FULL STEAM AHEAD
Just as Sacramento’s past is conjoined to rail travel, so is its
future. But there’s context:
With the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad,
Sacramento “became the transportation center of the West
in 1870,” says Earl Tobey, a guide at the California State Rail-
road Museum. “People from all over the world congregated
here to make their transportation plans by rail and river-
boat.”
To build and service its locomotives and cars, Southern
Pacific established its maintenance shops north of what is
now the central city. Those railyards expanded to 244 acres
and at one time employed one-third of Sacramento’s labor
force.
Over the following decades, the land was sold to Union
Pacific and underwent a $300 million cleanup of toxic sub-
stances.
The city consulted with a series of developers who tried
and failed to reinvent the property. Then, in September
2005, developer LDK Ventures of Sacramento purchased all
244 acres. Its master plan is to transform the railyard into a
mixed-use residential-retail-office extension of downtown,
with parks, restaurants and a history museum, doubling the
size of the central city.
Committed so far are a Sacramento Superior Court
building (construction starts this year), a Kaiser Permanen-
te hospital and possibly a Major League Soccer stadium.
The Railyards project is expected to take 20 years to com-
plete and will be the most expensive infill challenge in Sac-
ramento history.
The coming of the Transcontinental Railroad trans-
formed Sacramento into the city it is today. The railyards
— a key legacy of the railroads’ permeating inf luence — will
again shape Sacramento’s future.
“That’s the essence of The Railyards project — taking
the roots and history of Sacramento as a railroad town and
carrying it forward in a similar but different format,” says
LDK managing principal Denton Kelley and member of
Comstock’s editorial board. “To see the impacts these types
of projects have on the community and on families’ lives is
very rewarding.” n
Allen Pierleoni is a freelance writer in Sacramento. He worked
for The Sacramento Bee as a writer and editor in the features
department for 30 years.
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May 2019 | comstocksmag.com
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