In the Spotlight is a Sacramento Bee series that digs into the high-profile local issues that readers care most about. Story idea? Email metro@sacbee.com .
Sacramento’s next mayor will be tasked with seeing the city through a budget deficit, fielding the frustrations of residents calling for more affordable housing and managing the needs of business owners challenged by post-COVID economic shifts.
Those issues all converge downtown — California’s center of government and Sacramento’s urban core — which today faces elevated commercial vacancies and calls for revitalization.
“We need a very strong core once again,” said Robert Heidt, president and CEO of the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. “We really have a unique opportunity to change what the market looks like… It’s been disrupted, and it’s not going to go back to what it once was.”
Pedestrian foot traffic is still recovering from the pandemic, according to data provided by the Downtown Sacramento Partnership. And retail is occupancy is still down significantly from 2019 levels.
By some measures, the candidates’ downtown policy proposals are aligned. Both plan to prioritize university campus expansions there. Both see a clear need to expedite city permitting processes, to incentivize developers to build housing.
They differ on homelessness and policing. Both candidates favor intentional, sanctioned encampments , but disagree on which scenarios the city should move people who are sleeping outdoors. Assemblyman Kevin McCarty has said he wants to hire more officers, to keep pace with the city’s population growth, while Flojaune Cofer has proposed hiring more non-police personnel to respond to nonviolent calls.
And in interviews this week, McCarty leaned into the possibilities of adaptive reuse — the conversion of commercial buildings into housing — an issue he has worked on as a member of the Assembly. Cofer, meanwhile, focused on boosting downtown’s vibrancy by rethinking use of vacant spaces and supporting the creative economy.
From offices to apartments
Sacramento’s downtown was shaped in part by a wave of redevelopment in the 1960s, when the city pushed residential neighborhoods out of the urban core in favor of a more office-centric district.
“That’s kind of worked — relatively — for the past 60, 70 years,” McCarty said. “But I think everything is changing now, probably forever, in this post-pandemic world, and we really need to rethink downtown.”
Still, Cofer argued that downtown’s problems predate COVID-19. It’s part of the reason she opposed bringing state workers back to the office. During a debate last month she said it would contradict the city’s climate goals and burden state workers with solving “a problem that’s existed for 40 years, which is that downtown goes to sleep at 3 o’clock because that’s when the state workers leave.”
This week she recalled taking the bus and carpooling downtown to work after moving to the city about 20 years ago. The last bus, she said, left downtown at 6:30 p.m. Businesses she frequented during the day would be closed by dinnertime.
“My impression has been that downtown has always had a challenge,” Cofer said. “The pandemic did worsen the situation — but it didn’t invent it.”
For McCarty, a key part of downtown’s future is bringing more of its real estate under private sector ownership. He cited an analysis by the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, which showed a significant portion of downtown parcels are government-owned, and therefore do not generate property tax.
“It’s really the key to our future. How do we get these buildings on the tax rolls, paying taxes into city coffers where we can fund police, fire, parks services — and, heck, maybe even use some of that money to help do even more projects down there, more housing,” McCarty said. “It really is desperately needed for the future.”
McCarty has been involved in California’s ongoing efforts to convert underused, multistory state buildings into housing. The governor signed an executive order formalizing the effort in 2019. The state has completed one such project since then, and more are underway.
In 2022, McCarty passed a bill that required the state to look for more buildings eligible for conversion, and in January the Department of General Services identified 13 buildings statewide that could, potentially, be vacated in the future.
McCarty acknowledged the limitations of adaptive reuse, which can be difficult and costly. Of the 13 buildings the state identified, for instance, it found that only four were viable for conversion. Two are in Sacramento, on P Street downtown.
“Some (buildings) are prime for it,” he said. “Some, it would be too expensive, and it would cost way more to recycle than to tear down.”
A scholastic boost?
In their campaigns, Cofer and McCarty have both leaned into the idea of attracting universities to Sacramento’s downtown.
McCarty said he’s had conversations with Sacramento State and University of California about adding student housing downtown. Sacramento State, he said, has a small downtown campus already, but it’s “bursting at the seams,” and the main campus across town is also growing.
“It’s within my scope of work,” McCarty said, referencing his tenure as chair of the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education finance. “So I’m very familiar with this, and don’t think it’s a pipe dream at all.”
University President Luke Wood referenced downtown plans in a recent magazine Q&A .
“I look at all these relatively empty buildings downtown, and then I think about the fact that we’ve got 30,000 students and we don’t have enough space on campus to serve them,” Wood told SacTown Magazine. “... The goal would be not just a single building. It would be a downtown campus with residential living and classrooms.”
A university spokesperson declined to comment on the candidates’ and Wood’s remarks, but confirmed that the school intends to explore “downtown options.”
Cofer said she had discussed the idea with Wood. She views it as a means of increasing foot traffic and overall vibrancy downtown. The colleges may also gain a competitive edge, if they can offer students opportunities to study subjects like political science, criminal justice and public health at the foot of the capitol.
Cofer also said she wants to see more intentional use of spaces downtown. She referenced an artist who started an exhibition in a previously vacant storefront, and said the city may be able to incentivize more efforts like it. She proposed offering discounts or tax incentives for people to create pop-up stores or events in spaces that are on the market and vacant.
“You keep the ‘for sale’ sign up front, but there’s somebody in there doing something temporarily,” she said. “So they’re bringing in revenue, the space isn’t empty, and more people are coming to engage in the space. It’s not a dead zone.”
Cutting red tape
Both candidates have committed to streamlining city approval processes for businesses. Cofer said she wanted to establish a single point of contact for businesses to spare them from being “bounced around” between different departments. She discussed setting maximum time frames for certain processes, and establishing a “workflow tracker” wherein builders could track which stage their project is in, and hold the city accountable.
McCarty said he wants to make establishing outdoor spaces for restaurants easier , as many opted for alfresco dining temporarily in the early years of COVID-19. He has vowed to reform the building department to speed up permitting and encourage development. He views it as part of the solution to the city’s budget deficit.
“One of the ways we can grow out of this is to have more economic development in our city and our urban core,” he said. “This is a big piece of the puzzle, to help spur development in downtown Sacramento.”
Heidt, the chamber head, said developers have, at times, chosen to build in other parts of the region because they get more cooperation in other cities. While those projects still benefit the Sacramento region as a whole, he said, “you cannot have a strong region without a strong core.” (The chamber’s political action committee, Heidt said, has endorsed McCarty.)
“The message we need to send to the region and to the world,” Heidt said, “is that Sacramento is open for business.”
Local News
Comments / 0