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Let's please be honest, compare the Grid to 2019, not 2020. Ask the many small and large businesses who lost so much or simply gave up and retired or moved. I'll keep drinking the cool-aid and pretend Sacramento's Grid is just wonderful. Maybe it is....I see plenty out of town folks at the new hotels and older ones. But seriously, if you stayed at the Citizen and wandered over to Chavez park, and walked K Street Mall. Or stayed at the Hyatt Centric, Capital Hyatt or Marriott and walked around Capital Park, or K Street, or walked the depressing tunnel to Old Sac, would you be impressed and tell folks Sacramento is just fantastic. I know its not fair to compare Sacramento with Santa Barbara, but the scale and size of Santa Barbara's grid is remarkably similar to Sacramento's grid, minus the half-dozen Sacramento high-rises.
To be fair, I spent the day riding my bike around downtown Santa Barbara's grid. The architecture is fantastic, but a good 35-45% of the businesses are closed or reduced hours. Santa Barbara is just gorgeous but even this ultra rich town has been dramatically effected by the last 2 years of policies. Will it fully recover; it should , its Santa Barbara, but how long will it take as the Fed just increased the interest rate yet again.
Regarding light rail to the airport, a good sign it would be used is the RT Airport Bus seems to be pulling its weight. Every time I ride it, there are a half a dozen or so patrons. It saves your family/friends from having to take you "all the way to the airport", instead, have them drop you off downtown and take the emissions-free bus.
The Coast Starlight just pulled in to Santa Barbara always a fun way to go from Sacramento. And for those of you who didn't know Southwest has had non-stop direct flights to Santa Barbara from Sacramento for awhile now. I was chatting with a lady who lives in Ventura and she was ecstatic that she can visit her Son at UC Davis, and daughters in Roseville without having to fly out of Burbank or LAX. Santa Barbara's airport is tiny yet awesome and beautiful.
I know way off topic.....
Will Solidigm change there mind about Rancho and set-up shop in Alburquerque or Phoenix? Hmm.
Okay so as many of you know I have to deal with the fallout of this stuff at my job. But it really comes down to voters. Things could change, if voters had the will. Unfortunately, the Republican brand has become so toxic that I don't think it is possible in CA.
But long story short. No, cops are not busting people with small amounts of drugs in Sac proper. And if they are, it's because it is in conjunction with some other stupid shyte the druggie has been caught doing. The drugs just happened to be found in during the investigation of say, trespassing or vandalism (the two most common).
And in most cases these people are 8536'd. A promise to appear at court at a later date and cut lose, per legislation that makes this possible. Only way a twacker is being haulded in is if they have warrants on something else.
And even then, even THEN, many of these guys are getting released on OR the day they get arraigned. I'm talking people with 3,4, 5 active cases. I've seen it! Even with some of those cases technically being felonies!
Why? Because all these judges are appointed by Newsome and Brown or Gray Davis for some of the old timers. This ilk and the Commissioners who are hired are almost always former DA's. Or even worse, civil trial lawyers. But many of them are soft on crime liberal types, and getting woker with ever new one that gets sworn in. There have been literal perpetrators of homicide who get under charged, generous plea bargains, and are back on the street in less than half a decade.
While the Broadway and Alhambra corridors on the outer edges of the central city have their challenges, anyone claiming that the Folsom Boulevard corridor through Rancho Cordova is in better shape hasn't been there lately. While there is some seriously excellent Korean and Mexican food and some fun thrift stores in the decaying strip malls and mostly-vacant shopping centers, it's mostly a reality check that homelessness is in no way solely a "downtown" problem, or even a Sacramento problem (considering that 95% of Sacramento isn't downtown.)
However, I'm sure that not all of Rancho Cordova looks like Folsom Boulevard, while critics of Sacramento naively assume that all of Sacramento must look like the parts of Broadway that frightened them to drive through once, so much so that they have to wonder who is buying and renting the market rate housing in the central city instead of asking them! For-sale property tends to get snapped up and occupied very quickly, and while I know there's a limit to higher-end/market-rate apartments, the rentals seem to be sufficiently occupied to give the impression of human activity to passersby. The grid and the "toast" (Railyards & Richards) grew by nearly a third from 2010-2020, twice the rate of the region as a whole, and there's plenty more where that came from.
