Downtown Commons (branded DOCO) is the area of eateies, retail and
public space surrounding the Golden 1 Center. photo : joan cusick
Housing Alliance, expresses concern that the arena has ush-
ered in a renewed focus on eradicating blight with upscale
residential units downtown, and that the affordable housing
conversation could be lost.
“The market rate developers aren’t going to build the af-
fordable homes we need, at levels that will benefit a much
broader community who is struggling to make ends meet,”
Rutherford says.
The Golden 1 Center may have benefitted one unlikely
population – the homeless. Joan Burke, director of advocacy
for Loaves & Fishes, says that before the Golden 1 Center,
downtown was home to more undesirable housing options
like the Marshall Hotel. The Marshall and other single-room
occupancy hotels were replaced with higher quality quar-
ters like the 7th & H Housing Community by Mercy Housing,
which Burke calls the “gold-standard in affordable housing.”
“Those substandard units have been replaced with better
units,” Burke says.
She added that Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and
the Sacramento City Council recently approved a $44 mil-
lion funding plan for mental health and substance abuse
programs, amid rising tax revenues from a transformed
downtown. “Sometimes things do work out the way they are
intended to,” Burke says.
Like other professional teams, the Kings also participate
in programs to help underserved communities, before and
after the launch of Downtown Commons. The organization
has built 10 community basketball courts in Sacramento. It
gives away thousands of tickets to low-income children, and
players plant gardens in schools to celebrate farm-to-fork.
REGIONAL IMPACT UNCERTAIN
But assessing the arena’s impact on the overall city econ-
omy is not an easy endeavor, and it may prove impossible
given the complexities of Sacramento and its workforce in
the post-recession era, says Jeffrey Michael, director of the
Center for Business and Policy Research at University of the
Pacific.
It was promised that arena construction would benefit
local laborers, and according to the City’s Budget & Audit
Committee report, that promise was kept through local hir-
ing practices and apprenticeship programs. In Sacramento
County, an estimated 1,600 workers on the project took home
almost $36 million in pay. But the State of California is still
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