 2005 (scan from the Biz Journal, by me): Quote:
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Wow, I had totally forgotten all about the Asian Trade Center (was that it's name?).
And another sigh...a different 50+ story proposal on CM that never made it. |
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holy crap i remember that. Weren't there also proposals for it to be at ex airport and near the intl airport?
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My favorite: the Lot A propsal with the 4 tiered roofs, and shorter round bldg next to it. At the time I thought 34 floors was undoable in Sacramento.......looks like it still is......19yrs later. :slob:
Lets hope the airport expansion is completed without any cutbacks. |
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Metro Place
May 6, 2000 Sacramento Bee This was proposed before the housing wave started in downtown/midtown. A sweet tower for sure. https://i.postimg.cc/26nyqmbP/2-Nint...er-article.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/VNx5L56q/1-Nint...er-article.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/JhDGLj17/unnamed.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/66d4qVCy/Metro-Place2.gif https://i.postimg.cc/cL5r2FG5/Metro-Place3.gif https://i.postimg.cc/Xq0ZxX6j/Metro-Place4.gif https://i.postimg.cc/fyjVPZMx/Metro-Place6.gif https://i.postimg.cc/sg2MTtqh/Metro-Place7.gif https://i.postimg.cc/c40gnKcT/Metro-Place8.gif https://i.postimg.cc/ZKH9FT7m/Metro-Place9.gif |
:( The saddest loss (although maybe the Towers has overtaken it) for Sacramento. Such a great design, but do we know if the top or bottom renderings were the most recent?
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I did not know that Metro Place had any revisions? I can't imagine it changed very much.
Here's a link at the Biz Journal as to why is was not feasible... Friday, April 26, 2002 Metro no place A downtown Sacramento skyscraper with offices and apartments would have replaced a vacant lot -- if lenders hadn't been spooked Dean Ingemanson's plan for a 32-story office/apartment building at the Metro Place site on 9th and J streets is defunct because it cannot secure financing in today's weak office market. Shifting to a more feasible project, Ingemanson has signed a tentative agreement with a Southern California developer, CIM Group Inc., to build an apartment building of about five stories on the site. Yet Ingemanson and others agree that if the hybrid tower had been built, it almost surely would have been commercially successful. "The bottom line," Ingemanson said, "is that if I was able with a magic wand to get it built, it would have succeeded because of the low vacancy of class-A office space downtown and demand for downtown apartments." On top of that, it would have been a stunning coup for the redevelopment officials who staunchly supported Ingemanson's dream of a mix of high-rise apartments with offices and ground-floor retail in downtown Sacramento. And it would have permanently removed one of the worst eyesores in the downtown area, a half-block long hole in the ground, walled off with a cheap plywood fence. "I thought it was a great urban design project," said Andrew Plescia, the city's economic development director and a strong supporter. "It would have brought a lot of vitality and livability to downtown." So what happened to this dandy redevelopment project that might have been a resounding commercial success? The simple answer is that lenders wouldn't touch the $127 million venture. They were spooked by the national economic downturn, combined with a rising office vacancy nationally, especially in the Bay Area. It didn't matter that Sacramento itself is one of the nation's strongest office markets. No magic wand, no money: Ingemanson's proposal called for a 32-story building to include 114 apartments on the top 10 stories, as well as about 262,000 square feet of offices and 20,562 square feet of retail on the ground floor, plus 1,044 parking spaces. The whole building would be more than 850,000 square feet -- almost as big as the nearby Downtown Plaza mall. Metro Place would be built on the half block on the south side of J Street between 8th and 9th streets. Ingemanson controlled the western quarter block, while the city owns the eastern quarter. In early 1999, Ingemanson purchased most of his portion out of bankruptcy court. He then proposed a partnership with the city to build the tower, and the city agreed to chip in an $11 million subsidy, plus the city's quarter block of land, valued at $4.8 million. The whole city package came to $16.7 million. For redevelopment officials it was a dream come true. Metro Place, two blocks from City Hall, would have replaced a decade-old blight and replaced it with office workers who would shop downtown during the day and residents who would shop downtown after hours. "It was a huge, wonderful step forward for the housing market downtown," said John Dangberg, executive director of the Capitol Area Development Authority and former redevelopment director for the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. Renters were clearly very interested in the upper-story apartments. Despite high rents, the units would surely have leased, said Dangberg and others. Office pundits agree that the office portion would eventually have paid off. Downtown Sacramento's office vacancy is 5 percent -- among the lowest in the nation. Wrong time: But Ingemanson, looking for a loan of $70 million, showed up at the lenders' doors at the wrong time. "The financial market is chasing stabilized, completed projects, and development projects are seen as higher risks," said Kevin Randles, a mortgage banker with the local office of L.J. Melody & Co., a Houston-based lender and subsidiary of CB Richard Ellis. Around the nation, the office market is in the doldrums. Demand is sluggish and vacancies are up as a result of corporate America's slowdown during the past year. The Bay Area especially has seen horrendous vacancies and rental decreases as a result of high-tech's hard times. Sacramento, less than 90 miles from the bay, is guilty by geographical association. "Sacramento is the only big office market in the United State with single-digit vacancy rates," Randles said. "But we're seen as a sister city to the Bay Area, which is having a lot of trouble." More here... http://www.bizjournals.com/sacrament...29/focus1.html |
Well, the first rendering with the kind of sunset lighting makes the building look kind of rounded while the following ones are more rectangular looking. The balconies are also much more pronounced on the upper floors of the "second" renderings.
Funny thing is, if Metro Place had been built, it would have hit the boom at the exact right time, instead of too late like the others a few years later. |
Yeah, they're different alright. Check the vertical lines on the side of the curved/sunset version. That's the first I've seen of that version.
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This thread makes me sad... I may never look at it again.
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:previous:
Hey Mike, I hate to admit it, but I had those same newspaper clippings for a long time. I later burned them, seriously. |
Before joining, I spent quite a few years lurking on this forum and SSC and these sure are a blast from the past. Thanks for posting innov8. Jeez, looking at this thread is a sure reminder of just how little stock you can put in any proposal as most of them never amount to anything but renderings. TD's repost from SSC of the Asian Trade Center reminds me: whatever happened to the old mill site off Broadway and I-5 that was supposed to be sold off for the purposes of some grand civic project according to the wishes of the family owning the property? With the downturn in the real estate market did the owners balk on selling..
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Man, I should go copy some stuff I found at the archives: during the redevelopment era there were all these crazy plans for downtown Sacramento--stuff like 15-story condo buildings where Old Sac is, essentially tearing down the entire central city and turning them into "superblocks" of garden apartments like Capitol Towers.
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Proposals like those must shake you out of sleep at night in a cold sweat wburg :haha:
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arod: Nah, they just make me more pissed off than I usually get about the horrors that got inflicted on the West End. Considering that we'd have a central city that would look like a bunch of copies of the Capitol Towers apartments and the Resources Building (remember, we're talking mid-sixties here), I doubt they would excite much besides derision even by folks here.
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Agreed, for all the hokey candy and t-shirt shops that litter the tourist trap that has become Old Sac, the current condition is 700 billion times better than the Crapitol Towers apartments and the Resources building. I don't think anyone, even folks here, would argue that. Now if you start talking about bulldozing Old Sac and putting up some projects like the Towers and Aura then you might have us buzzing again wburg hahaha :poke:
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story of the acquisition here |
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