I was on Folsom Blvd in Rancho Cordova today. It is in significantly better shape than the grid. First during covid, the repaved Folsom Blvd, they added new sidewalks and added additional landscaping. Moreover, sprucing up the street helped lower the vacancy rate. The Pepboys that closed during Covid has become an Advanced Autoparts. A former strip mall that has been vacant so long I have no idea what was there last, now has a Harbor Freight tools and an appliance store so its fully leased up. The Walgreens that closed has been filled by a Dollar Store. The Kohls in the KP International Plaza has construction workers on the fascade in what looks like preparation for occupancy. Across the street from the Walmart in the plaza with the 99 cent store, there was a gym that closed during covid and that is still vacant. At the Mills Plaza, that used to have the Sears Appliance center, they brought in a Planet Fitness, an American Freight (appliance) store, and a DD's discount center, the only vacancy was the site of the former Dollar Store that moved to fill the Walgreen's site.
But the other big difference is that there are no favelas anywhere on Folsom Blvd in Rancho Cordova. That is just not something you can say about the grid.
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Originally Posted by wburg
The Grid's residential neighborhoods aren't more vulnerable than the suburbs--if anything, it's a remarkably resilient groups of neighborhoods that weathered the housing crash of the early 2000s and the events of 2020-2021 quite robustly; while a few places closed, residents and community groups took active steps to patronize their favorite neighborhood restaurants via take-out or outside seating once those options became available, and plenty of new restaurants and shops have opened to take the place of those that closed.
The value proposition that downtown wants to offer is close proximity to restaurants and bars. The crux of the issue is who wants to do outdoor dining downtown when you smell urine and see feces on the sidewalks downtown or dealing with needles and people spare changing you? The advantage that the El Dorado Hills Town Center and The Fountains (in Roseville) have is that you can eat outside in those locations and not have to deal with urine and feces anywhere near where you are eating. There aren't enough people living downtown to support all of the restaurants downtown and if the experience downtown isn't as nice as other areas people will flea to other options. Proximity to employers doesn't matter as much when peple just work from home. That is the vulnerability of downtown.
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Originally Posted by wburg
And that's why, as mentioned above, if we start to attract a larger number of tech workers, a lot of them will likely look for places in Sacramento's central city, and commute to Rancho Cordova via car, light rail, or some iteration of "tech bus" in the same way that many Silicon Valley tech workers eschewed the wealthy and comfortable suburban neighborhoods of San Jose for places like the Mission and the Tenderloin in San Francisco--which, I think anyone would agree, face even greater challenges in terms of social problems than K Street, Broadway or Land Park--or even Folsom Boulevard!
The grid isn't San Francisco and the Sacramento region isn't the bay area. The Silicon Valley is mostly built out. If employers want to expand their building in the Silicon Valley but not provide all of the additional parking space for those employers, I am pretty sure how tech companies get approval of local authorities to do that in the Silicon Valley is by promising that they will build the new building but not increase the demand for parking by offering the tech buses in the silicon valley that you referenced. But none of the tech employers in Sacramento do that here. I dated a woman who worked for HP in Roseville, she drove her car to work, there was no tech bus. I have a tenant in building in Folsom who works for Intel in Folsom, again he drives or takes his bike to work, but there is no tech bus. Second SF is dramatically more dense than the grid. It's also a much bigger area, SF is 49 sq miles. Is the grid even one square mile? It is a really small area that really isn't that densely built out. The more relevant comparison is likely Old Pasadena or maybe Long Beach. I get that you live in the grid and you like it, but its a small neighborhood that really isn't that important nor all that desireable. It just isn't that important, so I really question the demand of anyone working in Rancho Cordova to really go out of there way to live downtown. I just really don't see a huge demand to live there. So I don't see a big push for anyone to start a private bus service to the grid. Whatever demand there might be for that service probably can be handled by RT.
