Building Our Future

Bridge To Perfection

A few months back, Sacramento and West Sacramento announced agreement on design finalists for a new bridge connecting the growing cities. The news was a letdown. Despite extensive community involvement, work from an international design firm and a fair amount of hoopla, it felt as if everyone was trying too hard for something special.

The two spans competing to replace the 108-year-old I Street Bridge were thick, bulky and needlessly grandiose. Rather than complement and enhance the surroundings, each finalist loomed over the river like a boisterous, unwelcome hulk.

Fountain Valley

It’s been awhile since Sacramento’s design and architecture mavens had a big conflict with the state over a building project. But there is a passionate little battle taking place right now over the fate of the historic but dry fountain west of the Capitol.

This fight is nowhere near as pitched as the disagreement that festered between the city and state over the giant East End office complex near the Capitol in the early 2000s. That project achieved some important urban renewal objectives, clearing blight and consolidating scattered state offices and workers. But critics said the potential for a more eclectic and pedestrian-oriented streetscape was squandered.

Blight To Bright

I love it when Sacramento City Council members criticize my work. It means they care.

One of my favorite councilmen, Jeff Harris, took exception to a column about the city’s partnership with the Sacramento Republic, the local sports club ready to leap into Major League Soccer.

Rolling Thunder

It’s hard to imagine anyone better equipped to represent the interests of Sacramento bicyclists than Debra Banks. As interim director of SABA, Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates, Banks rides everywhere on one of her several dozen bikes.

She commutes to work, has ridden up and down California and around the world in long-distance 1,200-kilometer grinds where participants have 90 hours to finish, including the legendary Paris-Brest-Paris twice.

Eye For Style

Mark Friedman was showing a visitor around The Foundry, his latest apartment project in West Sacramento, when he paused to check something that had been bugging him.

An outer hallway connecting different wings of the three-story building were painted orange, which seemed like a good idea at the outset. But now Friedman was having second thoughts: too much orange. He was pleased to see workers already covering it up with a less garish coat of gray paint.

Late Arrival

This dates me, but when I was The Sacramento Bee’s urban affairs writer in the early 1990s, the newspaper sent me to Indianapolis, Boston, Portland, St. Louis and Toronto to report on how those cities transformed once-busy downtown railyards into new attractions, housing, jobs and broader tax bases.

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