Yesterday we had a visitor in our office, his name was Thaxter. He is another of the land owners in West Sacramento’s Washington area, and he stopped by to see if we can work together to make the area better.

He owns a key piece of property in a busy corner, and we have been hoping it would be put to good use. The site is a perfect spot for a grocery store or neighborhood retail center, something that the area needs sorely.

Thaxter was excited about working to make Washington part of the urban core and dedicated to seeing the area through to the vibrant urban village it will someday become!

We of coarse are thrilled to have other developers in the area who are working hard to make this a great neighborhood. If there is one thing we understand well, its that, when it comes to bringing new life to a neighborhood, we cannot go it alone. So its great when you see people like Thaxter stepping up and wanting to contribute to the vision.

Already, the map we have on our website is outdated as we’ve learned about other projects planned for the neighborhood with committed people behind them. I’m hoping we’ll see Thaxter’s land marked out as a future project: we’re going to do what we can to help that happen.

Levi

I recently got the following image from the Capitol Region Core Committee of the Sacramento Metro Chamber.

The map represents their take on where to draw the “urban core” boundary for Sacramento, and, as a decidedly “urban core” developer, it drew my immediate interest.

Cross City Boundaries
I was personally pleased that they took an inclusive perspective that accounts for West Sacramento’s proximity to downtown, thus the name–Capitol Region Core–doesn’t reflect either city but the common ground both cities share in being connected to the State Capitol. We’ve been articulating for some time that the Washington Area in West Sacramento is as valid a part of the “urban core” as, say, Midtown but I haven’t ever really known how to describe it outside the context of Sacramento’s downtown– reference the State Capitol seems so common sense now, I don’t know why I wasn’t using it before. Admittedly, driving through the Washington neighborhood today, you wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as having an “urban core” feel (the same could be said of the Railyards at present); but its location combined with and the development plans for the area are certainly grounds for inclusion. Its good to see that others share our perspective.

The 20 Year View and the 100 Year View
Looking at a map like this, you can see significant swaths of urban core development opportunities. Not to mention all of the rehabilitation and infill sites in downtown itself. Twenty years from now, I think this map will look significantly different. My hope is that the timing of an eco-urban tipping point will coincide with a lot of this development, so that the upcoming urban transformation truly makes life better for everyone for many generations.

Jason

If All Else Fails, We’ll Get to Eat Some Fat Cat Scones!
Several weeks ago, we had a workshop with the neighborhood residents in the Washington Area. The neighborhood doesn’t currently have an association, so we weren’t sure what the turnout would be. But we ordered a bunch of local Fat Cat Scones, brought in coffee from Café Refugio (West Sac will have to wait for our Gallery to open for a local independent coffee shop), got some fresh fruit from the farmers market and thought “this could be worse.”

We also invited representatives from the City and other developers in the neighborhood to show up. Our hope was that we could begin to understand collectively what this neighborhood needed to rise to its potential. So, we came with listening ears and open minds and lots of questions.

20+ people showed up, including several city staff and two other developers, which apparently, for this neighborhood was unprecedented. One of the developers told us they did a workshop and only 2 people showed up. I think (and hope) we’ll see even greater involvement in the future, as the community begins to understand the transformation forthcoming (perhaps most visually represented by the 18-story CalSTERS building two blocks away from four of our projects). This workshop was simply a starting point. And actually, while we can’t create one ourselves; one of the goals for our workshop was to serve as a catalyst for a neighborhood association, which we believe to be an important component of healthy communities. When neighborhoods have no voice, its usually because too few people who live there really care about it.

The Community Garden Gets Mowed Down
The event started with a bang. After introductions and an overview of the workshop, one of the residents stood up, announced they did not intend to stay for the whole meeting but wanted to articulate immediately their opposition to the community garden concept. Wow! That came out of nowhere— we really didn’t expect that the community garden would be the first issue contended with– but we’ve had enough experience with workshops to expect the unexpected. The resident owns property next to the garden and was concerned about parking, dumping and damage to his fence, water system funding, location of the garden in the neighborhood, illegal activity and transient use. Most of these issues we were aware of, thanks to Vanessa’s attendance at a community garden conference, but we noted them. The resident left after voicing his concern and more dialog continued: several others spoke in support of the garden as a community enhancement. Others had suggestions for alternative uses for the site. We actually have already made changes to our plans for that lot based on feedback from the workshop (which still includes a garden but adds two, flanking single-family homes) and we have a solid list of issues to tackle.

In general residents seemed to like the neighborhood as it currently stands (primarily residential) yet were excited about changes and new opportunities to bring life to the neighborhood.

