A recent column about downtown Sacramento highlighted the challenges we face but failed to capture the substantial progress we’ve made in transforming our urban core into a mixed-use district filled with housing and entertainment.
Sacramento’s downtown may be quieter during the day, but it’s livelier than ever at night. People pack the blocks around the Golden 1 Center for Kings games and concerts. The Old Sacramento Waterfront hosted 445,800 visitors in December, the highest number since 2018. An AC Marriott hotel will open in the next few weeks, joining several other hotels that came online in the past two years. And while 27 downtown businesses closed in 2022 and 2023, another 41 opened, and 18 more have signed leases, according to the Downtown Sacramento Partnership.
Twenty years ago, nobody was building new market-rate housing downtown. But in the past 12 months our downtown has added 635 new housing units. Another 860 are under construction – the highest number of any submarket in the city, according to CoStar Group.
The state will always be a central part of our downtown identity, and recent announcements by large departments that employees must return to the office at least two days a week will help.
But we are not depending or waiting on the state. In 2024 we will be moving forward with plans for new civic amenities, including a modernized waterfront, a new soccer stadium in The Railyards and a large convention center hotel.
Our new downtown will be the place state workers come because they want to, not because they have to.
The return of state workers helps, but Sacramento’s transformation is well underway
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Guest Commentary written by
Darrell Steinberg
Darrell Steinberg is the mayor of Sacramento.
Re: “Sacramento joins San Francisco as California’s slowest cities to recover from the pandemic“
A recent column about downtown Sacramento highlighted the challenges we face but failed to capture the substantial progress we’ve made in transforming our urban core into a mixed-use district filled with housing and entertainment.
Sacramento’s downtown may be quieter during the day, but it’s livelier than ever at night. People pack the blocks around the Golden 1 Center for Kings games and concerts. The Old Sacramento Waterfront hosted 445,800 visitors in December, the highest number since 2018. An AC Marriott hotel will open in the next few weeks, joining several other hotels that came online in the past two years. And while 27 downtown businesses closed in 2022 and 2023, another 41 opened, and 18 more have signed leases, according to the Downtown Sacramento Partnership.
Twenty years ago, nobody was building new market-rate housing downtown. But in the past 12 months our downtown has added 635 new housing units. Another 860 are under construction – the highest number of any submarket in the city, according to CoStar Group.
The state will always be a central part of our downtown identity, and recent announcements by large departments that employees must return to the office at least two days a week will help.
But we are not depending or waiting on the state. In 2024 we will be moving forward with plans for new civic amenities, including a modernized waterfront, a new soccer stadium in The Railyards and a large convention center hotel.
Our new downtown will be the place state workers come because they want to, not because they have to.