Home / Archive / South Placer: Down on Main Street
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Regional Focus: January 2008
Down on Main Street
Focusing redevelopment on old city centers
Story by Nancy Brands Ward
After decades of sprawling farther and farther out into faceless suburbs, the citizens of South Placer are looking to bring back the hearts and souls of their downtowns. They’re looking for unique shopping, dining and entertainment experiences, along with the identity and character of their towns that only a historic center or Main Street provides.
Lincoln, Rocklin and Roseville are at varying stages of developing their historic and Main Street districts. Creating a thriving city center is suffused with tension between big and small, old and new, public and private, and the chicken-and-egg conundrum of what comes first: the people or the businesses? It’s an endeavor that officials at all three South Placer cities estimate will take upward of 20 years.
Things are already beginning to take off in Roseville’s historic center, however. That’s what Michael Rapport, a 37-year-old entrepreneur who owns 50,000 square feet in Roseville’s historic district, believes. Earlier this year, Rapport was able to convince
Basic Urban Kitchen and Bar — a successful renovation venture in San Diego’s East Village — to open a second bar in one of his turn-of-the-20th-century brick buildings. It has invested close to a half-million dollars so far and is expected to open in mid-January. Above the bar, tenants already occupy 14 studio apartments in the rehabbed mixed-use building. A high-end Irish bar, The Boxing Donkey, is expected to open soon in another of Rapport’s nearby buildings.
The state’s Main Street Program reports that “study after study tells us that cities and towns with a strong sense of place and community will be the economic development leaders of the 21st century,” but getting developers to invest in old-time city centers is a tricky business. Rapport, for one, acknowledges that he’s a different kind of entrepreneur. The developers who are luring Home Depot, Lowe’s and Target stores in Roseville, Lincoln and Rocklin, Rapport says, aren’t the ones who will rehabilitate 100-year-old buildings.
A one-time resident of midtown Sacramento, Rapport is passionate about re-creating that type of environment where people can walk or bike to work, eat, shop and hang out with peers. “You’ve got to really want to take something old and make it new to keep its charm, to keep it cool.”
In the food chain of developers, Rapport places himself somewhere near the bottom. He has little in common with those putting in thousands of new homes in Lincoln and the big-box stores all over South Placer. But he does relate to Jon Mangini, an owner of Basic Bar. In December 2006, Mangini, who built most of the San Diego bar with his own hands, told The New York Times: “People said I was crazy for coming here. And here we are, a packed neighborhood bar, even if most of the neighborhood isn’t there yet.”
Even with risk-taking entrepreneurs, there’s no doubt redevelopment needs to be a public-private partnership. Roseville has spent more than $9 million to improve infrastructure, increase parking and beautify the streets to help pave the way for it to become the city’s central entertainment district. Most of that work was completed in December.
Revitalization of Roseville’s downtown — the Historic Old Town district and Vernon Street across the railroad tracks — started more than a decade ago. The idea, says city project manager Mark Wolinski, is return those areas “to their glory days” — sometime between the 1900s and 1940s. Wolinski says Roseville’s $15 million renovation of the civic center on Vernon Street demonstrates the city’s commitment to downtown. It also spent $4.5 million on streetscapes several years ago and at the end of last October, opened a new garage with 550 spaces of free shaded parking. The city, Wolinski says, wants to see Old Town and Vernon Street as one contiguous area. So, it’s also spending nearly a half-million dollars on the pedestrian underpass to the historic district from Vernon Street, and there’s talk of building a bridge over the railroad tracks to connect the two areas.
Like Lincoln and Rocklin, Rose-ville has offered grants for façade improvements and low-interest loans to businesses, but Wolinski says more is needed to attract a sustainable mix of businesses willing to take risks in the city’s center. “It’s going to take a collective coming together of the business community and the city and stronger marketing of the area to generate more excitement.”
Over the past few years, businesses have come and gone along Vernon Street. A fair number of buildings stand empty, but the area has two theaters with active calendars, art galleries, boutiques and restaurants. “We need to attract more restaurants and a more dynamic mix of businesses,” Wolinski says. “We’re starting to see some of these types of businesses.” These include a cinnamon roll bakery, a bridal and formalwear shop, a French door store and a Mexican restaurant.
But retrofitting old buildings is time-consuming and costly. Typically, the bigger the building, the more difficult the upgrades. The three largest buildings on Vernon Street have been vacant for nearly two years. If the city owns buildings, Wolinski says, it can do the work and get them ready for occupancy. That makes it easier for businesses to move in. But of the three empty stores on Vernon Street, Rose-ville only owns one.