Fun with Ranking Images
The group seemed to like this exercise. We wanted to get a sense of residents’ preferences for development types, design, height, land use, size, scale, etc, so we grabbed a mix of 35 images— local and outside the area– for them to rank, hoping some themes would emerge. John Leonard’s Rivers Side project got the highest marks. Most other images that scored near the top were town-home and mid-rise projects that had natural materials and colors on the exterior but modern designs. Perhaps even more telling, however, were the images that got the lowest scores: the CalPERS building in Sacramento, faux historic townhomes with garages along the street, senior apartments on F Street in West Sacramento, and single-family suburban-style homes along G Street in West Sacramento, the Ziggurat and its parking garage. Most images that scored low were suburban, highrise, extremely modern.

We’ve Got Questions: You’ve Got Answers
We also asked residents to answer some questions about the neighborhood. Here’s a few samples of what we got.

What Do you Like About the Neighborhood Now?

• Grid street system
• Historic buildings, Quaint character, well defined borders
• Friendly neighbors
• Quiet
• Not much traffic
• Close to River/Riverwalk, downtown, nature
• Trees
• Nice places to walk
• Historic society
• Cultural and economic diversity

What would you change about the neighborhood?

• Infill vacant lots
• More pedestrian/bicycle friendly
• More local services
• More community policing, bike patrol
• Drug problems
• No more high density or low income housing – spread it out
• Shopping mall, more professional business
• Weed abatement improved
• Light the Ziggurat
• Quiet train horn

What services would you like to see?

• Cafés
• Restaurants
• Book store
• High quality food market
• Community center
• Park – with Basketball Ct.
• Riverwalk Patrol
• Streetlamps
• Public Transit
• Community Garden

Naming the Neighborhood
Nobody really knows how long a name will last and whether or not a community will adopt it; but we’ll need something to use in order to articulate a vision for the neighborhood. We listed three suggestions— Washington Square, Washington Blocks and Washington Village. Other names were also suggested: Washington Area, Broderick, Washington Historic District, Washington Junction, Washington Heights, Washington District. No one name got strong support, which means we’ll probably pick one and go with it.

Any other suggestions? —we’re listening.

Jason

Central City Opinion recently wrote a good post about the proposed streetcar system that is being reviewed by West Sac and Sacramento as part of the Riverfront Master Plan.

This proposal is one of the aspects of the RiverFront Master Plan that we’re most excited about. Not only does the option of another mode of transportation targeted specifically at the urban core fit our eco-urban sensibilities, but route slated to run down West Capitol in West Sacramento is 2-3 blocks from the majority of our projects in the Washington Area. That entire neighborhood would benefit immensely from a stronger connection to downtown: not only would the area solidify its identity as a part of the urban core (stimulating further revitalization) but the streetcar itself would strengthen the pedestrian activity of the neighborhood, particularly with a stop at 3rd and West Capitol. Residents could literally walk to the streetcar to get to jobs and downtown life within minutes.

Central City Opinion has posted links to the proposal and information on upcoming presentations (the one in West Sac happened last night), past streetcar activity in the Sacramento blogosphere, etc. He’s also fielding answers to questions like “Are the streetcars going to prove themselves useful transportation options or tourist photo ops” (which I’ve tried to answer above).

Jason

P.S. The first image above is the Portland Streetcar.

5/9/07 Update: The West Sacramento streetcar presentation is actually tonight.

5/10/07 Update: The bottom image is a Tampa streetcar.

How do you go about re-envisioning a neighborhood? That’s a big question on our minds these days, due to the fact that we now control more land in the Washington Neighborhood of West Sacramento than any other landowner. For us, this level of control translates directly into the degree of influence we can have in creating an eco-urban community and the degree of contribution we can have there.

We’ve had a few internal meetings and brainstorming sessions about the neighborhood’s new identity. Last week, we met with some planning consultants. From these conversations, its abundantly clear that, if this neighborhood is going to step away from its past reputation and take on a unified, revitalized identity, we will need to provide leadership and facilitation to define a new vision for the future of this neighborhood. Without this unified vision, the neighborhood will simply become a hodge-podge of unrelated projects with little thought as to what will best serve the community.

Where Do We Start?
For us, the visioning process starts with a dialogue with the people who live there. Yes, we’ll also need to get into discussions with other developers and with the city (both of which have already been initiated), but first priority should go to the community. So we will be hosting a workshop for the neighbors on May 8th at the Warehouseman’s Association Hall.

