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  #181  
Old Posted Aug 23, 2007, 11:19 PM
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wow, what a bad analogy. Don't they know the tiananmen protesters lost big time? They must get their news from the bee.
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  #182  
Old Posted Aug 24, 2007, 3:58 AM
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NIMBY ALERT!!! NIMBY ALERT!!!
that made me laugh out loud. You're funny...
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  #183  
Old Posted Aug 27, 2007, 4:22 PM
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double post

Last edited by ozone; Aug 28, 2007 at 4:04 PM. Reason: double post
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  #184  
Old Posted Aug 27, 2007, 4:29 PM
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Mr. Old Sacramento
Ed Astone is retiring after 40 years as the optimism-fueled catalyst of a source of civic pride
By Dixie Reid - Sacramento Bee August 27, 2007


Ed Astone, the ebullient town manager of a little piece of history called Old Sacramento, has written his obituary. He isn't ill, he just doesn't want a stranger writing about his life.

A stranger wouldn't know about his love of the Jiffy burger at Fanny Ann's Saloon, the shrimp bisque at Rio City Cafe, the Chinese chicken salad at Fat City or the coconut-shrimp Aruba Salad at Joe's Crab Shack, all found in Old Sacramento. Astone remembers them all in his self-scribed obit, as if they were beloved nephews.

Astone was one of three idealistic young men in place when Old Sacramento's transformation began in the mid-1960s. Old Sacramento was designated a historic district by the National Historic Landmarks program in 1965.

The late Bill Gentry, a civil engineer, planned the sidewalks and other improvements. Jim Henley was the project's historian and, Astone says, "its historical conscience."

"And Ed was the guy who was supposed to hawk the project to the public," says Henley, longtime Sacramento city historian. "He was the perfect person at the time to promote the issues and keep the parties talking. There were enormous obstacles to overcome. Redevelopment was a slash-and-burn mentality: old is bad, new is better, and level everything to the ground.

"He had a sense of salesmanship. He wears enthusiasm on his sleeve, and that's contagious."

Went for D.C. lunch, got funding

Astone often was crafty in getting what he wanted for Old Sacramento. For instance, he once took a White House acquaintance up on an offer of lunch in Washington, D.C. -- to ask for $200,000 in Housing and Urban Development funds. The lunch didn't work out, but Astone got the money for Old Sacramento projects.

There were Gold Rush-era buildings to be renovated or restored, and new buildings that mimicked old buildings to be built. The city got control of most of the distict's properties, which Astone and his crew consolidated into developable parcels and started selling off.

"That was my job. I spoke to every service club in town. The community thought it was a neat plan but that 'this guy is naive to believe he is going to do it.' It did seem overwhelming," Astone says. "I'm 27 years old and I'm way in over my head, and my bosses are telling me, 'You can make some mistakes, but don't do anything illegal.'

"I was having so much fun. I was passionate about what I was doing, totally committed to it, because it was the right thing to do. People said, 'No, no, no.' I said, 'Well, go away. Don't tell me that it isn't going to happen. Go away, and I will find someone who will make it happen,' which is exactly what we did."

Astone was director of planning and development in Old Sacramento for 13 years. Before being named manager of the district in 1994, he and wife Kris operated a planning-consulting firm that worked to improve Franklin Boulevard, and he was a consultant on San Diego's historic Gaslamp Quarter. He was a consultant to Old Sacramento, helping to establish the district's maintenance assessment district, the management board and the property owners council.

"Ed knew so many people, and he volunteered to help us," says Lina Fat, part of the Fat family restaurant dynasty that owns Fat City and California Fats in Old Sacramento. "As property owners, we had so much at stake. Ed is a great person. I always say, he is Mr. Old Sacramento."


Fresno beginnings

Astone grew up in Fresno, the younger son of Ethel Astone, who worked as a cook at St. Agnes Hospital. His father abandoned the family when Astone was 18 months old and his brother, Angelo, was nearly 7.

