A Cranky History of the Railyard

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Imagine the excitement: $150 million for infrastructure alone; drain every resource to build an arena for billionaire casino-owner playboys from Las Vegas. Come on, that’s what “major league cities” do. Forget that the Brothers Maloof didn’t even want to be there. Forget that there is hardly one block in the existing central downtown that doesn’t face challenges, blighted buildings and empty lots.

Alas, only 17 percent of the voters were willing to fork over their tax dollars for a temple to the NBA. More silence.

What we’re left with now is a new plan by a new developer. With fewer charettes (which actually is French for the carts used to take prisoners to the guillotine) and less public attention, that developer has come up with a plan that is hard to differentiate from the award-winning 1990 scheme.

While the new developer has bought the railyard from Union Pacific, there aren’t any prospects for public or private financing in the foreseeable future. And for all its vision, the new plan raises some serious questions about priorities in Sacramento.

Take the grand plan to spend $10 million to move the old SP Railroad Station 100 yards to the north, to be closer to relocated train tracks.

With careful scientific research we were able to determine that a 60-year-old man (either of us) could walk that distance carrying a briefcase in just two minutes. Why move a historic structure one block when a nicely landscaped sidewalk could do the job?

Just think what could be done with that $10 million. How about a down payment on a two-block-long plaza south of Capitol Mall across I-5 that would finally redress a nearly 50-year-old blunder that cut off the city from the river that gave us life in the beginning?

Or how about tearing out the traffic tourniquet between Hwy. 160 and Del Paso Boulevard that has strangled historic North Sacramento — an area that deserves our money more than moving a rail terminal.

We’d like to hear the sounds of earth movers and hammers, but we fear it will be more of the same. And as the railyard languishes, other more promising areas for renewal will continue to face the same silence.

Speaking of silence, anyone heard about the NBA’s plan for a new arena?

David Townsend and Jeff Raimundo are alleged political and media professionals who have participated in and watched the Sacramento region for way too long. And these views are obviously theirs and theirs alone.

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