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Next Stop, Portland
In 2003, the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce took its annual study mission to Portland, Ore. One of the things we wanted to look at was their success in developing critical areas of their downtown, says the chamber's vice president of policy and advocacy, David Butler, most especially their success in reducing regulatory and bureaucratic barriers to development and encouraging private capital. That's really what the whole thing was all about.

The director of Portland's Bureau of Development Services was invited to speak at a panel discussion set up by Sacramento developer Mark Friedman. The director's name? Ray Kerridge.

He talked about how they reduced their permitting from six months to six weeks for major projects, Butler says. We thought six months was good. The Sacramento contingent wondered how Sacramento could learn from Portland's success, then how Sacramento could get someone like Ray Kerridge, and ultimately, Why don't we just get Ray Kerridge? Kerridge arrived in late 2004 as Sacramento's director of development.

Money is like water, Butler explains. It wants to flow where there are the fewest number of barriers. What Ray has been able to do is decrease the barriers that encourage private capital to be invested, and that's really the whole deal. Everybody had been beating their heads against the wall, and part of the equation that's now in play is to reduce the barriers for the private sector so public money is the catalyst and private money kicks in. That's what it's all about. They've found the formula.

But Do You Want To Live There?

From Elk Grove to the foothills, Sacramento is blessed with fabulous places to live. Downtown is going to have to meet and beat that competition. Good thing there's a trump card. My feeling is people don't want to go to a place that's like everyplace else, Fargo says. We have a unique history, a unique role in the region, in the state and beyond, and we have some incredibly beautiful historic buildings. We are at a point now, from what I can tell, where almost every one of the special and historic buildings in our core has been fixed up or is owned by somebody who is going to fix it. Saving what is unique about our city is important not only for people who have been here a long time, but for anybody who is coming in. You can't have it all be new. There has to be a blending. That adds charm and character and value. And it's the right thing to do.

The Cool Factor

Cool. That's what City Manager Kerridge says Sacramento is now. People are beginning to wake up now to some of the things we're doing, he says. For example, the way developers are treated like customers instead of adversaries. Kerridge brought with him some of the ideas that facilitated development in Portland, then added some new ones. The MATRIX program, for example: It's the city's new permitting and project approval process. A developer who's worked here and gone through the MATRIX system is also working in other major centers, too, and these guys talk to each other, Kerridge says. You can go to San Francisco and try to get your project through and it will take you 10 years. So what happens is, people say, ‘How can Sacramento do this in six or seven months?' That generates a buzz in the development community. And we're hearing this more and more now. It's all cutting-edge stuff, and it's working. As the mayor puts it very, very well, ‘We're under construction, but open for business."

Blewett, whose 926 J St. project went through MATRIX, puts it this way: Ray Kerridge and other additions to the city are a big reason why we are downtown and newly looking at it as a place to do business. That is a very new and very dramatic change. We would not have purchased 926 J had it not been for them. That's the truth. . . . We spent six months working with the city about how we were going to approach this asset, and they were open to doing that.

This Site Under Construction

So downtown may be cool and, as Kerridge says, on its way to becoming the regional hub it was always intended to be. But on its way is a key phrase.

 Part of my challenge is to get beyond the projects and develop a real downtown neighborhood with services and amenities and [that] is a place that people who live there want to be, Fargo says. I don't want to have them getting in their cars to shop on weekends. I don't want them to have to go too far for groceries. We haven't treated downtown as a real neighborhood for a long time, and it needs to grow into having those kinds of things. Right now, a lot of people drive across the bridge and go to Raley's in West Sacramento. It's wonderful to have the Safeway on 19th and S, but that's still a little far for people who are going to be on the west side. So we're working on that.

Ault of the Downtown Partnership admits that, while Sacramento has come a long way, it still has a way to go. While there's a fair amount of optimism about where we're going, he says, there's still a lot of work to do.