Question: What's the current Downtown/Midtown residential market look like?

Answer: It's nice if you can get it.  But unfortunately,  there's just not a lot of homes in these neighborhoods.  Yet.

Here's a February 2015 Trendgraphix Market Summary for the Downtown and Midtown zip codes (95811,95814 and 5816) showing the number of homes For Sale, Sold and Pended (in contract):

Just 44 homes available For Sale in February!

If you'd like to check on current Price per Square Foot for the DT/MT area click here , or to see the current DT/MT  Average Price For Sale and Sold + the Median price click here

Prospective sellers should take note of the lack of competition IF they are thinking about selling!  :)

Coloring INSIDE the (purple) lines

Sacramento's Entertainment & Sports Center (AKA Downtown Arena) hit another milestone yesterday by "going vertical" for the first time.  The first of many steel beams - appropriately colored purple - was hoisted into place at the area job site.

"Live" from DTSac

See more construction photos from the BJ.

Downtown, getting Clean and Safe…

Downtown has experienced a 50% decrease in crime in the past 10 years*

A big part of the credit for this goes to The Downtown Sacramento Partnership (DSP).  They've built an effective coalition with government/service agencies, law enforcement and the business community. Their clean and safe programs support downtown development and  provide services to all downtown users by maintaining the physical environment.

Here's how:

Downtown Guides: The familiar, Downtown Guides, dressed in yellow, provide customer service to downtown users. These information ambassadors welcome visitors and employees to downtown, provide directions (to more than 18,000 people last year!) and assistance, and support crime prevention by working closely with law enforcement agencies.

Clean Streets: Seven days a week, the Clean Streets team, wearing lime green gear, respond to maintenance issues in the district.  In 2014, they removed 3,618 pieces of graffiti and 163,240 gallons of trash, debris, and leaves from DT. They're now also providing street-level maintenance services in Old Sacramento.

Homeless Outreach Navigators: DSP's blue jacketed Navigators connect homeless individuals with services focusing on housing and long-term solutions.  The Navigator team, working with over 500 individuals in the past year, successfully housed 117  individuals in permanent or transitional housing and reconnected 258 individuals with other services outside the district.

Community Prosecutor:  A deputy district attorney, designated as a community prosecutor,  works on behalf of downtown businesses, property owners, social services, law enforcement, and community organizations to identify and implement broader solutions to nuisance crimes specific to the urban core. Last year the program prosecuted an average of 50 cases per month, including violations of probation.

Attribution: DSP's 2014 Annual report.

*Source: Sacramento Police Department Part 1 crimes 2005-2014.

Sacramento Rising... ..."its a new day"...

Sacramento is in the 2014 TOP TEN of Least Stressed-Out Cities according to CNN Money.  That and many other interesting and fun facts and visuals can be found on DSP's exciting video! Sacramento Rising!  Check it out...

A” Collideoscope” of possibilities...

Collisions, Co-Learning and Connectedness.  Or setting the stage in Downtown Sac for innovation and growth from chance meetings. “Collisions”.

At DSP’s recent “State of Downtown” breakfast, Keynote Speaker, Mark Roland spoke of his vision of how downtown could be re-shaped to fuel innovation, using his experience as a ROCeteer consultant for (Las Vegas) Downtown Project. The ROC stands for Return on Community.

Mark founded ROCeteer to fuel innovation within Las Vegas’ Downtown Project. ROCeteer provides coaching, mentoring, training and consulting support to the Las Vegas Downtown Project’s startup ecosystems and entrepreneurs.

Excerpts of Mark’s vision:  It’s all about Accelerating Collisions, Co-Learning, and Connectedness, which in turn will lead to Happiness, Luckiness, Innovation, and Productivity

We should focus on maximizing long-term ROC (Return On Community & Return On Collisions) and institutionalizing ROL (Return On Luck) – Accelerating Serendipity, as in finding valuable or agreeable things you weren't looking for.

Mark's 3 INGREDIENTS FOR SERENDIPITY:

1.    Residential density of 100 residents/acre

2.    Street-level activity for residents to collide

3.    Culture of openness, collaboration, creativity, diversity and optimism

This all sounds a lot like where Downtown Sacramento is headed to me, how about you?

[Attribution: Gleaned from Mark Roland’s (Las Vegas) Downtown Project presentation, DSP (Downtown Sacramento Partnership) and Internet sources.]

Just 84 homes a month, that’s all we ask…

Mayor Kevin Johnson wants 10,000 housing units downtown over the next 10 years.  So we’ll need to average 84 homes a month to make that happen!

The DSP (Downtown Sacramento Partnership) also identified housing as a critical component of any effort to improve the urban core in their 2013 “3 Point Plan for Moving Sacramento Forward”, part of a broad assessment that identified the key initiatives necessary to support growth downtown.

A lot of housing proposals have come and gone and new ones are in the works; but what’s (still) missing in current development proposals are concrete plans to develop "moderately priced", owner occupied housing in mid-range price points of $250,000 to $450,000 that will attract young families and young professionals, and empty nesters that want to come back to Downtown.

Now the mayor has publicly recognized the need for housing in Downtown’s rebirth as reported by Tony Bizjak in the Sacramento Bee recently:

Repopulating downtown

The mayor set out this ambitious goal Thursday night: 10,000 new housing units in the next 10 years. Those people, he said, will be getting around via streetcars and light rail, not so much in cars. That way, the downtown will finally become a people place again. The downtown is getting its arena, and new businesses are emerging. “Housing is the missing component,” he said.

Downtown arena

A big topic in his last two speeches, the Kings and the downtown arena got only a few mentions this time around. The mayor said ESPN plans to air a documentary later this year on how the city kept the Kings and got a new arena built.

What do you think?

Is a street car really desired by DT businesses?

It’s more than a streetcar:  It’s the Downtown Riverfront Streetcar Project (DRSP) and it’s about connectivity.  Connecting people to businesses and entertainment events – think baseball at Raley Field, a concert or basketball game at the ESC - be it the Kings or College March Madness! Or even an event at the Community Theater/Convention Center.

Are DT business leaders really supportive of DRSP?

So far, local business leadership – in the form of Downtown Sacramento Partnership (DSP) has been seen as neutral although behind the public scenes they certainly have been actively studying and discussing how the project might get financed and how it could affect Downtown property owners.

And a SACOG committee has been focusing on a detailed economic study done in 2013 that showed that the cost to affected property owners was about 1% of the value of a building or 1% of rents on an annual basis.  The benefit to property owners was 3-5 times the cost at a minimum; and that does not include potential benefits to individual retailers and businesses into the future.

It was also recently reported that the City and SACOG had hired a consultant to work on public and business outreach about the Project and outreach meetings have been scheduled.

Meanwhile, DSP staff, have been drafting guiding principles that include moving light rail off of K Street (to accommodate a Streetcar), and a cap on private property owner assessments among other issues.  These principles will be presented to the City for consideration and shows that the downtown business community does indeed support the concept of a streetcar to improve connectivity to the city’s core business districts.