Collaboration = Creativity
Honestly, this workshop is the first chance we’ve had to act on the full intent of the value LJUrban places on collaboration and inclusivity. We believe that the communities we work in have knowledge and ideas that we don’t, and, if we work together, we will have a better end product – a better neighborhood. As we’ve already learned, collaboration isn’t always fast and easy or without conflict, but we also have learned that conflict is often a catalyst for creativity, if channeled correctly.

Our first projects were significantly defined before we had a clear sense of this value, so, while we did engage in community outreach with both projects—enough to know that what we were doing was welcome and beneficial–the degree of engagement was less than what we now see is possible.

So, this is a start.

At this particular workshop, we are hoping to accomplish several things:

Meet the People Who Live There
First, we want to meet the members of the existing neighborhood. A personal relationship is much more productive, and we believe we can address issues and concerns much better at this point where our plans are still tentative for each project. Plus, some of us will be moving into the neighborhood and these will be our new neighbors!

Discover Likes and Dislikes
Second, we want to find out what the likes and dislikes of the neighbors are. We are planning a community image survey that allows participants to rate different street scenes and creates a visual reference for many urban design concepts. Since we have not designed exteriors, we may be able to incorporate their tastes and any important neighborhood themes into the appearance of our projects. We’ll be looking for strong themes to emerge, knowing that individual preferences run along a wide continuum–it will be interesting to see what emerges from this activity.

A Developer Creating A Neighborhood Association?
Yes, that does seem a bit oxymoronic, knowing the often-tumultuous relationships between developers and neighborhood associations. However, we strongly believe that a healthy community has a strong sense of ownership and that members should be empowered to have a voice in what happens in their community. So, while there is no existing neighborhood association for this neighborhood, we would like to see one formed. The people that come out to this meeting may be the ones interested enough in community action to take on this task and organize the neighborhood.

Steve

This should be fun. We’re partnering with the city of West Sacramento and several other developers on a Music Festival, the first of many to come in the Washington neighborhood.

You can get the full scoop on the event site, but here’s a quick rundown:

Date: This Sunday, April 22nd
Time: 12 – 5:30pm
Location: Corner of 3rd and B Street
Contact for more Information: Kurt Overmeyer at 617-4535

Bands:
Brittany Shane,
Glider (offshoot of Counting Crows),
Chuck Prophet

In addition to the live music, there’ll be food by Sal’s Tacos and other vendors, family activities, as well as information on the various projects forthcoming in this neighborhood and booths with activities hosted by various city departments.

In many ways, this event is a kick-off for the forthcoming urban neighborhood that will undergo major revitalization in the next 5-10 years and the developments that will be showcased at the event will be among the first to be realized.

Hope to see some of you there!

Yesterday, we had a session talking about the various “must-have” components to the Washington area in West Sacramento where a number of our projects are forthcoming.

A lot of the conversation stemmed around the notion of gathering spaces. If we’re creating eco-urban community, how and where people will congregate and interact is of utmost consideration.

Today, in response to this article in the Bee on neighborliness. The article cites a UC Irvine study that says that “Suburbanites make the best neighbors.” What do you think about this finding? I’m interested in reading the study.

We wrestled with it a bit today among our team, discussing the how the built environment impacts our neighboring instincts: whether or not you invite people over for dinner or wave and say “Hi” or ask to borrow stuff. A lot of us grew up in suburban neighborhoods and each had different experiences: some good, some bad. And even our experiences in urban neighborhoods has been mixed. The question boiled down to the nature of the people that live in a neighborhood–well-designed urban projects don’t automatically translate into neighborliness which is why thought has to be devoted to larger community concepts.

As we’re exploring the emerging community that we’re building in the Washington area, we’re aware that what we build will impact both who lives in the community and as well as how the people who live there will interact. So we’re trying to be deliberate about building it in a way that makes “urban” and “neighborly” a natural fit.

All this connects with one of the scribbles on the car I’ve been riffing on for our site.

Eco-Urban
Few things epitomize the high quality and interconnectivity of eco-urban life as strongly as a corner café. As social gathering places, they bring neighbors out of their homes and into the larger community. Familiar faces at these hang-outs translate into a stronger, safer neighborhood.

In stark contrast to the single-use, utilitarian function of a strip mall chain restaurant, a corner café is a type of “indoor park” that serves diverse needs: a quiet retreat, a hangout spot, a romantic habit, a walking destination, a mid-morning coffee break, a wi-fi workspace, a neutral zone for conducting business, a place to read or write or a place pretend to read or write so you can people-watch. The idea of a single location meeting all these needs simultaneously translates into the same kinds of space, energy and resource efficiencies associated with mixed-use development (which corner cafes often are).

