Places: Elk Grove, California: Wanted, Nude or Designed

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By Elspeth Cisneros; Additional Reporting by Mark Barna

Elk Grove went from cow town to commuter city in the blink of an eye. Now, after 10 years of plunking down car lots and tract homes on almost every open field, the city (pop. 136,609) is seeking to renew its long lost small-town charm.

Though Elk Grove’s old town scarcely covers a quarter of a square mile, the city recently won approval as a “Preserve America Community,” part of a Laura Bush-led initiative to restore and maintain historic towns and cities. As one of 11 such communities in California, some of Elk Grove’s claims to fame include a handful of mid-19th-century homes, a site associated with the Bear Republic revolt and some jail cells once connected to the original Sacramento County jail. Not exactly a window to the past, but probably worth a class field trip or two.

Marketing a vanished way of life isn’t the only strategy for making the town more appealing. Landmark architecture fever has hit Elk Grove in a big way. Similar to Redding’s Sundial Bridge, Elk Grove is bringing in a design heavy hitter to perform a postmodern facelift.

The ever-growing city is negotiating a wellness, civic and performing arts complex at Elk Grove Boulevard and Big Horn Road with Zaha Hadid, an Iraqi-born Vienna-based architect. Hadid’s style is known as "deconstructivist,” a genre described as conveying controlled chaos. That may sound a lot like Highway 99 on a weekday morning, but city planners have high hopes.

“If you are going to make a landmark building,” planning director Christine Crawford says of the coming Elk Grove community center, “people are going to want to come and look at it, and that helps the city’s economy. I think that is part and parcel of going with an architect like this.”

Cost to the city will be about $200 million, according to Mayor Pro Tempore Michael Leary. The complex will be part of the 1,900-acre Madeira residential and commercial development in west Elk Grove.

Mixed-use is the word of the day when it comes to growth. This means that in theory a resident of Madeira, like other planned communities in the area, could leave home, walk the common area to a restaurant, to a shop, to his or her office, then to a performing arts event at the community center.

Despite grand plans for development, Elk Grove is not without its quirky side.

Every September, free-wheeling nudist resort, Laguna Del Sol, in nearby Wilton hosts Nudestock. Billing itself as a summer of love celebration reliving the mood of the 1960s, performers include Willie Nelson impersonator Rod Marshall and peace and love musician Groovy Judy.

“The cross-section of people you see here is the same you would see at the grocery store,” maintains general manager Steven Sailors of the 1,700-member resort. Like much of Elk Grove, Laguna Del Sol members are open to the unexpected. “The post-baby boom generation has just got the kids out of the house and is looking for something fun to do,” says Sailors.

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