"I had a fabulous life," Astone says. "We never wanted for anything but never had the best of anything. My mother was a dynamo. Ninety percent of what I am, I owe to her."

He graduated from San Joaquin Memorial High School and Fresno State College, with a degree in business administration. He and Kris have been married 45 years and have four children (Laura Kilgore, Gail Drake, Amy Astone and Brian Astone) and six grandchildren.

He became Old Sacramento town manager 13 years ago, the job he gives up this week.

"His legacy is really Old Sacramento," says Steve Hammond, president and CEO of the Sacramento Convention & Visitors Bureau. "And when people look back on the growth of Old Sacramento, they can look to Ed as the catalyst for a lot of positive things that have happened there over the last 30 years. Ed has a passion for the district, he has a passion for its success, and he did it all within the realm of historic preservation."

Today, as he has done often over the years, the 70-year-old Astone is sitting in a window seat at Fat City, having his usual chicken salad and a root beer.

With his time in Old Sacramento winding down, he's in a reflective mood. He retires Friday, closing out four decades devoted to the revival, restoration, preservation and promotion of Sacramento's Gold Rush-era district.

"Most people don't know and don't care what we had to do to make this happen," he says, shrugging. "No one knows who I am. No one gives a damn who I am. I just walk around here, a fat, little peacock, watching the public enjoy Old Sacramento."

Sure enough, outside the restaurant's window, he sees tourists wandering along the wooden sidewalks, peering into shops. Horse-drawn carriages ply the streets for hire. A vintage train loaded with passengers is about to make its way alongside the Sacramento River. Modern liveliness melds nicely with the city's storied past.

When Astone went to work as project manager in Old Sacramento on May 1, 1964, the place was a dump. Historic buildings were mostly abandoned, neglected and left to decay, and by the time Sacramento's redevelopment agency started cleaning up the area in the mid-1960s, an estimated 4,500 bums and drunks populated what was then known as the West End.

Well-heeled Sacramentans had to get past the down-and-outers to reach the toney Firehouse Restaurant, which had opened in 1960. Old Sacramento, nee the West End, was not a popular destination for locals, much less for tourists.

"It was a slum, a skid row," Astone says. "It was flophouses, old saloons. There was nothing going on. Downtown had moved uptown. The center of town moved to 10th and K. There wasn't much interest in historic preservation at that time. It wasn't in vogue."

In the late 1950s, he says, the state's Department of Beaches and Parks (now Parks and Recreation) had an interest in old buildings, and its study of West End buildings confirmed that a significant number dated to the 1850s to 1870s.

The waterfront area was Sacramento's Gold Rush-era birthplace, where gambling tents, bordellos, banks and hardware stores catered to miners with gold dust to burn. Despite a spate of devastating floods and fires, early Sacramentans continually rebuilt their community.


Planners wanted to tear it down

In the early 1960s, redevelopment planners wanted to tear down everything between the Sacramento River and Seventh street, which would have destroyed Old Sacramento. Meanwhile, plans were under way to build Interstate 5 between downtown and Old Sacramento.

The Bee editorialized against building the freeway there, saying it would "bruise, scar and depress the city for generations." The newspaper pushed for the freeway to be built across the Sacramento River in Yolo County.

The lines were drawn, and Sacramento was a city divided.

"This is a volatile fight," Astone says, "a knock-down drag-out."

Long story short, the city wanted to lure Macy's downtown, and the department store's honchos insisted there be a freeway off-ramp nearby. So Sacramento got a big department store downtown and a freeway that split the old part of town from the new.

"You can't wish it away, so why dwell on it?" Astone says of the freeway. "So we began to make lemonade, putting parking under the freeway, building the (pedestrian) underpass, making do. And it provides us the opportunity to have this little island, where there are definite boundaries from other parts of downtown."

Hammond was among the friends, family and colleagues who attended last week's roast for Astone at the Embassy Suites. It was a fundraiser for the Old Sacramento Christmas Tree Fund, Astone's charity of choice.

