David Townsend: Blow K Street Up or Move On

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Sacramento city leaders have two options downtown.

No. 1, blow up K Street. Again. OK, not with dynamite but with the same fearlessness and bulldozers that didn't work the last two times they tried it. Maybe they'll get lucky this time.

Or they can take option two, which may actually hold more promise. They can move on. Lift their collective heads out of another vacant downtown lot and make something happen elsewhere.

In fairness to our current mayor and city council, city leaders have been struggling with what to do with downtown -- especially K Street -- for more than 70 years. Old-timers will tell you that as far back as the 1940s their parents forbade them to go west of 7th Street on K.

First, in 1947, they ripped out the trolley tracks that had fed people into downtown for nearly 90 years. Then in the '50s, along came air conditioning, TV and suburbia. The downward spiral accelerated, spurred by construction of I-5, buried like a casket between our squandered riverfront and the rest of downtown.

In 1968, the new bright idea was to bulldoze K Street, close it to traffic and create a pedestrian mall. Large concrete sculptures, with fountains and pools that sat dry through several drought years and were meant to conjure California from the Sierra to the sea, instead it brought a wasteland of empty storefronts and deserted streets.

A different mayor and city council brought out the bulldozers in the 1980s and spent a half-million dollars to take down the battlements, hoping to reinvigorate the city's central core. You can see how successful that was: redevelopment wars, failed plans for a downtown Kings Arena, scary Greyhound Depot, derelict buildings, cheerless Downtown Plaza, holes in the ground and a struggling rail yard -- millions of dollars spent on dreams with little to show for it. And those light-rail trains? Empty at night, because what's to see in the abandoned canyons of K Street besides panhandlers and pigeons?

Moe Mohanna had a bright idea for K Street. He's the downtown property owner and flophouse landlord currently embroiled in dueling lawsuits and backroom negotiations with Mayor Fargo and the Redevelopment Agency over what to do with his large-scale holdings on K Street -- properties critical to downtown's future.

His bright idea for a shining, revitalized K Street with his property at the center was first floated in 1995 -- yes, a dozen years ago! And he was a central city property owner for 20 years before that. After more than 30 years of owning large swaths of downtown, Moe has failed to deliver much more than empty storefronts and smelly, dingy "hotels."

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