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Originally Posted by wburg
The ongoing crisis of the unhoused is saddening but our local councilmember is taking the lead in efforts to address the issue through creation of more affordable housing, and challenging the more conservative and stodgy members of the Council to step up their game regarding long-term solutions. It's going to take some activism and a lot of work, but I think we can get close to a central city population of 50,000, a number we haven't seen since the mid 1950s, by the 2030 census. I imagine that some of the younger and more creative workers at industries like Solidigm will prefer that sort of environment to a nice, quiet 1970s ranch house in Fair Oaks.
If Solidigm thought that there was a demand of its workers to live downtown, they could have looked for a location downtown. From what I understand they were looking for a space in Folsom or El Dorado Hills and then settled on Rancho Cordova.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
Depends on what part of the grid; some parts are very lively, others are quite quiet. One thing that happened during the last 2 years is some long-time central city residents were reminded just how nice it could be to be in a quiet neighborhood, and as neighborhood numbers increase, the power of those neighborhoods to organize and advocate also grows, even in a majority-renter neighborhood. Meanwhile, I have a feeling that downtown Roseville is just going to become more urban over the next few decades, which will mean a livelier Vernon Street than some may be used to.
I agree that Roseville seems to want to make downtown Roseville more urban.
Let's please be honest, compare the Grid to 2019, not 2020. Ask the many small and large businesses who lost so much or simply gave up and retired or moved. I'll keep drinking the cool-aid and pretend Sacramento's Grid is just wonderful. Maybe it is....I see plenty out of town folks at the new hotels and older ones. But seriously, if you stayed at the Citizen and wandered over to Chavez park, and walked K Street Mall. Or stayed at the Hyatt Centric, Capital Hyatt or Marriott and walked around Capital Park, or K Street, or walked the depressing tunnel to Old Sac, would you be impressed and tell folks Sacramento is just fantastic. I know its not fair to compare Sacramento with Santa Barbara, but the scale and size of Santa Barbara's grid is remarkably similar to Sacramento's grid, minus the half-dozen Sacramento high-rises.
To be fair, I spent the day riding my bike around downtown Santa Barbara's grid. The architecture is fantastic, but a good 35-45% of the businesses are closed or reduced hours. Santa Barbara is just gorgeous but even this ultra rich town has been dramatically effected by the last 2 years of policies. Will it fully recover; it should , its Santa Barbara, but how long will it take as the Fed just increased the interest rate yet again.
Regarding light rail to the airport, a good sign it would be used is the RT Airport Bus seems to be pulling its weight. Every time I ride it, there are a half a dozen or so patrons. It saves your family/friends from having to take you "all the way to the airport", instead, have them drop you off downtown and take the emissions-free bus.
The Coast Starlight just pulled in to Santa Barbara always a fun way to go from Sacramento. And for those of you who didn't know Southwest has had non-stop direct flights to Santa Barbara from Sacramento for awhile now. I was chatting with a lady who lives in Ventura and she was ecstatic that she can visit her Son at UC Davis, and daughters in Roseville without having to fly out of Burbank or LAX. Santa Barbara's airport is tiny yet awesome and beautiful.
I know way off topic.....
Will Solidigm change there mind about Rancho and set-up shop in Alburquerque or Phoenix? Hmm.
There is a limited number of places near the coast with the climate like Santa Barbara. No matter how badly Santa Barbara is ran, it is really difficult to screw that up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Valley Boy
Okay so as many of you know I have to deal with the fallout of this stuff at my job. But it really comes down to voters. Things could change, if voters had the will. Unfortunately, the Republican brand has become so toxic that I don't think it is possible in CA.
I agree that the Republicans are irrelevant in California and I question there staying power in places like Placer County and El Dorado County - even there, they are living on borrowed time. The real issue to me is where are the moderate Democrats? Do they have any juice anymore?
