Grieving a loved one’s death is never easy, as I learned 20 months ago when my husband Jim passed away.
My biggest challenge was managing my publishing business alone. Jim retired several years earlier, but he was my business partner for more than two decades.
My focus was off, my employees unsure how to deal with me. No one wanted to deliver bad news. I struggled with decisions. It took time, but we all adjusted.
When Jennifer Tornatore and Eric Knutson married in 2003, seven years after joining households, they lived in a ranch-style home in Point Richmond. “Eric came as a package with two young sons, so we had a family-friendly home in a good school district,” Tornatore says. “But the home was uninspiring.”
Tornatore, an account executive with Uber, comes from the Sacramento suburbs. Knutson, an architect, grew up in the Bay Area. His design specialty is high-end residential, smaller commercials and multifamily homes.
Inside Publisher Cecily Hastings interviewed mayoral candidates Flojaune Cofer and Kevin McCarty and recorded their responses to important questions facing the city. Interviews were separate, but both candidates responded to the same questions. More questions and answers will appear in our October editions.
The Old Sacramento Waterfront has a vacant, dark hole instead of a beautiful dining spot with the best views in town. Mark and Stephanie Miller closed Rio City Café Aug. 3, ending 30 years as a family-run landmark.
The café’s landlord was the city of Sacramento. City officials didn’t maintain the building as required under lease terms. Most egregious was the city’s neglectful approach to the river deck that produced 70% of the restaurant’s revenue.
Rather than make repairs, the city ordered the deck closed for safety reasons. And the city rejected efforts by the Millers to fund a temporary measure to reopen the deck while permanent fixes were planned, approved and funded.
I’ve met hundreds of small business owners in almost three decades as publisher of Inside Sacramento. Mark and Stephanie Miller, co-owners of Rio City Café, are among my all-time favorites.
I met Stephanie in 2015, when the Millers arrived from Denver to run Rio City. Mark’s father owned the restaurant for decades.
Rio City has the best river views in town, just north of Tower Bridge. “The deck location has been the site of so many community memories, from parties to wedding proposals,” Stephanie says.
Like many couples who meet, marry and combine households in middle age, Elaine Lintecum and Anthony Herrera wanted a new home unique to them.
Lintecum, retired CFO of McClatchy Corporation, and Herrera, a retired state manager, took the challenge and made decisions together.
As a single woman, Lintecum purchased and remodeled a McKinley Park Tudor. Herrera lived in South Natomas. Together, they decided they wanted a one-story house for Herrera’s two dachshunds. Stairs are not a good idea for the sleek low-to-the-ground breed.
They also wanted a home where they could age in place.
The couple toured properties and, in 2006, discovered something unique, a home at 46th and M streets different from other stately homes in the Fab Forties. It was a mid-century modern from 1959, set among large Tudors and Spanish-style designs.
