Quote:
Originally Posted by NikeFutbolero
"We" didn't build anything. Arco was privately financed.
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"We" meaning Sacramento as a whole--people spend a lot of time talking about what "we" should build here, referring to projects that are primarily private in nature. And if Arco was privately financed, it might be worthwhile to determine how the developer managed to make money off the deal--it might provide some useful insight as to how it could be privately financed again. I would imagine that the team studying the issue right now is pretty aware that city government isn't going to be able to write big checks anytime soon, and that the local electorate isn't too friendly to such schemes--I would not be surprised if they were looking for other models to follow than public financing, at least to test them for feasibility.
Sacramento isn't "behind" other California cities--we developed at the same time, just along a different pattern based on what we had to offer and the connections we had made. We have had several industries of our own: railroads, for starters, including the first railroad in California, the first transcontinental railroad, the only place west of the Mississippi River where full-sized railroad locomotives were built, and the main servicing shops for two transcontinental lines. We also had agricultural processing, like canning, brewing and winemaking: in the 1920s, Sacramento had two of the biggest canneries in the country. And being the seat of California government certainly counts as an industry, and one we fought hard to keep more than once: while the "industry" isn't as glamorous as it was when California was booming like wild, and is definitely in a slump, it is unlikely that California is going to stop needing a government anytime soon, nor is California likely to become radically easier to govern in the foreseeable future.
So, how do we take advantage of our historic industries? For railroads, we're still a transportation hub. Potential opportunities include expanded locomotive construction (our Siemens plant is building full-sized electric locomotives for Amtrak), expanding our passenger depot into a full-sized intermodal depot of a similar scale to Los Angeles Union Station (the only passenger depot in California busier than ours), expanding commuter trains to Reno and north to the northern Sacramento Valley, and, ideally, a full HSR connection to southern California.
For agriculture, thinking small may be more valuable than trying to chase back the canning industry. We already have a cluster of recent "urban winery" operations and several urban breweries (celebrated this week in our 2nd annual "Beer Week.") Farmer's markets do bumper-crop businesses, often patronized by high-end chefs from new restaurants whose premiere attraction is the produce of the nearby agricultural regions. Changes in city codes have permitted front-yard crop gardening, community gardens and urban farming of all sorts is rising in popularity (as it is in big cities all over the country), along with an interest in urban chicken-keeping that threatens to soon overturn the city's urban chicken ban. The "industry" here is a panoply of small business: while big Fortune 500 companies make the headlines, the foundation of our economy, and the biggest job-creating engine in the country, is small business. By promoting small businesses that take advantage of local agricultural resources, we create and reinforce our regional identity while producing useful (edible and drinkable) products that can be exported elsewhere or consumed by visitors who come to taste the best of the region.
As to government: We don't have much direct control over who most of the state elects to call the shots in state government, but at least the current Governor actually lives in downtown Sacramento, rather than flying home to southern California every night. Brown's presence as a central city resident is the ideal "glamour tenant" for central city living, which may not be the perfect argument for central-city living, but it certainly can't hurt. And the renewed focus on northern California issues may give us a little more attention at the state level. Obviously, we'll have to see what the next few years brings for our state government, but assuming we don't devolve into total "Road Warrior" style chaos, we're probably going to have a state government that is more efficient and cost-effective, that will probably be in the process of handling big things like HSR and massive renewable energy projects. And if we can get the attention of state government, we might ask them what they have done lately for the city that has played host to state government for over a century and a half.
There are other things we don't have, which might catalyze all of the above: a full-size university in the central city to supplement or consolidate all the little satellite campuses, a much larger residential base downtown, a streetcar network to connect us to the rising star of West Sac and take some pressure off downtown streets and highways, and better promotion (through less suppression) of local musical culture, mostly by simply abandoning the illusion that we're a quaint little valley town where nothing interesting happens. Trying to make ourselves "competitive" through smokestack-chasing, in an effort to go head-to-head with other California cities, is unlikely to succeed--we'd be leading with our weaknesses, not our strengths.
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