Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s 2024 State of Downtown Address
Sacramento (Mar 26, 2024) - Here is Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s State of Downtown speech given on Tuesday March 26, 2023 at the Safe Credit Union Convention Center.
Watch here:
“An old legislative colleague once said to me, ‘It’s much more fun to serve during good times, it’s much more important to serve during challenging times.’
I want to say something about all of us here in Sacramento. Sometimes, especially when things get tough we tend to focus on what’s wrong and not what’s hopeful. Too often, we don’t give ourselves enough credit. In the midst of all the challenges, have you ever stopped to think about how far we’ve come together, how far downtown has come. I’m a little reflective today because today is my last State of Downtown as mayor, and as a Sacramento elected official.
Thirty years ago, I was part of the younger generation on the Sacramento City Council and we were debating the future of R Street. The conventional wisdom proclaimed that housing, music, sports and entertainment would never take root downtown.
Downtown was big boring office buildings. A few good restaurants. An arena miles away in a field. An old convention center and theater. Long commutes to get to offices that closed up at night. We voted in 1994 to reject more of the same and instead embrace real mixed use, including housing, entertainment, food and more. It was one small decision but the rest, as they say, is history.
I look at our current challenges and say look at what we have done over these past years. Look at how you and we have persevered through a pandemic, a housing crisis, a mental health crisis, several titanic recessions, and ask, how can we make any other conclusion than that…… Anything is possible.
Housing starts. 5,819 permits pulled between 2018 and 2023 in the central city. An iconic sports and entertainment district. A new convention center and beautiful theater. Conventions are booked out till 2027—and a guy named Hamilton is coming again!
A food scene so rich and varied it’s hard to keep up with. More entertainment venues like Another Planet that’s now under construction at 24th and R. Our city will soon rival Austin as a capital not just of government but of music festivals: Aftershock, Golden Sky, Sol Blume, and more to come.
It’s all that and so much more that makes me nothing but positive about the future of our downtown.
Here is what I intend to see through as your mayor in my next eight months, 14 days and 10 hours – assuming that the swearing in will take place at 6 p.m. on December 10th. Let’s go back to 2021, to this very venue and state of downtown speech. I called for state workers to come back, and I have trended as their favorite target on Reddit ever since. If we aren’t over that debate, we are pretty darn close. We’re grateful our state workers are now back two days a week, but full-time in-office work is not happening, and maybe for good reasons. The cost of childcare, the long commutes, the better work life balance, all of it. We get it.
Get me off the Reddit.
We don’t control the future of remote work or the decisions of state government. But we can control how we respond. We are already on our way to defining downtown in a much more exciting and dynamic way. The present and the future of downtown Sacramento is housing, food and entertainment of all kinds, with a still solid but not dominating employment center.
The partnerships’s move to strengthen its ties to the governor and state leadership is smart. We have great Congressional representation. We also have tremendous strength in our own state Capitol. For the entire business sector, I believe strongly that while Cap-to-Cap is important – and also a great time – you all need to put as much effort into a Cap-to-Cap that’s not 3,000 miles away but three blocks away.
We can complain about the state not paying property tax or the loss of redevelopment but there are endless opportunities for partnership. When I got $30 million for the Railyards and our legislators deliver for our neighborhoods, including our downtown, it’s only the beginning of what’s possible if we are organized, we are focused, and we prioritize one or two or three amenities in the next three to five years.
Rebuilding downtown will take years. But here’s what we can and will do together before the year is out: Some of it is small but powerful like what we’re doing tonight at Council to raise the live music scene. Tonight we’re moving to create a less expensive and faster permit for small businesses and restaurants to be able to have live music.
Some of the stuff we’re going to do over the next nine months is big and long time coming. And much of it is made possible by Measure N, which I proposed and we passed in 2022. It allows us to use the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) on anything that drives tourism. We now have $100 million in unallocated TOT that we can not only dream with – we can spend.
One such project is a convention center hotel. The land at 15th and K has been leased to Tony Giannoni and Gafcon Development out of San Diego. This parking lot will become a 350-room Hilton – 28 stories connected by bridge to the Convention Center. We will bring the final terms to the City Council after the budget this summer.
Also this summer, we’ll be coming to Council with a plan to modernize the Old Sacramento Waterfront. We were poised to make this investment in 2020 before covid temporarily flattened our tax receipts. Now we are back. I will bring a request for nearly $40 million of TOT capital to the City Council for their consideration. Beginning to modernize our waterfront is long overdue. This summer we get started.
