Date: May 17 – 22, 2009

Location:Sacramento, CA

Sponsor: City of Sacramento and the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Authority

Chair: William Hudnut, III

Subject Area: Corridor Redevelopment

For the panel report, please visit ULI’s Knowledge Finder 

The Assignment

• What is the current market demand in the area?
• How many and what types of jobs can be attracted to the corridor?
• What is the potential to attract vertically integrated, mixed-use development, including residential, to the corridor over the next 20 to 30 years?
• How does the corridor position itself to attract transit-oriented redevelopment?
• 

  Existing conditions along Stockton Boulevard

  How important is land assembly to attracting the appropriate market to the corridor?

• What uses, development schemes, and development programs are most appropriate based on the market?
• How can communities best market development opportunities without overtly competing with adjacent jurisdictions?
• How can the private sector be encouraged to accommodate bus and transit-system accessibility?
• How important are streetscape and other infrastructure improvements to the redevelopment process?
• How should access and parking be accommodated?
• What are the best and most cost-effective processes for assembling land for redevelopment along the corridor?

Summary of Recommendations

This conceptual plan for the east and west side of the Stockton Boulevard corridor suggests a variety of uses, including residential, limited retail, and community uses. The central organizing feature for the new development is a town green with a variety of vehicular and nonvehicular links to adjacent neighborhoods, a new community center, and the school sites to the east.

The panel believes that there is not a short-term market solution to the problems facing the entire Stockton Boulevard corridor or specifically for the Stockton Boulevard Opportunity Area. Patience and determination will be required. In addition, significant intervention and stimulus from the city and other financial entities will be necessary.

• The city should evaluate, choose among, and begin to implement the recommendations contained in Ten Principles of Reinventing America’s Suburban Strips (ULI, 2001).
• The city must reduce developer and investor risk by
  • Addressing visual blight through the enactment of design guidelines and code enforcement and beginning a more proactive code enforcement process;
  • Rehabilitating the Budget Inn, as planned;
  • Demolishing the remaining deteriorated motels and land-banking the properties as green space;
  • Implementing a new streetscape program;
  • Improving public safety through better jurisdictional cooperation;
  • Streamlining the development entitlement and permit process; and
  • Providing land assemblage assistance.
• The city should focus efforts on the “focus area or central node” rather than the entire opportunity area or the entire corridor.
• It should build better relationships with UC Davis Medical Center.
• The city should consider forming a nonprofit section 501(c)(3) community development corporation.