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Thursday, May 17, 2012
Regional Focus: March 2007
Railroad Revival
If Sutter Street is the heart of Folsom, the Historic Folsom Station is a defibrillator
Story by Bill Romanelli
A public-private partnership between local developers and the city of Folsom could serve as a model of mixed-use development — and a gateway to downtown Folsom.
“Historic Folsom Station is envisioned as a catalyst to give the whole downtown district a rebirth,” says Jerry Bernau, president of the Bernau Development Corp.
The project, which has been in the works for nearly 10 years, will include a 315-space parking garage, a plaza and three developed parcels totaling 120,000 square feet of mixed retail, office and residential space.
Costs are being split by the city and developers based on expected use. The parking garage and plaza, for example, will be paid for by the city at a combined price tag of about $18 million, a significant investment. Bernau Development, which will construct the mixed-used projects, estimates costs to be about $25 million for all three structures.
Construction won’t even start on the parking garage until 2008, and the rest of the project is slated for completion sometime in 2009, but the project is already serving as a catalyst for development along Sutter Street.
“The fact that this project is moving forward is reassuring developers that this is really going to happen, and it’s encouraged them to proceed with their own planned projects,” says Joe Luchi, economic development coordinator for the city of Folsom. “We’ve already seen two projects get started that will serve as anchors at both ends of Sutter Street.”
Joe Gagliardi, president and CEO of the Folsom Chamber of Commerce and the Folsom Tourism Bureau, says the plaza will help the historic district fill a niche.
“We conducted a retail analysis on the Sutter Street commercial core, and in addition to demonstrating that the area could be performing better economically, the study suggested one way it could do that would be to have a niche for live art,” Gagliardi says.
City planners also see the Historic Station as an important tool for putting people in touch with Folsom’s rich historic past. Most people aren’t aware that Folsom Station was the terminus for both the Pony Express and the first railroad west of the Mississippi.
“Too often, the first thing people think of when they hear the name Folsom is the prison,” Luchi says. “We want to show the region and beyond that we are so much more than that.”
