The K Street Mall is a sad, sad place.
Located in the heart of Sacramento's downtown arena, the four block pocket has become a blighted area traversed mostly by ne'er-do-wells, panhandlers, hustlers, career loiterers, and teenage moms. Recently, however, there has been some hootin' and hollerin' to get the depressing pedestrian mall back on its feet... yet again. This would make (what?) the umpteenth attempt by the City's planners to do so? (I've honestly lost track.)
Recently, it was announced that D&S Development (the team responsible for restoring and re-invigorating the R Street Corridor) won the bid to revamp the 7th to 8th Street portion of the strip. It's been hinted about that in addition to a live music venue and several independent shopping outlets, the city may even restore through traffic for automobiles. Yes, 40 years after turning this portion of their burgeoning mini-metropolis into a pedestrian mall, the City Planners have possibly seen the error of their ways in restricting street use to those people who get around via car, motorcycle or bicycle.
Like many cities across the country, Sacramento in the turn of the century was awash in structures with character and charm all their own. But the late 1960's and early 1970's were not kind to Sacramento, especially from an architectural point of view. During this time period, many of those historic and splendid buildings were simply razed to make way for what The City thought were newer, better and more aesthetically pleasing buildings (today, we call these Brady Bunch-era replacements "eye-sores"). Who knows what this town would look and feel like today had those great old monuments of vision and grace been allowed to stay? I posit that the ever-elusive "world class city" yolk Sacramento keeps trying to wrap around its neck would be much easier to apply if structures like The Sacramento Hotel, The Alhambra Theater, The Buffalo Brewery, or practically any of the old original buildings (many of them theaters) on K Street were still standing.
Somewhere along the (time)line, some short-sighted jackass (or a committee of short-sighted jackasses) got the bright idea to cut off one of Sacramento's main downtown thoroughfares by turning K Street into a pedestrian mall... with what seems now to be a series of elaborate tank traps. With large swaths of inhabitants leaving cities all over the country for the more tranquil and numbing honeycombs of the suburbs, urban pedestrian malls seemed like just the trick to lure back that much needed revenue to Downtown (because convenient and ample parking at the malls in the suburbs apparently wasn't challenging enough for most consumers, I guess). Sacramento was not immune to this trend. It was a desperate idea at the time...
Over the next 40-some odd years, K Street hobbled along with mixed results. The 1990's saw the once open-air portion of the mall between Old Sacramento and 7th Streets converted into a ridiculously expensive "Downtown Plaza," flush with a Gap, a state-of-the-art (for the time) movie theater and some really horrid public art pieces. The K Street portion saw the rehabilitation of the last remaining movie theater (the splendid Crest Theater) as well as the opening of a brand new IMAX movie theater. Light Rail tracks were installed, ensuring easy accessibility for consumers from the suburbs. What could possibly go wrong?
Walk down the K Street Mall today, and the place is a virtual ghost town, complete with shady specters and 9-to-5 zombies. There are more empty retail outlets than open ones, and dust and cobwebs offer a year-round supply of built-in Halloween charm. The term "dead zone" should not be applied to any city's urban center (no offense, Detroit), but how else can you describe the rotted-out core that is the K Street Mall? Even the once teeming Downtown Plaza is a sad sight to behold; having been slapped around by the Great Recession, many prominent businesses have left Dodge, with a tiny pock-marked smattering of janky retailers taking their places.
To quote Iggy Pop: "The proof is in the pudding," and K Street's 40-year experiment with pedestrian mall-ness is the empty bowl the pudding left behind several years ago. So where do we go from here?
With the D&S deal in place, it seems that The City is ready to blow fresh air back into K Street's lungs. But we've heard this "we're serious this time - K Street is coming back!" spiel before. What lessons has The City learned from their past mistakes, and will they finally decide to ditch their counter-intuitive micro-managerial stance and let the strip evolve organically, answering to the calls of local, in-town consumers rather than trying to lure-in cash from Roseville, Elk Grove and Carmichael's denizens? Instead of appealing to the bland and imagination-adverse natures of the classy-yet-culture-less McMansion dwelling set, will The City Planners finally turn their attention to the very people who have to live in the same general area of this urban retail albatross?
Let's hope.
A while back, before the D&S deal went through, I had jotted down some ideas to bring K Street and the Downtown Plaza not back to life, but rather into a new life. The idea is simple. Go to most major cities that Sacramento seemingly wants to imitate, and what can you usually count on being there? Tall buildings? Boldness and vitality? Pretty and/or ambitious people? Sure, sure. But, in the area of commerce, most cities have depositories of youth activity that caters to what they want, yet don't necessarily need: shoes, clothing, tattoos, bars, etc. - all concentrated in one distinct district.
Berkeley has Telegraph Avenue. San Francisco has Haight/Ashbury. Brooklyn has Williamsburg. Portland has the Hawthorne (and better public transit - zing!) In short, each of these cities have a shopping district/neighborhood that caters to the one demographic that, even in rough and tumble economic times (like, say, right now) still spends their hard-earned, yet disposable income: consumers ages 14 to 34 years of age. Why couldn't K Street be Sacramento's faux-bohemian shopping destination?
First, you'd have to reroute the Light Rail off K Street. Just tear out those tracks and (yes) restore the street for car and bicycle traffic (sidewalks, gutters, parking spaces, bike racks - the whole enchilada). Then court anchor businesses such as H&M, Buffalo Exchange, American Apparel, while offering lowered introductory rents for the first year to them AND smaller, local independent business like Eco-Thrift, Old Soul Coffee and a bicycle retailer or two, as well. Cap-off these buildings with affordable apartments and lofts (this town is having a love affair with lofts lately) so people can actually live there and keep an eye on their neighborhood (which would now need a spiffy new name, by the way).
As for The Downtown Plaza? Turn the upper section into satellite extensions for UC Davis, UCSF, UC Berkeley, and/or Sac State. The lower section will be reserved for mixed-use retailers pertinent to these schools (i.e. bookstores) and non-pertinent shopping alike. The needs of the residents and students should--and ultimately will--dictate which retailers provide exactly what they need and want. Crazy idea, I know, but it seems to work in other cities. Why not ours?
(Also, I'd just like to add that this town would be greatly improved when it removes all the red tape it uses to bind-up both busking and food carts. I don't know why this town is so afraid of street musicians or gourmet food servers on wheels, but this aversion is ridiculous and, quite frankly, laughable (not to mention woefully behind the curve on both trends, as usual). I don't know when the powers that be in Sacramento will clue into this, but people feel most connected with their city when they feel that they can contribute something creative to it.)
The idea is to make K Street into a living, breathing destination that people want to either go to or be at. Essentially, the exact opposite of what it is right now.
The Verge Gallery and Studio Space
The Verge has a KickStarter page which allows those of you who value visual art as intrinsic and valuable to the fabric of our community to donate whatever dollar amount you place on this local and vital arts complex. As of this writing, The Verge has raised $4,265 towards their $6,000 goal (a seriously meager amount considering The Verge provides the same thought-provoking and engaging visual arts that in much larger cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York would require much, much more). And if you doubt the serious contribution that the arts provide to a city, Try imaging a Sacramento that consisted ONLY of buildings in the bland and imagination-free beige color scheme some of our sleeper denizens prefer. (((Shudder!)))