"Last year, the first year we had a community Christmas tree, we did it on a shoestring. I thought it should be a tradition down here."

He promises that before he leaves, he will tell someone where he buried the Old Sacramento time capsule in 1977.

"It'll be in my book, the book I'm writing that will be published six months after I die. It exposes all. It tells the rest of the story."

He's kidding about writing a book. If he did, though, he might mention his proudest accomplishments: Helping to land the Sacramento Dixieland Jubilee (now Sacramento Jazz Jubilee) for Old Sacramento in 1974, and getting 180 tons of decomposed granite spread on Old Sacramento's streets for Gold Rush Days (it starts Friday and runs through Monday, Labor Day), giving Old Sacramento a more authentic 1850s look.

"I said, 'We gotta put dirt down.' And it was the same old roomful of skeptics. So I said, 'Stay out of my way and let me do it,'" Astone says.

He wishes Old Sacramento still had its annual Mardi Gras celebration, that there was a visitors' orientation center somewhere in the area, and that costumed docents were on the streets re-enacting historic events.


Packing up the memories

The time has come to clean out his office. He's taking the family photos with him, sending the old Winston cigarette machine to his son in Colorado and leaving behind the wild-eyed, stuffed coyote some movie studio props guy never came back to pick up.

He jokingly suggests draping a red velvet rope at his office door, as if it were a museum space. Maybe it's just too much to think about packing it all up.

"If I were to die today," he says, "as I was having my final breath, I would feel pretty good. I've been very lucky, blessed with wonderful friends and family, a job that was challenging, sometimes frustrating, but a lot of fun."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let me first say I totally respect Ed and think Sacramento owes a lot to this man. However, I hate to say it but I also believe his retirement is maybe about 10 overdue. He has done a great job but the reality is that Old Sacramento has become rather stagnant and maintenance has not been kept up to the level it should be. Also the business plan, events, and promotions all seem outdated. Of course, it's not entirely his fault but hopefully some new 'blood' will address this problems.

The original idea of a "Williamsburg of the West", making people feel as if they have stepped back it time -with costumed docents is just impractical today especially with modern highrises rising across the river, parking meters (I know Ed didn't have anything to do with that) and the tons of cars.

We need a contemparary vision for Old Sacramento.
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  #185  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2007, 9:19 PM
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maybe Sacramento should be pursuing actions like this, instead of annexing more land and trying to compete with the/other counties? thoughts?

Sutter sues Placer
By Mary Lynne Vellinga - Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:06 pm PDT Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Sutter County has gone to court to challenge neighboring Placer County's approval of more than 14,000 homes on the county line.

The lawsuit, filed last month, is one of three challenging Placer County's recent approval of the Placer Vineyards project. The Sutter lawsuit alleges that Placer failed to adequately consider the traffic impact on rural Riego Road in Sutter County from drivers in Placer Vineyards. Sutter County Administrator Larry Combs said residents of south Sutter County already have been affected by commute traffic from rapidly growing Placer cities such as Roseville.

"They ultimately will have six lanes that come to the county line, and they are assuming Sutter County will take it from there," Combs said.

Scott Finley, deputy counsel for Placer County, said the environmental review conducted by the board was "comprehensive." He said the Placer Vineyards development will fund new stoplights on Riego Road and contribute to the eventual building of an interchange at Highway 99 and Riego Road.

Placer Vineyards also faces two other lawsuits, one filed by The Motherlode Chapter of The Sierra Club and the Sierra Foothills Audubon Society, and another by a pair of concerned citizens, Finley said.
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  #186  
Old Posted Aug 29, 2007, 9:01 PM
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WTF?!

Two developers vying to lure hotel chain to Sacramento
By Jon Ortiz - Bee Staff Writer
Published 1:02 pm PDT Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Two developers with a history of competition are in talks with InterContinental Hotels Inc. to partner with them on rival condo-hotel towers each wants to build in downtown Sacramento.