I also think people vote with their feet. When voting really breaks down and your general sense is that how you vote isn't going to make things better, well moving really becomes attractive. One of the things I have thought about is just moving up to Alaska during the summer time and spending my winters just traveling or maybe get a second home in the Phillipines, Costa Rica or Mexico. Alaska right now is pretty cheap and when oil gets phased out, I think it will be dirt cheap. But it is a really pretty area and it has all of these national parks to check out and to the extent global warming does occur, its just going to lead to further climate improvements there. So I have thought about that. I could also just move back down to San Diego. I own some property there already. No matter how badly California is ran, it is really tough to screw up that area within 5 miles of the coast in Southern California.
Valleyboy, How do most Californians respond to you when you share this information?
They smile, nod, dig their heels in, and keep voting liberal. As Shelato said, people vote with their feet more than anything else. That 's why suburbia was BOOMING during Covid and why CA is losing population.
If not for family obligations, we would move too. Hopefully the California cashout is still possible when I retire.
The funny thing is people act like they didn't vote for this stuff. Like the shooting on K Street downtown. People are like "how were these guys on the street?!" I'm like, well who did you vote for?
I was on Folsom Blvd in Rancho Cordova today. It is in significantly better shape than the grid. First during covid, the repaved Folsom Blvd, they added new sidewalks and added additional landscaping. Moreover, sprucing up the street helped lower the vacancy rate. The Pepboys that closed during Covid has become an Advanced Autoparts. A former strip mall that has been vacant so long I have no idea what was there last, now has a Harbor Freight tools and an appliance store so its fully leased up. The Walgreens that closed has been filled by a Dollar Store. The Kohls in the KP International Plaza has construction workers on the fascade in what looks like preparation for occupancy. Across the street from the Walmart in the plaza with the 99 cent store, there was a gym that closed during covid and that is still vacant. At the Mills Plaza, that used to have the Sears Appliance center, they brought in a Planet Fitness, an American Freight (appliance) store, and a DD's discount center, the only vacancy was the site of the former Dollar Store that moved to fill the Walgreen's site.
But the other big difference is that there are no favelas anywhere on Folsom Blvd in Rancho Cordova. That is just not something you can say about the grid.
The value proposition that downtown wants to offer is close proximity to restaurants and bars. The crux of the issue is who wants to do outdoor dining downtown when you smell urine and see feces on the sidewalks downtown or dealing with needles and people spare changing you? The advantage that the El Dorado Hills Town Center and The Fountains (in Roseville) have is that you can eat outside in those locations and not have to deal with urine and feces anywhere near where you are eating. There aren't enough people living downtown to support all of the restaurants downtown and if the experience downtown isn't as nice as other areas people will flea to other options. Proximity to employers doesn't matter as much when peple just work from home. That is the vulnerability of downtown.
The grid isn't San Francisco and the Sacramento region isn't the bay area. The Silicon Valley is mostly built out. If employers want to expand their building in the Silicon Valley but not provide all of the additional parking space for those employers, I am pretty sure how tech companies get approval of local authorities to do that in the Silicon Valley is by promising that they will build the new building but not increase the demand for parking by offering the tech buses in the silicon valley that you referenced. But none of the tech employers in Sacramento do that here. I dated a woman who worked for HP in Roseville, she drove her car to work, there was no tech bus. I have a tenant in building in Folsom who works for Intel in Folsom, again he drives or takes his bike to work, but there is no tech bus. Second SF is dramatically more dense than the grid. It's also a much bigger area, SF is 49 sq miles. Is the grid even one square mile? It is a really small area that really isn't that densely built out. The more relevant comparison is likely Old Pasadena or maybe Long Beach. I get that you live in the grid and you like it, but its a small neighborhood that really isn't that important nor all that desireable. It just isn't that important, so I really question the demand of anyone working in Rancho Cordova to really go out of there way to live downtown. I just really don't see a huge demand to live there. So I don't see a big push for anyone to start a private bus service to the grid. Whatever demand there might be for that service probably can be handled by RT.
