If you believe the old narrative that Sacramento is boring, oil your bike chain and join the next Cool Projects Bike Tour.
Organized by local planners and architects affiliated with Urban Land Institute Sacramento, the July ride was an eye-opening, uplifting experience. I tagged along with about 30 urban planning enthusiasts.
“It’s always a fun and informative ride,” says Tim Denham, a planner with the local firm Wood Rodgers. He and urban planners Bob Chase and John Hodgson, along with former mortgage broker Dean O’Brien, originated the rides in 2009.
“I keep thinking we will run out of projects to visit, but great things are continuing to be built every year,” Denham tells me.
We visited six cool projects and heard from the principals. Confession: I drove because of a sore knee. But I came away with two favorites.
One is Channel 24, the midsized music venue at 1800 24th St. Sotiris Kolokotronis developed the site with partners that include Another Planet Entertainment.
Some neighbors feared a 2,300-person hall would cause traffic and parking problems, but the site works fine. Concertgoers can pay online for nearby parking, walk a few blocks to the theater and not make life miserable for residents.
Music lovers can finally see top acts that used to skip Sacramento because there was no quality midsized facility.
My other favorite is the luxury Hotel Eleanor under development by Roger Hume at 700 J St. Hume, who named the hotel after his grandmother, has a flair for the dramatic. His track record shows he can pull it off.
In a much more complicated project, he turned the old Order of the Eastern Star building in Midtown into a Hyatt House hotel. He built the hotel inside the old framework and combined new with old.
“This new project is my reward for having gone through that one,” says Hume, a contractor who makes his own design decisions. When he met the urban cyclists, he was effusive about everything from lighting plans to elegant art deco doors that will lead into the hotel and eventually to a speakeasy.
To start the project, Hume purchased the elegant 110-year-old Capital North Bank Building for $11 million. It’s the only Downtown structure clad entirely in terra cotta. Placer County’s 150-year-old terra cotta manufacturer, Gladding McBean, supplied the material.
Our morning tour began at the sprawling May Lee State Office Complex at 651 Bannon St. Opened in 2024, it includes 1.25 million square feet of space on a 17-acre site. Designed by ZGF Architects and the local firm Dreyfus+Blackford, it’s said to be the largest net zero carbon facility in the country.
The site was named after May Lee, a state worker who retired after 79 years of service and died in 2023 at 102.
It’s a first-class, campus-like setting with gym, day care center, 300-seat auditorium, and dining and coffee facilities. I’m not sure whether it competes with or compliments Downtown and the railyards as a commercial office market for the state. I also wonder how busy it will be with most state employees still working remotely. Still, it’s impressive.
At the railyards, where construction is underway on Kaiser Permanente’s 310-bed hospital, we swung by the A.J. Apartments at 251 Sixth St. Water damage caused by vandals delayed the opening, but the site includes 435 units of studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments with 69 priced below market.
Another classy addition will be the Cypress Residences at 1330 N St. The project has 98 market-rate units that include a beautiful terrace overlooking Capitol Park and penthouse space that several in the cyclist group predicted would rent for about $8,000 a month.
“After too many years of working from home, I think people realize there is value in getting out and getting together and socializing,” Denham emailed after the ride. “I sense that Sacramento is on the upswing, and all of these new projects are setting a great course for the future.”
Cool Projects Bike Tour is being organized for September or October. Come along and see if you’re not impressed.
For information, visit the Urban Land Institute Sacramento website at sacramento.uli.org.
Gary Delsohn can be reached at gdelsohn@gmail.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
