K Street hasn't been Sacramento's main street in any practical sense since before I was born--and K Street's "golden age" was pretty much the same era when the Southern Pacific shops were Sacramento's largest employer, up until the early 1950s...just before the redevelopment era. So I'd say that, in many ways, they are of equal importance--and given their location within a couple blocks of each other, their success is very much interdependent. In some ways, the decline of both came hand in hand with the era of the automobile, redevelopment, and the post-industrial era.
The Railyards is a larger area than the downtown chunk of K Street--240 acres vs. 80 acres (the half-blocks on either side of K Street from I-5 to about 16th Street) and has a lot more currently vacant land (open except for the Shops, Depot and UP ROW, vs. 1/4 block at 8th and K) which means a lot more potential for new growth and new construction. And while K Street already has a currently viable 9-5 function (there are a whole lot of offices there, which is why there are so many lunch places that close after 3 PM) and limited nightlife function (mostly on the 1000 and 1200 blocks), the Railyards currently only play the role of Amtrak depot and Railroad Museum repair/rehab facility.
The Railyards are also a lot more visible to visitors to Sacramento, via the Capitol Corridor and San Joaquin, both of which are among the busiest Amtrak routes in the country, and the Sacramento Valley Depot, the second-busiest Amtrak depot west of the Mississippi. You can drive on K Street now, but the only time a visitor to Sacramento driving into town sees K Street is if they make a wrong turn coming in via J Street or going out via L Street.
Not sure how many planning blogs or online newspapers you follow, ozone, but they're all screaming about how the Millenials want to live downtown, RIGHT NOW, and we do appear to be catching the wave of the Bay Area housing boom (as usual, a little later, but it inevitably arrives) so it seems to me that the time to build dense, urban housing in the Railyards, and creative new uses in the Shops buildings, is immediately if not sooner--while the economic "balloon squeeze" of the Kings arena is still in effect (it's a temporary effect, only as long as it's still considered "the new arena" and not "the old arena.")
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"Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings."--Jane Jacobs
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