Add “locally owned” and “artisan-quality” into this mix and the corner café takes on the identity of a neighborhood icon that the entire community can celebrate.

LJUrban
For all these reasons and more, we’re designing a fully-operational corner café at the entrance to our Gallery in the Washington Area. And yes, housing will be on the second floor.

Jason

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

We are always excited to see other developers doing good things and its especially good when its in our area.

I want to point you all over there where you can find all about Leonard Development Company’s newest project.

It’s a much needed addition to the Washington area in West Sacramento and has been a long time coming.

Also we want to congratulate them on receiving the Business Journal’s 2006 Peoples Choice Award for Best New Development and 2007 Judges Choice Award for Best Emerging Infill Project.

They are having an open house on Saturday the 3rd and Sunday the 4th of March. We will be there to support the project.

If you’ve got some time, drop by and check it out next weekend.

Levi

2007 has proven in its early days to be quite the year for LJ Urban. Some remarkable people have come on board–Molly, Steve and Scott have been such an incredible addition– and we’re forming some key relationships with other groups and individuals outside the LJUrban team that look very promising.

I have known for some time that things were getting ready to be real cool real fast but I know I never anticipated this fast. Here are a few of the things we are working on.

Current Projects
As you all have seen recently, our first two construction projects—B Street West and Newton Booth–are well on their way to becoming a reality. B Street West has been approved and is rapidly approaching a ground-breaking in the next several months. Newton Booth has been submitted for tentative map approval and is going through the rounds of responding to city and community feedback (check out some renderings here). We’re hoping for approval in the next couple of months so we can focus our efforts on specific green and interior features that we want to incorporate while we simultaneously move towards construction financing. As it currently stands, we’re looking for a September ground-breaking, but, of course, these dates are always subject to change (one reason why I’m so glad we have a flexible team). As they become more and more defined and get closer to ground-breaking, they start looking better and better. It’s fun for all of us to see the things we have dreamed of and put so much heart into come to reality.

More Acquisitions
Our land purchases have taken a big leap. Throughout last year, we crystallized our strategy and financing structures. The results are that we have tied up land for more than 300 houses in the urban core of Sacramento. Very cool if you ask me. And we are just getting started. Some of the projects we will be announcing over the next few months are over 100 units each. I get dizzy when I think of the Eco-urban impact we will be able to have on Sacramento with these communities.

Systems, Balance and Change
All this growth has brought with it a need for more systems and better balance. Something that we are all focusing on in the office. I think that every change brings with it a new way of thinking. Our ability to move forward depends on how well we adapt and learn. Change can be the best thing because it allows you a chance to rethink why you do things and figure out a better way.

Defining the Vision and Identity for a Revitalized Neighborhood
The Broderick/Washington area in West Sac is getting our devoted attention at present… specifically, the grid-streets between Tower Bridge and the I Street Bridge from 2nd Street out to 8th Street. The potential in this area is enormous and we’re actively moving to be a catalyst for its re-emergence as an extension of the urban core. The area needs an identity. As you may have read we have been wrestling with what to call the area, some of the city documents call it the Washington area yet in all of our dealings with the residents in the area its referred to as Broderick.

In looking at the area, its clear the area is currently in somewhat of an identity crisis—a natural stage of any development process. Although, undoubtedly, the area will quickly develop into a urban extension of downtown Sacramento; we have a belief that an area needs a calling or a vision of what it can be at its best. Rather than a haphazardly thrown-together mix of “urban” developments, we’d like to see a stronger unified vision that allows for diverse projects under a broader umbrella. That’s the primary reason why we’re working fast to develop our “Discovery Center.”

So, we are taking this area and looking at it through our eco-urban point of view and coming up with some pretty cool concepts. Imagine “Broderick Village” or some other name being adopted in that neighborhood with a clear vision for this area to model eco-community–a “walk-to-everything” center of town with parks strategically placed for optimal use and green-built structures. This is just the start of what we could accomplish. From there, the vision spreads to the entire urban-core. For instance Sacramento has often pulled architects from Portland to design our urban projects. Why? Because Portland is known as an urban pioneer of a city. Consider what comes to mind when you think of other cities–Las Vegas, San Diego, Detroit, Seattle. Something different comes to mind every time (and not always something positive). Why not position ourselves as the Eco-Urban Community pioneer. The region already has a strong and growing emphasis on sustainability. There is no reason why we can’t start right now.

These are just a few of the very cool things we are starting to look at. There is a lot more to come, and we are always increasing our capacity to handle more and more. After all when your goal is large scale social change… why not go for more.

Levi