If Solidigm thought that there was a demand of its workers to live downtown, they could have looked for a location downtown. From what I understand they were looking for a space in Folsom or El Dorado Hills and then settled on Rancho Cordova.
I agree that Roseville seems to want to make downtown Roseville more urban.
There is a limited number of places near the coast with the climate like Santa Barbara. No matter how badly Santa Barbara is ran, it is really difficult to screw that up.
I agree that the Republicans are irrelevant in California and I question there staying power in places like Placer County and El Dorado County - even there, they are living on borrowed time. The real issue to me is where are the moderate Democrats? Do they have any juice anymore?
I also think people vote with their feet. When voting really breaks down and your general sense is that how you vote isn't going to make things better, well moving really becomes attractive. One of the things I have thought about is just moving up to Alaska during the summer time and spending my winters just traveling or maybe get a second home in the Phillipines, Costa Rica or Mexico. Alaska right now is pretty cheap and when oil gets phased out, I think it will be dirt cheap. But it is a really pretty area and it has all of these national parks to check out and to the extent global warming does occur, its just going to lead to further climate improvements there. So I have thought about that. I could also just move back down to San Diego. I own some property there already. No matter how badly California is ran, it is really tough to screw up that area within 5 miles of the coast in Southern California.
Well yeah, the elites have taken over everything with in a few miles of the beach in SoCal. The days of surf ghettos like Ocean Beach, Huntington Beach, Venice, and Santa Cruz being chill more affordable beach towns is long gone. They still have tons of problems like before, just 3x as expensive than it was 20 years ago. For me SD is not attractive, the 20-30% increase in pay would not off set the doubled housing costs. We would be in a nice area but worse off financially. But if u already own property there, I would say go for it!
The grid is like any other central city. Just a nighlife/entertainment/dining/job center. No one working in Rancho is gonna want to live there unless they are under 25. It would be like scoring a job at Safeway HQ in San Ramon, but commuting from Berkeley or SF. Not worth it long term, unless you are really about that quasi urban lifestlye.
Last edited by Valley Boy; 09-22-2022 at 09:19 AM..
Sorry, read my typos. I meant to say most of these Judges and Commissioners are former Public Defenders. So you get this real conflict of interest. Where Judges are interacting with former colleagues. So when the DA wants someone to be remanded on 25,000$ bail and the PD wants them released that day, who do you think the judge sides with? Well they side with the public defender 99% of the time.
Even with cases with sex offenders! Just had that happen the other day. Sex offender released on OR. Even though he was CAUGHT DEAD TO RIGHTS and had a digital footprint clearly establishing guilt!!!! Nope out you go, sorry the mean cops got you. And what do you think the odds are he skips out on the next court date? We had one the other day, guy had been on the lam for 10 years with a warrant. JUDGE released dude on OR that very same arraignment day!!
Don't even get me started on AB1950 and AB1228! This the stuff these pig slob politicians from LA and The Bay are passing right under your nose!!
And then folks wonder why cops have no interest in responding to petty crime in Sacto. Why? What's the point? It's literally a waste of everyone's time. Just get their info, file a civil lawsuit and try to get justice that way. Because you ain't getting it on the criminal justice end.
And how about those parole boards. No longer straight and narrow types. It's filled with woke liberal types, who think a murderer who managed to get a GED in prison is now worthy of release!
Well yeah, the elites have taken over everything with in a few miles of the beach in SoCal. The days of surf ghettos like Ocean Beach, Huntington Beach, Venice, and Santa Cruz being chill more affordable beach towns is long gone. They still have tons of problems like before, just 3x as expensive than it was 20 years ago. For me SD is not attractive, the 20-30% increase in pay would not off set the doubled housing costs. We would be in a nice area but worse off financially. But if u already own property there, I would say go for it!
The grid is like any other central city. Just a nighlife/entertainment/dining/job center. No one working in Rancho is gonna want to live there unless they are under 25. It would be like scoring a job at Safeway HQ in San Ramon, but commuting from Berkeley or SF. Not worth it long term, unless you are really about that quasi urban lifestlye.
