The acreage involved in the Stone Lock District project is shown in color at left. This photo is taken from the Sacramento side of the Sacramento River. Jefferson Blvd. is running from left to right near the middle of the picture, crossing the barge canal.
To the left of the barge canal is Southport, to the right are central and northern West Sacramento. The project involves property both along the barge canal and the riverfront -- the biggest chunk is near the foreground, southeast of Stone Lock and next to the river. (From the city's project website)
News-Ledger March 9, 2011
By Steve Marschke News-Ledger Editor
West Sacramento’s 215-acre waterfront development deal
with The Cordish Companies has been sitting on the back burner since the recession.
But the deal may get a push this month, indirectly, because of those same financial
hard times.
Plans for the city and The Cordish Companies
to form some kind of partnership to develop the property along the Sacramento
River and West Sacramento barge canal stalled
when the real estate market tanked. But now, Governor Brown has proposed
eliminating local redevelopment agencies to help balance a troubled state
budget. If that happens before the West Sacramento Redevelopment Agency has a
deal in place with Cordish, it may lose a chance to make such a deal. The worst
case, fear city officials, is that Brown could succeed in abolishing
redevelopment agencies and West Sacramento’s
could have to liquidate its assets – like these 215 acres – in a rush.
So staff and officials from Cordish are
negotiating a purchase option agreement for the “Stone Lock District” acreage,
hoping to put it on the March 23 city council agenda. They also hope that the
redevelopment agency won’t have been constricted by the state before then.
“We’ve been in negotiations for several years
with the Cordish Company,” said Jon Robinson, a redevelopment services manager
for West Sacramento. “We’ve been in exclusive
negotiations for at least a couple of years. This is the fruition of that
development.”
The proposed agreement is still evolving. But
it would basically call for the company to pay some amount of money in advance,
for the option of buying the 215 acres at a later time.
The deal would have a time frame far enough
out to allow development conditions to improve. And it would be flexible
enough, somehow, to allow Cordish to come up with a new plan for developing the
acreage.
An earlier development scheme is now viewed
as unrealistic for the new economic conditions and no new plan has replaced it.
But Robinson said certain things will probably be in the final plan for the
Stone Lock District:
“You would see riverfront commercial,
riverfront restaurants, lodging, trails, parks, and a whole mix of residential
densities,” said Robinson. “We would be looking to Cordish to come up with
innovative development ideas – all across the country, they’ve shown a real
knack for doing this.”
Other
urban Cordish projects include the development of Baltimore’s
“Inner Harbor.”
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The acreage involved in the Stone Lock District project is shown in color at left. This photo is taken from the Sacramento side of the Sacramento River. Jefferson Blvd. is running from left to right near the middle of the picture, crossing the barge canal.