Denver-based developer Craig Nassi said that he is "close" to signing a deal with the luxury hotelier for Epic, a high-rise he envisions for 12th and I streets.

Local developer John Saca didn't return calls seeking comment about how InterContinental might fit into his 10th and J streets tower, The Metropolitan, but Sacramento business observers confirmed he has talked to the British firm about a deal.

"What we're hearing is that John has spoken with them," said Michael Ault, executive director of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership. Steve Hammond, president and CEO of the city's Convention & Visitors Bureau also said that Saca, who signed Intercontinental to his Towers condo project on Capitol Mall before it failed earlier this year, hopes to renew his partnership with the company.

John Lee, InterContinental's western region vice president, declined to comment about either project. "Sacramento is a target market for us," he said, "and we'd love to be in the city."

The InterContinental Hotels & Resorts chain is part of the larger InterContinental Hotels Group PLC based in Berkshire, England. It operates the InterContinental Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco and owns the Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express chains, among others.

--

Oops! duplicate post... see construction thread.
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  #187  
Old Posted Aug 29, 2007, 10:34 PM
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Originally Posted by TowerDistrict View Post
WTF?!

Two developers vying to lure hotel chain to Sacramento
By Jon Ortiz - Bee Staff Writer
Published 1:02 pm PDT Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Two developers with a history of competition are in talks with InterContinental Hotels Inc. to partner with them on rival condo-hotel towers each wants to build in downtown Sacramento.

Denver-based developer Craig Nassi said that he is "close" to signing a deal with the luxury hotelier for Epic, a high-rise he envisions for 12th and I streets.
Yeah really. Someone needs to let Nassi know that it would probably help out his situation to first get Aura out of coma before even thinking about Epic. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.
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  #188  
Old Posted Sep 26, 2007, 6:22 PM
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By Bob Shallit - Bee Columnist
Wednesday, September 26, 2007

* * *

The winners are ... Publishing honors are pouring in for a couple of Sacramento magazines.

Both Prosper and Sactown won big at last weekend's annual "Ozzie" and "Eddie" awards event in New York, sponsored by Folio, a prominent trade publication for magazines.

Prosper, which was founded three years ago and revamped earlier this year, received a gold Ozzie for best redesign for a consumer publication. Sactown won top Ozzie design honors for a new consumer magazine and a bronze Eddie for best regional magazine.
Sactown's founders Rob Turner and Elyssa Lee, both veterans of New York's magazine scene, attended the awards event. "We're coming up on our (magazine's) one-year anniversary, and this was the perfect birthday present," Turner says.

Nobody from Prosper attended the awards show, but the staff was thrilled with the recognition, says marketing VP Scott Doniger.

The wins for both publications "show there's some real talent in this region," Doniger says, "and we're proud to be part of it."
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  #189  
Old Posted Oct 3, 2007, 9:22 PM
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This poor state office building has so many issues... last year the windows were
falling out and today it's mold.

Mold shuts portion of a state high-rise
Board of Equalization workers say building has made them ill.

By Mary Lynne Vellinga of The Sacramento Bee
Wednesday, October 3, 2007

The state Board of Equalization has moved employees from two floors of its downtown high-rise headquarters after finding "a variety of molds" growing in the walls.

A memo sent to BOE staff members Monday said the 22nd and 23rd floors of the 24-story building at 450 N St. are off-limits to everyone but construction workers.

Beth Mills, a spokeswoman for the state Department of General Services, said the mold found last week between two layers of gypsum wallboard includes Stachybotrys chartarum, the "black mold" that has been the subject of numerous legal claims and reports of illness nationwide.

BOE says they cleared the two floors because they discovered the mold during repainting. But an attorney pointed out that the move came less than two weeks after he filed claims on behalf of four BOE employees who say that they've been sickened by working in the building, and that BOE management has covered up problems stemming from extensive water leakage into the high-rise.

