Fish Out of Water

Musings and observations about life from an East Coast native now living on the Left Coast in the California State Capitol since 2004. This fish has made her home in Madison, WI (7 years); Portland, OR (2 years); Las Vegas, NV (7 months); Middlebury, VT (3 summers); Marne-la-Vallee, a small town east of Paris, France (6 months); Middletown, CT (3 years); and Marshfield, MA, the fish's coastal hometown 40 miles south of Boston (17 years).

Name:
Location: Sacramento, California, United States

5.06.2014

Day 38: CADA Warehouse Artist Lofts

We live in the part of downtown Sac that is considered the "R Street Corridor."  When we first moved to our townhouse at the corner of 9th & Q Streets, I wasn't even sure that R Street was really a street, as it looked more like an alley due to the rough road, old railroad tracks, and lack of typical amenities such as lighting, way-finding indications, bike racks, etc.  Since Sac is full of alleys throughout the grid, it didn't seem unusual to have yet another alley nearby.  We eventually discovered that parts of R Street were somewhat more developed, and many blocks have now seen great improvements (more on that in a later post).

One of the abandoned buildings in disrepair was known as the CADA Warehouse, on the south side of R Street between 11th & 12th.  CADA is the Capitol Area Development Authority, which is charged with residential and mixed use development in a designated area around the State Capitol.  The agency manages multiple apartment complexes and is responsible for much (all?) of the redevelopment along the R Street Corridor.

Mr. E and I quickly got involved with community meetings that addressed planned or potential urban development projects in and around this area, and one of the first workshops we attended was for the CADA Warehouse.  I think this was back in 2004, and the project unfortunately lingered in limbo for years and years when the economic picture turned so bleak.  During this time, improvements were made in the general infrastructure of the street thanks to public investment funds, but the private investment had stalled completely.

Within the last year, however, the project has been resurrected and is finally moving forward.  The new development is known as the CADA Warehouse Artist Lofts...the WAL (formally the Capitol Lofts) is the proposed rehabilitation of the existing six story historic CADA warehouse building, into a residential mixed-use apartment complex. Located in the heart of the R Street Historic District between 11th and 12th Streets, this exciting project includes new residential housing construction east of the historic warehouse building, a below grade parking garage, and ground floor retail along R Street.  The 116 housing units and 13,000 square feet of commercial spaces will be marketed to the Sacramento artist community with the goal to make the R Street Historic District also an art and culture district. 

It's been so exciting to see construction finally progressing on this project, and we're looking forward to increasing the number of residents in the area to help support additional plans for redevelopment.  We're also hopeful that the ground-floor mixed-use retail will bring some additional amenities to our neighborhood (coffee shop? wine bar?). 

The WAL web site has a fabulous photo of the view of downtown from the existing Warehouse:

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