Its more that it is just really tough to screw up that area within 5 miles of the beach in Southern California. If there are wildfires in Califoria or the West, being along the coast means you still likely have a really good chance to escape most of the smoke. If global warming gives us more of these additional heatwaves with 115 degree temperatures, more often, the area right along the coast probably is still going to do pretty well even then. If local governments are pretty screwed up, high rents are still going to keep out most of the riff raff. So that area is just unusually resilent from getting screwed up.
But the other big difference is that there are no favelas anywhere on Folsom Blvd in Rancho Cordova. That is just not something you can say about the grid.
Maybe it's a little hard to tell where I was because the strip malls pretty much look the same from Rosemont to Folsom, but I definitely saw plenty of tents on my recent drives along Folsom Boulevard--but not as many as I saw on a recent visit to Arden-Arcade! Perhaps having "another layer of government" in the form of a city government has made Rancho Cordova more able to address public camping along their business corridors than in the unincorporated county?
[quote]
The value proposition that downtown wants to offer is close proximity to restaurants and bars. The crux of the issue is who wants to do outdoor dining downtown when you smell urine and see feces on the sidewalks downtown or dealing with needles and people spare changing you? The advantage that the El Dorado Hills Town Center and The Fountains (in Roseville) have is that you can eat outside in those locations and not have to deal with urine and feces anywhere near where you are eating. There aren't enough people living downtown to support all of the restaurants downtown and if the experience downtown isn't as nice as other areas people will flea to other options. Proximity to employers doesn't matter as much when peple just work from home. That is the vulnerability of downtown.
[/qiote]
The value proposition that downtown offers is close proximity to a great multitude of uses--restaurants and bars, nightclubs and concerts, workplaces and government, libraries and grocery stores and other convenient things, within short walking distance. Nobody takes a stroll from their gated McMansion to the restaurants at the Roseville Galleria. If you've visited other American downtowns, not just boutique & wealthy towns but major cities, they do tend to be a little funky, and in a way that funkiness is also part of the urban experience. Those who prefer sterility and never seeing poor people may prefer to dine with a view of the parking lot at El Dorado Hills Towne Centre or the Fountains in Roseville, but they aren't the urban customer who wants to live downtown and would prefer to not get into a car unless it's absolutely necessary, even if they own one. The fact that downtowns aren't like the suburbs is entirely the point.
There aren't enough people living downtown to support all of the restaurants downtown right now, principally because we destroyed most downtown housing and then stopped building it for decades, and it's going to take another couple of decades to catch up with demand. In the meantime, the businessmen still convinced that the only future for downtown Sacramento is as a destination only, not a neighborhood, whose only role is for people to drive downtown, either to work or to dine/be entertained, and then drive home, will either have to be convinced that this business model hasn't worked for half a century and has utterly failed now, or just wait for them to die of old age. We're well on our way back to a central city population of 50,000 or greater--a population that can support a whole lot of restaurants and other businesses.
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The grid isn't San Francisco and the Sacramento region isn't the bay area. The Silicon Valley is mostly built out. If employers want to expand their building in the Silicon Valley but not provide all of the additional parking space for those employers, I am pretty sure how tech companies get approval of local authorities to do that in the Silicon Valley is by promising that they will build the new building but not increase the demand for parking by offering the tech buses in the silicon valley that you referenced. But none of the tech employers in Sacramento do that here. I dated a woman who worked for HP in Roseville, she drove her car to work, there was no tech bus. I have a tenant in building in Folsom who works for Intel in Folsom, again he drives or takes his bike to work, but there is no tech bus. Second SF is dramatically more dense than the grid. It's also a much bigger area, SF is 49 sq miles. Is the grid even one square mile? It is a really small area that really isn't that densely built out. The more relevant comparison is likely Old Pasadena or maybe Long Beach. I get that you live in the grid and you like it, but its a small neighborhood that really isn't that important nor all that desireable. It just isn't that important, so I really question the demand of anyone working in Rancho Cordova to really go out of there way to live downtown. I just really don't see a huge demand to live there. So I don't see a big push for anyone to start a private bus service to the grid. Whatever demand there might be for that service probably can be handled by RT.