It’s the same in Lincoln, where the city owns a few parking lots and City Hall in its historic district, which runs along State Route 65 between 1st and 7th streets. “Lincoln is one of the few cities in South Placer that has a historic old town,” says Steve Art, economic development manager for Lincoln, noting that the city began redeveloping its central core a half-dozen years ago.
Work invariably proceeds more slowly than residents want. But in Lincoln, the 100-year-old Brand Feeds building — rehabbed by new owners a few years ago — now houses four new restaurants and a flower shop. One-of-a-kind boutiques have opened along the numbered side streets. At the southern gateway to Lincoln, a new 70-foot façade mimicking the iconic silos on State Route 65 will front a mixed-use building expected to include a restaurant on the top floor. Commitment to downtown is demonstrated by Lincoln’s general plan, which despite the explosive expansion plans, calls for all future roads and transportation lines to end at the historic district.
Less has been done in Lincoln than in Roseville, but on a recent Sunday afternoon its downtown was livelier than Roseville’s. “We want people to feel it’s a marvelous place to come spend an afternoon,” Art says. “We want to say to people, ‘Don’t go south on 65. Stay in town.’”
There’s still much to be done, though. The tension between new and old, suburb and downtown is most evident in Lincoln. From 2000 to 2006, the population of Lincoln more than tripled to 33,600, according to the California Department of Finance. A new general plan could go to council as early as this month, proposing a four-fold population increase in the next 50 years. Project developments list one housing tract after another in addition to the new Lowe’s, Home Depot and Target stores that have opened in Lincoln over the past year.
“It’s all driven by the almighty sales tax dollar,” Art says. “You still need to chase the large businesses. People want police; they want roads repaired. Very little property tax comes back to the city.”
Rocklin’s struggling, too, to keep sales tax revenues in town. By 2009, the city expects to get a tax boost from its own big-box stores slated for a 1.2 million-square-foot shopping center. The center would go up after the five-lane overpass is completed next fall at the Sierra College interchange. Big projects like that one may be getting attention in Rocklin, but Assistant City Manager Rob Braulik says the city remains committed to developing its downtown.
Rocklin doesn’t have much of a downtown, however. Ravaged by fire at least three times, there’s little left of the historic district that grew up along the railroad tracks more than a century ago. Mayor Kathy Lund says, “The people want a downtown.” That’s what the city learned from the more than 1,000 residents who participated in putting a downtown plan together.
A conceptual plan was approved by the City Council in January 2006, but it’s not approved for implementation. The plan offers a blueprint for infill and calls for moving Finn Hall to the downtown quarry, where it will be turned into a performing arts theater.
Downtown Rocklin would ultimately have mixed-used buildings to create a pedestrian-friendly community where residents walk from their homes to Amtrak and where they’re joined by others from outlying parts of Rocklin for dining, shopping and entertainment experiences.
Braulik appreciates what a downtown can do for a city. He talks with admiration about Walnut Creek’s thriving city center and that of neighboring Benicia, where he worked before joining Rocklin. Benicia belongs to the California Main Street Program — which is part of the state Office of Historic Preservation — and Braulik says Rocklin will certainly look at what the organization proposes. He’s realistic, however; he knows Rocklin has a long way to go.
So far, a historical church near the railroad tracks has been renovated, and a few businesses have moved into the Victorians downtown. Rocklin is investing in new buildings with modern architecture in the area. For example, a train depot housing the Rocklin Area Chamber of Commerce opened last summer. Construction began downtown last November on a new Department of Motor Vehicles office, and a new branch of the Placer County Library is set to go into a building purchased by the city.
Maybe even more than the other two cities, Rocklin is plagued by the age-old redevelopment question: Do you bring the commercial first or the residential first? Two developers have proposed apartment complexes in downtown. The city is also working to get a sprawling 15-year-old Albertson’s center on Pacific Avenue redeveloped. Today, the outdoor mall stands at the top of a sea of empty parking spaces that Braulik acknowledges gives it a feel similar to a ghost town.
“It’s a challenge,” he says. “No question about it.”
What will it take for all three cities to create thriving central cores? Despite differences in their downtowns, available financing and planning stages, officials for all three cities agree: It’s going to take commitment, funding and time. “Take Grass Valley or Nevada City,” Art says. “They’ve been working on their downtowns for 20 to 30 years.”
