Quote:
Originally Posted by LandofFrost
The real questions is "Why are there industrial buildings that close to the American River? Shouldn't that be super prime real estate, high end condos, parks, and civic buildings?" People complain about I5 cutting off downtown from the waterfront.. and here we have downtown Sacramento with an unobstructed waterfront.
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Because the whole area was swamp until the early 20th century, and back then the plan was to move our industrial areas into the recently reclaimed swamp area along the American River and out of the downtown waterfront along the Sacramento River. It wasn't super prime real estate because it wasn't anywhere near the heart of the established city. And remember that this area is still pretty susceptible to flooding.
The Truxel bridge was redesigned a couple of times, the first plan was for a Light Rail only bridge but the city rejected it because they wanted it to be an automobile bridge instead of just for light rail. The most recent iteration is multi-modal, with light rail, cars and bike/pedestrian. Still no money to pay for it yet, but the plan is pretty much in place--and it's not a very big deal to run a road up to the point on the south side of the river.
Why is there such a rush to displace existing industrial buildings and businesses? It seems like people keep talking about wanting to bring jobs downtown, why so eager to remove workplaces that are already functioning? It's not like any of them have belching smokestacks, and people are already growing more comfortable with "mixed use" neighborhoods like Midtown that combine residential, commercial and even light industrial uses within a short distance.