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This is a little late coming but the Bee reported last week that Thomas Enterprises, the developer for the railyards, wants community suggestions for street names.

The qualifiers: historic, sophisticated… nothing Disneyland.

Your thoughts?…

Although a small gesture, I personally find it refreshing to see such a massive development engaging in some community outreach and soliciting civic involvement. Street names add much to a city’s “sense of place” and become an enduring characteristic of the city; so being intentional and community-focused about this is important.

One of our core values states, “We believe that our responsibility as developers is first to the community and future generations.” That being the case, its important that we see the communities in which they build as partners and fellow citizens and not as opponents. Sure, its a given that there will be never be consensus and there are those times when certain communities or community members can’t see beyond the present or past or their own immediate self-interest, but the dialogue is really important and welcoming community members to the table is a vital component of healthy development process. If a developer has the best interests of the community in mind, it behooves them to educate the community and try to help them work past the inevitable fear of change.

That said, we’re not perfect at this either. Community engagement and dialogue is extremely important to us but we make mistakes in it just like anyone. It can be a rather complex dance and like any beginning dancer, you start out somewhat clumsily, occasionally stepping on toes and tripping on your own feet.

It’ll be interesting to see the level of competency the railyards development has at this dance…

So, if you’ve got some “historic but sophisticated” street suggestions, send them to Carlos Alcala at calcala at sacbee dot com and he’ll get them to the right people.

And while you’re brainstorming, if you have some suggestions for project names in the Washington Area in West Sacramento (we have five we’re working on besides B Street West, including the currently dubbed “Discovery Center”), we’re all ears. Qualifiers: urban, sophisticated… nothing Disneyland, nothing pretentious. Think about it as if you were living there yourself.

And hey, you don’t even have to go through anyone else, “spokesperson” or otherwise. Just e-mail us directly: jason at ljurban dot com.

Jason