Marcos Breton’s latest editorial takes aim at the 1000 block of J Street, best known for its long-shuttered buildings, entitled for two high-rise condo towers more than a decade ago.
Breton directs much ire at developer John Saca, known for his failed project/hole in the ground on Capitol Mall, whose plans for a 40-story building at the northeastern corner of 10th and J streets have resulted only in a new hole after the Biltmore Hotel burned in late 2015.
But there is also a hole in Breton’s article. Despite its obvious presence, he ignores the portion of this block in active, vital use, and fails to outline potential solutions that could bring the dormant parts of this block back to life. Recent nearby projects demonstrate how refocusing on pragmatic reuse, instead of lofty high-rise dreams, can re-knit our urban fabric.
The word “blighted” is a nebulous term whose real definition is “a property that isn’t worth as much as a real estate developer thinks it should be.” It can be used to describe any place where something the speaker doesn’t like can be seen: peeling paint, litter, vacant storefronts or, most often, visible poor, homeless, nonwhite, and/or young people.
The general assumption is that the only cure for “blight” is immediate demolition, based on the assumption that dirty people don’t like to stand in front of new buildings. For a visitor from the tidy, organized, middle-class suburbs, this block seems like chaos. But this block includes other elements that are easy to miss, primarily on the occupied and active southeastern corner of 10th and J streets.
These two buildings on the 1000 block of J Street escape Sacramento Bee columnist Marcos Breton’s notice, and his ire. They are in active use and play important roles in downtown Sacramento. [Photo William Burg]
The building next door, another 1940s terra cotta façade atop bold burgundy tile, is home to a trio of local businesses. Dad’s Sandwiches is a back-to-basics diner for burgers and sandwiches, decorated with historic Sacramento photos. Kim’s Vietnamese Restaurant produces a legendary pho and a tasty, inexpensive banh mi. In a city drowning in overpriced, curated “farm-to-fork” destination restaurants, Kim’s and Dad’s present an authentic, inexpensive alternative.
In between both restaurants, PLA Skate Shop is another locally owned business, serving the needs of Sacramento’s board riders. The shop’s customers (and employees) often inhabit the sidewalk in front of the shop, testing the tensile strength of their merchandise and the concrete with street-skating moves. While some of those aforementioned suburban visitors might consider street skaters a detriment to a city block, they provide the much-needed “eyes on the street” so important to public safety.
These local businesses are compact, efficient, inexpensive and useful to city dwellers. The main difference between these two buildings and the vacant portions of the block is, perhaps, the attitude of its landlord. Tenants paying regular rent are a greater appeal to these owners than the long-term gamble of a proposed high-rise without financing.
The Fred Mayes clock, a listed city landmark, was recently restored to its 1940s Art Deco appearance. [Photo William Burg]
Traffic engineers consider an empty sidewalk the best sidewalk. To an engineer, this block is undesirable chaos. For the flaneur, someone who walks in the city for pleasure–not to get from Point A to Point B but to enjoy the city’s urban dance–this is something like paradise. This stretch of the block feels like a big city. The layers of urban grit, variety of sights, sounds and smells are impossible to fabricate except through sufficient application of time, decay, renewal and people. It’s the same feeling you can find on the sidewalks of San Francisco, New York, Chicago or other big cities–at least in the spots that haven’t been gentrified yet.
This is a terrible thing for those who love a nice suburban mall and prefer their doses of urbanity in controlled, safe environments, but it’s a rare treasure for Sacramento’s city dwellers. There were once more corners and blocks like this in American cities, including downtown Sacramento. Today, they’re a rare thing, a gift for the flaneur, even if they horrify real estate speculators and local journalists.
The other treasure of this block hides from the street. The door to the right of Dad’s leads to an upstairs artists’ studio and band practice space. Quiet during the daytime, evening visitors often notice music coming from the upper story’s windows, a hint of the creativity taking place inside. Sacramento also once had many more downtown art galleries and studios, until the office-building boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s pushed most of them out into Midtown or North Sacramento. For a city finally embracing its homegrown artistic talent, places like this are essential to a healthy arts economy. But they are generally impossible in new high-rise buildings. As with the local businesses downstairs, creative uses require old buildings.
The 1000 block of J Street packs appeal and potential for Downtown Sacramento. [Photo William Burg]
A fire in the fall of 2015 doomed the Biltmore Hotel, a single-resident occupancy hotel closed in 2001 for an office building project that was never completed. [Photo William Burg]
Repair and reuse are important economic strategies in Sacramento that receive little press compared to new construction, but their contribution cannot be ignored. Breton mentions the MAY Building in his article but fails to note that it is a historic building–the former Mohr & Yoerk meat market, once occupied by Bon Marche and Ransohoff’s department stores.
The statement that the MAY was “without subsidies” isn’t entirely accurate. The team that restored it to residential use utilized a federal historic rehabilitation tax credit program to recoup some of the costs of building restoration. This tax credit appears in many recent projects, including WAL, the Maydestone, the Libby Cannery and the Washington Firehouse in West Sacramento. The historic Bel-Vue Apartments on 8th Street will utilize tax credits as part of a larger mixed-income project on the 800 block of K Street, between K and L Street.
Some may claim that not every building is suitable for reuse as a historic building, or that I am theorizing about possible outcomes that no builder would attempt. So I will close by mentioning the final element of this block that Breton failed to notice: last summer, a company called Zaytuna LLC received city permits for 1012 J Street, former site of the Lorenzo Patino School of Law. The plan calls for a modern re-façade, with ground floor retail and two apartments upstairs. The apartments will almost certainly be market rate–and we will see how they interact with the band practice spaces next door–but it is clear that at least one developer sees potential in these buildings.
A proposed project at 1012 J Street was submitted by Zaytuna LLC to convert this former law school into a mixed use building with upstairs apartments and ground floor retail. [Source: City of Sacramento]
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