If the state denies the claims, the workers intend to file lawsuits against the state, said the lawyer, Anthony Perez.

Perez said he had been contacted by dozens of BOE employees, some of whom have taken leaves of absence or are telecommuting because of respiratory and other health problems that they blame on their workplace.

Board of Equalization spokeswoman Anita Gore, who was moving from her 23rd floor office Tuesday, said the building is safe for workers.

"We have had this building's air tested and tested for mold spores, and the air quality has tested normal," she said.

But Rebecca Landeros, one of the employees who filed a claim, said the environment in the building has been less than ideal for years. She has spent 14 years working on the top few floors of the BOE headquarters, most recently on the 23rd floor.

"Since the opening of the building (in 1993), we've always had water intrusion," said Landeros, an appeals analyst. "We've had waterfalls. We've actually named waterfalls for attorneys whose offices were nearby. I've had to experience ceiling tiles falling on my desk. That was in the '90s. When I was pregnant, there was mold growing on the pillar near my desk."

Landeros complains of headaches, mysterious rashes, fatigue and blisters on her head. She said other workers have suffered similar symptoms. About two weeks ago she was moved to the 20th floor.

Science has not established a direct link between mold and specific illnesses. But Sandy McNeel, a research scientist with state Department of Public Health, said researchers agree that molds produce indoor allergens that cause reactions in some people.

Mold isn't the only danger lurking in wet buildings, McNeel continued. Bacteria grow faster in damp environments, and so do dust mites.

"The scientific evidence is stronger at this point that chronically damp buildings are more a problem for people than specifically mold," she said. "Mold can be a canary in a coal mine that indicates there's something wrong with this building, or this room."

Opened in 1993, the BOE building is essentially a wall of more than 6,000 windows set in pre-cast concrete. Between 1999 and 2005, seven large panes of window glass failed, some sending shards of glass crashing to the street below. A state report blamed premature window gasket failure, which caused the windows to fail and water to leak into the building.

The state has since spent about $12 million to fix the windows. Temporary scaffolding that protected passers-by has been removed.

Gore said the state Department of General Services was just finishing repairs to the windows when the mold was discovered. It was growing between layers of gypsum wallboard near a balcony that had problems with leaking.

Crews had pushed back the modular furniture so they could repaint the walls, she said. That's when they spotted discoloration on the walls. Mold was found growing inside.

"As a precaution we've moved everyone in the affected area out of their workspace," she said.

Gore said between 100 and 120 people, including legal staff members and department executives, have been relocated from the 22nd and 23rd floors to other parts of the building. About 2,200 people work in the building.

The BOE headquarters was built by the California Public Employees' Retirement System as a profit-making investment for its portfolio. It debuted on the skyline at the same time as the similarly sized Wells Fargo Center nearby, but cost only about half as much -- $79.4 million.

At the time, Sacramento city officials complained about its design and bemoaned the fact that the state was exempt from the city's design standards.

CalPERS later sold the building to the state Department of General Services, which acts as the landlord for state departments. DGS spokeswoman Mills said it should take about four weeks to replace the moldy gypsum wallboard and bring the displaced workers back.

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/411918.html
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  #190  
Old Posted Oct 3, 2007, 9:57 PM
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Isn't that perfect. Every once in a while the Bee gets it right, and you gotta love the how the article basically calls out the building as a big cheap concrete turd that is a public health menace to those working inside and to the people walking underneath it. The details about how the tower was built at the same time as the Wells Fargo center for half the cost and all the money being spent to keep this pile of junk inhabitable because of it, are gold. You get what you pay for. That's crap that the city gets no say on the state building standards. THe city dodged bullets with the EPA building and Fed court house.
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  #191  
Old Posted Oct 4, 2007, 2:55 AM
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Fed buildings are legit most of the time, but this building is a prime example what the state gives Sacramento.

