Quote:
Originally Posted by urban_encounter
As long as its cheaper for builders to construct homes in Elk Grove, Roseville, Folsom and Natomas we aren't likely to see much high density housing. It just doesn't pencil out (yet). There isn't that catalyst to make people want to open their wallets and pay a premium. Not without low income housing subsidies and let's be honest we have enough of that in our central core. Those are not the people who are going to fill bars and restaurants. I think everybody knows that more market rate housing is what downtown needs but you have to make people want to be a part of something that they can't get in the suburbs. To that end we have already seen five commercial properties change hands in anticipation of the ESC. The owners of 555 CM want to build a residential component and maybe even open up then L street side. Things are verge of changing. But market rate downtown housing isn't going to just miraculously happen without a catalyst project.
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The era of cheaper suburban housing is starting to fizzle out--I don't think we have seen the end of sprawl, but a lot of people in the housing market (about a third, I think) just plain aren't interested in a house in the suburbs, even if the house itself is cheaper, because that suburban house comes with expensive hassles like a long commute home, and lacks the sort of physical environment that can't be found in the suburbs but can already be found, to a certain extent, in the central city. That's the market people are already building for in Midtown, in West Sacramento, in Southside and Alkali Flat and even East Sacramento and Curtis Park.
The catalyst is already occurring in every direction around the downtown core, where housing of all sorts (both low-income and market rate) is under construction or in the planning stages. The people in the market-rate housing fill the bars and restaurants, and the people in the low-income housing certainly do as well, and probably also work there (remember, "low-income" refers to people making $20, 30, 40K per year.) Because they live downtown, they spend their money downtown on a day-to-day basis.
You don't have to
make people want to be part of something, they already want to be part of it. And the most important "urban amenity" of all is
people living in the downtown core.