The grid isn't San Francisco, but San Francisco isn't downtown San Francisco either! Discussions about Sacramento inevitably focus on the grid while failing to recognize that the city of Sacramento covers about 98 square miles, and the central city is about 1/20th of that area--but, what we think of as "the grid" is gradually expanding to include more adjacent neighborhoods, which will change that dynamic; as denser and transit-adjacent housing is built out in the Railyards, along the Broadway and Stockton corridors, in East Sacramento and North Sacramento, the urban part of Sacramento which has largely been contained to within the fortress defined by our freeways will spill out to other neighborhoods, even the ones who are still convinced they can see hop fields from their backyards.
Our central city grid covers about 4 square miles and has about 36,000 residents as of the 2020 census (it's probably a bit higher now.) That's about half of San Francisco's overall population density of about 18,000 people per square mile overall, but then you also have to look at neighborhood-specific density: the central city isn't just one neighborhood, but rather about a dozen different neighborhoods. Midtown, despite being more low-rise architecturally, has about 3 times the population density of Downtown, which was mostly cleared out during the redevelopment era for office use--meaning that the population density of Midtown is closer to the population density of a typical San Francisco neighborhood (if not the densest San Francisco neighborhoods like the Tenderloin or Chinatown.) So, effectively, the densest parts of the central city are, effectively, the only parts of the Sacramento region that approximate the kind of walkability and population density of San Francisco--so, while Sacramento is not San Francisco, a tech transplant to the Sacramento region who wants something that reminds them a little of the urban experience they got in San Francisco is more likely to find it in the grid than in El Dorado Hills.
Meanwhile, the Bay Area resident more comfortable with the hills of Marin and the faux pastoralism of remote parts of Contra Costa County may find Folsom, Fair Oaks, or Rocklin more to their liking--like Gavin Newsom, for example, who, despite his tenure as mayor of San Francisco, is still a Marin County guy at heart.
I'm not trying to convince people who like suburbs to live downtown, and nobody has to do that. There is an urban customer who wants to live downtown already, you don't have to convince people to do it or clean it up to attract suburbanites, all you have to do is build the housing and ensure that at least a reasonable proportion of it is affordable enough for a service employee (that last part is kind of the rub, of course.) If you don't see the appeal of downtown, that's fine. It's not for you, and it's not obligated to be for you. It is, however, for plenty of people--and the premium people pay for for central city residential properties, for sale are rent, make that clear.
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If Solidigm thought that there was a demand of its workers to live downtown, they could have looked for a location downtown. From what I understand they were looking for a space in Folsom or El Dorado Hills and then settled on Rancho Cordova.
I don't think Solidigm made their decision based on a desire for a lot of its workers to live downtown, and that's not what I'm saying--I think they prioritized proximity to Intel and the part of the region they already know, plus a place that already had a quarter million available square feet of office with a big parking lot. But I do think that at least some of their workers are likely to live downtown. And if they take light rail to get to work, that's great too! However, your point about telework functions in both directions: why should a coder drive (or take transit) from their house in Boulevard Park to a cubicle in Rancho Cordova or Folsom when they can telework from home just as effectively, without having to commute?
Its more that it is just really tough to screw up that area within 5 miles of the beach in Southern California. If there are wildfires in Califoria or the West, being along the coast means you still likely have a really good chance to escape most of the smoke. If global warming gives us more of these additional heatwaves with 115 degree temperatures, more often, the area right along the coast probably is still going to do pretty well even then. If local governments are pretty screwed up, high rents are still going to keep out most of the riff raff. So that area is just unusually resilent from getting screwed up.
Yep the immediate SoCal Coast as long as it is not Venice is stunning in Sept/Oct. Santa Barbara is so awesome, when I lived in LA I rarely came to SB because of the distance and traffic. I was really missing out.
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