The state never seems to keep up with its own demand for space, and then has to build huge projects all at once, and somehow keep costs down. It doesn't work to skimp on large buildings; it hurts you in the long run, as were seeing here.
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  #192  
Old Posted Oct 7, 2007, 8:46 AM
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City's core a caldron of neglect
By Marcos Bretón - Bee Columnist
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, October 7, 2007
Story appeared in METRO section, Page B1


Spend just two hours watching Sacramento police officers work, and their
role in our city becomes abundantly clear:

We expect cops to clean up our failures. We expect them to control a
preposterous concentration of low- income hotels downtown, places where
people live in conditions that can't even be described as squalor.

If you have no clue that your teenager rides the light rail downtown to
loiter instead of going to school, the police will do your job for you.

Then, there's the political failures that become police problems. For
example, what do you think happens when buildings remain boarded up for
years? Or are populated with questionable tenants? Would you believe they
actually attract criminal elements? I know. I was shocked, too. But there it
was. One minute I'm talking to a cop in front of the Greyhound station on L
Street, and the next we had a felony arrest.

A young woman was picking up her girlfriend at Greyhound while blaring
the stereo in her yellow convertible. The music was so loud, West
Sacramento undoubtedly heard it. She was oblivious to several shouts to
turn it down, and got a ticket for her trouble. A simple background check
found an outstanding warrant on the young woman who had just gotten off
the bus. Off she went in handcuffs, while a resident of the Berry Hotel next
door invited us to see his room.

Up we went, traversing stairs that moved as you stepped on them. To call
it a tenement would be an insult to tenements. The smell of the hallways
made you dizzy. The ceiling panels were torn and frayed. People were
paying more than $400 a month for these places.

At the Marshall Hotel on Seventh Street, I met an amiable man who told
police he was a registered sex offender. Another man showed us his hovel
of a room, the floor water-damaged, walls with black mold -- and spoke of
mice infestations. There are proposals to turn the Marshall into a "boutique"
hotel. The Berry is supposed to be cleaned up. The Greyhound station is
supposed to be moved. Blah, blah, blah. They are what happens when bad
property owners meet bumbling city officials.

And it doesn't stop there.

A short walk away on the K Street Mall, we found a man who had fallen on
the street. Turns out he was well known by police, in a program for "serial
inebriates." That means he's been arrested at least 25 times for public
drunkenness.

The K Street Mall was most heartbreaking of all, where scores of teenagers
loitered with no purpose. Where were their parents? Why weren't they in
school? Why would we expect the cops to be their babysitters?

This quagmire is vividly illustrated in the ongoing battle between the city
and Moe Mohanna, who owns many of the threadbare storefronts on K
Street and has an option to buy the Berry Hotel. Mohanna hasn't made
anything of properties he's owned for 20 years; his idea of tenants seems
to be tattoo parlors and low-end clothing stores that attract vagrants.

The city, which has been incompetent in dealing with him, will sit down with
him again Wednesday. Fine. But we're way past demanding accountability
from both sides. The city core remains a sewer with police as garbagemen,
dealing with the refuse of civic failures.
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  #193  
Old Posted Oct 7, 2007, 9:12 PM
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For the longest time I couldn't figure out why reviving the K Street Mall was such a big deal. So yesterday my boyfriend and I walked from our apartment (L & 25th) to Old Sac. On the way back we decided to to walk up K Street Mall from where it begins to where it ends at the convention center.
I now realize why its so important; and unfortunately, what a dump it is. Seeing as it runs from the convention center all the way to the mall and to Old Sac, its the heart of the city.
That douche bag Mohanna has posters up saying something to the effect of "stop the city's imminent domain abuse." What a slumlord!
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  #194  
Old Posted Oct 8, 2007, 4:40 PM
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The more I read editorials by the one above the more suspicious I get of journalists. They tend to not bother getting their facts straight. Mo had an option to buy the Berry, but it is AF Evans, a far more reputable company, that is buying them: that's in process. It will take a while, everything does. As to the Marshall, the plans for its renovation were only made public about a week ago and he's already complaining about how long it's taking?

