Sacramento Project ‘Almost a City in Itself’
New York Times
August 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/re...1&ref=business
SACRAMENTO — The western terminus of the first transcontinental railroad is a forlorn place these days. All that is left of the historic railyards are seven immense brick buildings, the remnants of an era when this site was the busiest industrial center in northern California. There is little indication yet of a $5.3 billion redevelopment plan to transform the site.
But the old railroad buildings are expected to come back to life as the retail portion of a huge project called the Sacramento Railyards. In the next 20 years, the developer Thomas Enterprises, based in Newnan, Ga., plans to build up to 12,000 residential units, 800,000 square feet of commercial space, scattered small parks, a railroad history museum and a performing arts center.
The ambitious housing plans reflect the anticipated growth of Sacramento, a city of 481,097 people that is expecting 100,000 new residents in the next 20 years. Thomas Enterprises says it intends to build many of the first 400 residential units in mixed-use projects, with retailing at street level and housing on upper stories. In later phases, the plan calls for more units, this time in a mix of low-rise and high-rise apartment buildings.
Much of the commercial appeal of the project results from its proximity to downtown Sacramento, particularly the central business district and the State Capitol complex, which lie south of the old train yards. When completed, the old Union Pacific property will become an extension of the downtown, effectively doubling its size.
The 240-acre Sacramento Railyards is “probably the largest urban infill project in the country right now,” said David Kwong, planning manager for the City of Sacramento. In both size and the variety of building types, he added, the project is “almost a city in itself.”
The abandoned train yards had been one of Sacramento’s most imposing redevelopment challenges, long before the city approved the project in 2007.
“You could drive by those old buildings for years without thinking anything of them,” said Michael T. Ault, executive director of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, a business improvement district representing property owners and tenants. “It’s not until you go and actually look at them that you realize their potential,” he added.
At one time, 100 “workshops,” as the old industrial buildings were known, produced new steam engines and passenger cars, among other goods. At the peak of activity during World War II, more than 7,000 people worked there.
After the war, however, work at the yards declined steadily. In 1999, the Union Pacific Railroad closed its last remaining industrial operations at the yards, and demolished many buildings in anticipation of selling portions of the site to developers.
The redevelopment of the site started in 2002, when Union Pacific offered 37 acres for sale. “We told the railroad we wanted the entire thing,” recalled Suheil J. Totah, vice president of Thomas Enterprises.
At first, the railroad was reluctant to sell, partly out of concern about liability for site contamination, according to Mr. Totah. Former railyards are notoriously polluted, and the railroad owner had already removed more than 800,000 cubic yards of tainted earth from the property.
To shield the railroad from future lawsuits stemming from contamination, Mr. Totah had to find insurers able to write policies on brownfields — disused industrial sites with a strong likelihood of pollution. “It wasn’t easy to find insurers who could underwrite a project of this scale,” Mr. Totah said.
After four years of negotiation, Thomas Enterprises completed the purchase at an undisclosed price.
The few remaining industrial buildings form the centerpiece of the development. On a tour of the site, Richard Rich, the company’s development director, opened the door to the Erecting Shop, a 68-foot-tall single-story structure more reminiscent of an old church than a modern factory. The only interior light came from rows of windows on either side, far above his head.
“This is the first industrial building in California,” Mr. Rich said. The structure was built in 1868, one year before the Golden Spike was driven in Utah, connecting Sacramento by rail to the rest of the nation. For decades, Union Pacific workers assembled locomotive engines in the building.
Renovation of the Erecting Shop and the six other historic buildings are part of the first phase of construction, set to start in 2011. After historic preservation and structural reinforcements for seismic safety, the renovated workshops will become the core of a retail district.
New structures will fill out the historically themed shopping area. The developers plan to build a new structure atop the foundation of the demolished roundhouse building. The roundhouse was used to switch locomotives from one set of tracks to another using a circular turntable.
Instead of rebuilding the roundhouse in a historical style, however, the new building will be an “honestly modern building on a historic footprint,” Mr. Rich said. The new building will contain both commercial space and the railroad museum.
The redevelopment of the site dovetails with the construction of an adjacent project, a $300 million transit station to be built by the City of Sacramento. The 16-acre station will provide connections among trains, light rail, buses and taxis. Thomas Enterprises is selling the city a portion of railroad land on which to build the station.
Although separate from the Sacramento Railyards project, the transit station is said to be crucial to overall development, because the station is expected to increase the attractiveness of nearby housing, especially among commuters.
Before construction can begin, however, the developer must build new tracks across the site to enable Union Pacific trains to switch tracks quickly without interrupting service.
The new tracks are part of $750 million in new infrastructure. A majority of that amount is to come from local, state and national governments, including federal stimulus money. The first phase of construction requires about $310 million from public sources: $150 million from the city, $130 million from the state and $30 million from the federal government.
A new road system threading through the Railyards is also planned. To cement a strong connection between the Railyards and downtown Sacramento, the developer plans to build two bridges to carry traffic over existing tracks that separate the two areas. “Connectivity to downtown is crucial to this project,” Mr. Rich said.
Although it is playing up the history of the site, Thomas Enterprises plans to make new and old buildings harmonize through the use of similar materials, notably brick and glass.
“This will not be ‘suburban urban,’ ” said Mr. Rich, alluding to the faux-historical style of many recent outdoor shopping centers. The Railyards, he said, will be “gritty, like a city.”
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