Then we get to the Railyards. Again, look at the long view. Five years ago there was virtually nothing. Now we are completing a half billion dollar state courthouse, 1,227 units of senior, affordable and market-rate housing, and tens of millions of dollars worth of public infrastructure. And Kaiser chose the Railyards for their hospital because they view it as a central part of our city and region’s future.
The next nine months in the Railyards, soccer and live entertainment. The saga of our soccer journey has been quite the challenge. Kevin Nagle, DRV and the city have done everything right. For now, the MLS has decided to slow down its expansion plans. If they’re smart, they’ll come back to us. We have the Republic. If they are not formally considered an MLS team that’s just a matter of semantics. They beat MLS teams. And no one needs to designate us as a major league city. We are a major league city.
Through all the crazy ups and downs we have never given up. And the next nine months matter. I hope, I believe, I’m confident that before the end of the year we will have a major investor to build a beautiful professional soccer stadium in the Railyards, expandable for MLS or any other league that sees Sacramento the way we all do. And an entertainment district to complement DOCO. This saga can only end one way.
That’s not all. The Railyards’ historic shops are perfect for large entertainment and music venues. In partnership with the River District we have applied for a $19 million grant through the federal EPA’s Community Change program. The grant will enable us to connect the River District and Railyards to the rest of the city. It will fund improvements to the plaza facing the shops and connect them to the housing, retail, the new Kaiser hospital, and to the Sac Valley Station, our local, intermodal and regional transit hub.
The Railyards is a microcosm of all that is possible and what it takes to ultimately break through. Try, succeed, fall down, try again. Start seeing the impossible come out of the ground. And never give up.
What is it going to take? It seems to me we have all the pieces in place. If 25 years ago we couldn’t imagine the downtown we are building today, what will the next, five, 10 and 25 years bring? Yes, we have a current budget deficit and the traditional role of city government still does not include real funding for sustained economic development. That must change.
The downtown needs more local funding for critical infrastructure. Either we follow through on a Central City or citywide infrastructure finance district or a county tax measure that doesn’t subsidize sprawl but instead focuses on infill housing, safe streets, public transportation. It should never be about benefits to specific projects. It needs to be squarely focused on affordability, sustainability, walkability and overall quality of life for the downtown and the rest of our entire city and county.
Our economy and our politics are rapidly changing in the new Sacramento. We grew up over the past century as a government town with land use and development being our most important private sector driver. The Kaiser investment, Aggie Square, the growth of food, technology, tourism and entertainment in our city, the rightful insistence on climate, inclusion, and equity, signal a very new trajectory that requires a new and different way of growing than we are used to. As a prime example, the future needs of our downtown and our entire city demand that the next infrastructure ballot measure not be funded by just the few interests with large projects.
The power and politics in the city have traditionally been centered on organized labor, especially public employees, and the development community. They still have a strong say, as they should, but younger people, especially, are demanding that their voices be heard, especially around quality of life and equity.
The results of the March mayoral election were close. The results were also instructive. The vote revealed a city where a strong majority of voters are increasingly center left. They want growth, they also want the growth to be consistent with addressing our climate crisis. They want growth. They also want working and low income people to be able to live in any and all of our neighborhoods, including the central city. They want downtown to be the center, but they also want all the neighborhoods of the city to get the attention they need and deserve. They want a strong police and fire department, and they also want more than band-aids for our social problems.
The old political framework that pits development against neighborhoods is old and tired. The new political reality provides a positive roadmap if we choose to follow it. Today’s progressive candidates have to be for economic growth, for business, for downtown if they’re serious about creating opportunity for everybody. And the business community has to focus less on tagging candidates and electeds as pro- or anti-business, and embrace our collective obligation to grow in ways that allow everyone to thrive and enjoy all the city will offer in the years to come.
The only way to achieve great things in a city and a downtown as dynamic and diverse as Sacramento in the coming years is to create new and broader coalitions, find the genuine intersections between the activists and business, and business and labor.
Create some unexpected coalitions. Break out of the old paradigms. He or she who can cross over and embrace some parts of the other side will have the greatest success.
As the next mayor and council take shape, support them as they support you, not just at election time, but as they’re trying to meet the needs of wildly diverging constituencies. Step into their shoes as you expect them to step into yours. Your jobs are not easy. Neither are theirs.
My favorite two weeks during my seven plus years as mayor came last spring when the Kings battled the Warriors. For two weeks, people from all walks of life and all parts of the city celebrated something pure and unifying. The joy and the optimism was everywhere. And everybody was talking, talking to each other.
Not everything is a game, I know. Politics, governance, business, activism, none of it is easy. Nor should it be. Those two weeks we overcame 16 years of frustration. Let us summon the same joy, optimism and purpose as we continue to build a new downtown and a city that belongs to everyone. I know we can.”
