Comstock's magazine 1119 - November 2019 | Page 17

LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER n
SHOPPING IS STILL IMPORTANT
TO SACRAMENTO’S ECONOMY
PHOTO: TERENCE DUFFY
I
was reminiscing recently about downtown Sacramento when
project on the 700 block of K Street, is an example of develop-
I was a kid. I remember so vividly what it was like when my ment the city has advocated for a long time. As a mixed-use
grandma was alive and I was about 5 years old. My parents
project, it will include 72,000 square feet of retail space to go
would drive me from Nevada City to spend the summer with my along with its 137 mixed-income residences.
grandma in her McKinley Park home. It was always fun to sit out
That is a pattern throughout the city as it carries out a strat-
on the patio swing on her front porch and take cool naps in her egy of combining retail with residential development. Of the 35
basement when the Sacramento temperatures were soaring (no
most recent housing projects in the city’s core, about two doz-
air conditioning in those days).
en are mixed use, incorporating retail space where people live.
She would take me to the McKinley Park pool to swim while That retail expansion is critical to the city’s ability to develop
she’d watch from the bleachers. Many days, we’d catch the bus 15,000 new residential units downtown to increase density and
to downtown to go shopping. Kress department store was al- the supply of affordable housing.
ways fun — we’d often go to its food counter for a sandwich and
The new retail developments are diverse, offering restau-
a slice of cherry pie, a bargain at 15 cents. We’d usually stop at rants and craft brewers, merchant goods and services. In short,
the Karmelkorn shop too, just outside the old Fox Theatre, and
they offer places to eat and drink, have fun and find the newest
share a bag while we strolled from one store to another. Places
merchandise.
like Hale’s, Montgomery Ward, Ransohoff’s, Breuners Home
The big department stores I remember as a kid have large-
Furnishings, Kress and Woolworth’s were all favorites.
ly gone the way of that 15-cent-a-slice pie at the Kress lunch
Since those days, downtown Sacramento has tried to rein- counter. Retail shops today are more specialized and spread
vent itself several times, often with little success. It started with
throughout neighborhoods.
streetcars, then closed-off streets, then a menagerie of concrete
Contrary to the popular trend, I’m not an online shopper.
monoliths and concrete seating areas up and down K Street. I like shopping in person and the experience of browsing as I
Through the years, the shopping dwindled and retail suffered. stroll from shop to shop.
Even the former Downtown Plaza — now the site of the success-
Even in this age of Amazon — nearly two-thirds of Ameri-
ful Golden 1 Center and Downtown Commons shopping, dining cans have made a purchase through the online megaretailer
and entertainment area — seemed neglected by Westfield not — that’s not as old-fashioned as it sounds. A 2018 marketplace
long after it purchased it in 1998.
survey by real estate company CBRE concluded that, as e-com-
Today it seems you can’t drive down any downtown street merce rises, the strongest retailers are those that offer a unique
without finding lanes blocked for construction and cranes in experience in their physical stores as a complement to their on-
the air. And it appears Sacramento’s latest reinvention is infus- line efforts.
ing downtown with new energy as an urban spark plug for the
Even as the marketplace changes, two things remain true:
region’s economy. And that includes shopping.
Retail activity is still a critical part of downtown Sacramento’s
The Golden 1 Center is fulfilling its potential to stimulate economic success, and it makes the city come alive. And stroll-
new development at one end of downtown. Since the arena
ing from shop to shop to see and feel the latest stuff is still as
opened three years ago, 43 retail businesses have opened down- much fun as it was when I was a kid.
town and another 38 are planned in the next several months,
according to the Downtown Sacramento Partnership 2018 an-
nual report. Those businesses join another 100 retail shops in
Old Sacramento. And this “retail renaissance” is spreading be-
yond downtown’s traditional retail core.
Sacramento has long relied on the redevelopment of K Street,
the city’s original shopping district, to promote regional eco- Winnie Comstock-Carlson
nomic growth. The recent opening of The Hardin, a residential President and publisher
November 2019 | comstocksmag.com
17