The "preposterous concentration" thing is kind of silly: we're really talking about maybe half a dozen buildings along the J/K/L corridor. They seem like a concentration because there is so little other housing in the vicinity, largely due to land-use decisions from the 1930s-1970s that assumed that people shouldn't live downtown. The solution? Let's build more housing in the central city! Somehow, there are hotels of this sort in downtown Los Angeles and San Francisco and it doesn't bring construction to a grinding halt there--why should it be so here? Perhaps because the SRO residents aren't the problem?

Reading Cosmo's article in the SN&R was generally dismaying, because it just seems like there aren't any good guys to root for here: the city, Mo, and Zeiden all come off as manipulative, liars, or just incompetent. The city's strong-arm tactics just remind me of similar strategies used during the 1950s redevelopment era. And the purported illustration of Mo's plan for the neighborhood looks nothing like the plan I saw him support in 2005, which was to knock down the buildings on the 700 block except for the facades and build a tower behind them.

I'm no fan of eminent domain. I'm surprised to see that people here, who tend to generally be big fans of individual property rights, supporting the use of eminent domain as a development tool. It doesn't have a particularly good track record.
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  #195  
Old Posted Oct 8, 2007, 6:14 PM
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Yeah I really disliked Bretón's paragraph:

"At the Marshall Hotel on Seventh Street, I met an amiable man who told police he was a registered sex offender. Another man showed us his hovel of a room, the floor water-damaged, walls with black mold -- and spoke of mice infestations. There are proposals to turn the Marshall into a "boutique" hotel. The Berry is supposed to be cleaned up. The Greyhound station is supposed to be moved. Blah, blah, blah. They are what happens when bad property owners meet bumbling city officials."

Bad property owners?? Yeah maybe the former owners of the Marshall but not the current owners. And the biggest sins the City has committed over the years has been being too easy on the property owners, too easy on the Downtown Partnership, too easy on the State, and too easy the Loaves and Fishes, too easy on the drunks, drug addicts, and sexual/social predators.
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  #196  
Old Posted Oct 10, 2007, 4:31 AM
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As a journalism student at SF State I praise Breton. He's an excellent columnist and I enjoy his stories. I may be bias because I have met him while working at the Bee.
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  #197  
Old Posted Oct 12, 2007, 4:42 PM
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Found some cool pictures of Sacramento from years past from the California Archives.
1953:




1870 map:


5/11/1942 - 2 days before the Japanese were 'evacuated' from this area to iternment camps.
4th and Capitol:


Capitol "Street" (?):


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  #198  
Old Posted Oct 12, 2007, 6:45 PM
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Thanks neuhickman, I love seeing shots like those first two you posted
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  #199  
Old Posted Oct 12, 2007, 10:13 PM
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Everyone's favorite hindrance and historian, William Burg was on Insight
just a few minutes ago. The show covered his recent book on Southside Park.

Good show, and the next book on Sacramento, then and now, sounds cool too.
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Last edited by TowerDistrict; Oct 12, 2007 at 10:31 PM. Reason: spellign mstake
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  #200  
Old Posted Oct 12, 2007, 11:47 PM
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What's eerie about the Japantown photos is that all the stores are vacant with "For Rent" and "Clearance Sale" signs on them.

The first Japantown photo shows the kind of Sacramento urbanity that was pretty much destroyed by redevelopment: not the 8-story Paris photos shown a while back (Sacramento's population and land prices didn't make such things necessary) but a good example of ground-floor retail with residential above. Still plenty of examples of such housing in San Francisco but it's a rarity here except on stretches of J Street and 12th Street. Notice the wide variety of goods and services available within that one block: a market, a hotel (probably residential, considering its location,) two appliance shops, two drugstores, a hardware store, and so on.

I didn't use these photos, but I have a few like them of the old Japantown, including the Buddhist church, the Japanese hospital, a fish market and a few others.
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