How one county aims to make up for decades of sprawl and three incorporations
Sacramento County Planning Director Robert Sherry calls it “planning for complete communities.”
That’s how the county is responding to the Blueprint, the vision for how to accommodate the Capital Region’s next half-century of growth while boosting air quality, easing traffic congestion and improving quality of life. All this, advocates say, without hindering economic growth.
These are ambitious goals even as things stand. But by 2050, the year-end of Blueprint growth projections, the counties of El Dorado, Placer,
Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba will have added 1.7 million residents, 1 million jobs and 840,000 homes since 2005.
The Blueprint, the product of a years-long effort led by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments and Valley Vision Inc., was developed in response to the realization that such growth would overwhelm the region without major changes in the way we think about land use and transportation.
When the six counties and 22 cities signed on to the Blueprint in December 2004, they agreed to adhere to its smart-growth ideals. Sacramento County Supervisor Roger Dickinson says the Blueprint will bring the region “cleaner air, better health, more opportunities to walk — all sorts of good things.”
Sacramento County tried to address sprawl in its 1993 general plan update, which made 20-year growth projections. Unfortunately, Sherry says, green space went away when the same projections were extended to 2050.
Sacramento County has received more than $4 million to improve or install streets, sidewalks and streetlights for seven project areas, all of which are in pre-construction stages.
By contrast, the Blueprint’s emphasis on compact land use and infill development forecasts even more growth than the county expected, but in a way that doesn’t overflow the county urban-
services boundary. The Blueprint projects enough holding capacity for 100,000 new housing units, versus 25,000 in Sacramento’s general plan.
Fortunately, it doesn’t require junking the general plan, but rather placing renewed focus on some of its main priorities. Prominent among these is revitalizing 14 major traffic thoroughfares, including Jackson Highway and Auburn Boulevard, that have essentially outlived their original functions. Sherry says “they used to serve the traveling public” to or from outlying towns and communities, but now need to better serve local interests. “We don’t want to just give them a facelift,” he says.
Which brings us back to “planning for complete communities,” a phrase Sherry translates as node-based planning for jobs, retail and residential at once. On a directive from the board of supervisors, his department has drafted detailed plans for moving ahead on three corridors: Florin Road; Watt Avenue North, near McClellan Park; and Fair Oaks Boulevard in Carmichael. The planning department has hired consultants and is conducting public outreach.
Sherry points out that Fair Oaks Boulevard is “not a very attractive stretch” through Carmichael. It doesn’t have the restaurants, entertainment and upscale groceries residents want, forcing them to make long trips out of the community.
The boulevard’s intersection with Palm Avenue has been identified as a development node where high-density housing and mixed-use catalyst projects designed to attract further investment will eventually replace the current low-density retail fare. The county also is planning a major streetscaping project with medians, landscaping and sidewalks.
“We really want to design that street so that people who want to drive it can, and people who want to get on and off of it for business can,” Sherry says.
The county is also taking advantage of SACOG’s Community Design Funds, a key Blueprint incentive. According to SACOG Director Mike McKeever, about $500 million will be available over the next 20 years to help jurisdictions initiate Blueprint-compliant projects.
Greg Chew, SACOG’s program manager for the funds, explains they are generally for public right-of-way
expenditures. In the two years funds have been available, Sacramento County has received more than $4 million to improve or install streets, sidewalks and streetlights in seven project areas. All seven projects are still in pre-construction stages.
The Blueprint may not encourage big-box stores,
but it presents many new opportunities.
The geographic dispersal of these projects underscores the tremendous challenge facing a county trying to compensate for decades of sprawl. Strung out along its major thoroughfares — and filling in much of the space between — are residential communities of single-family homes, the legacy of old land-use practices that paid little attention to building retail and commercial centers where people live.
Long before there was the Blueprint, county officials knew these old practices had to go. While the county’s general plan integrates land use and transportation in certain cases, particularly through transit-oriented developments around light-rail stations, McKeever insists it has only been in the past five or 10 years that people have become serious about integrating the two in their planning practices.
In light of the county’s legacy of sprawl, fast-growth areas will be proving grounds for applying the complete-community concept. One such area is served by the Jackson Highway, a corridor Sherry says is a natural fit for node-based, high-density development. Other fast-growth areas of the county include Mather Field and its environs, Florin Road and North Natomas, which is slated for annexation to the city of Sacramento as development occurs there.
So even with a commitment to infill development, the county will continue growing outward. As such, Dickinson sees the county’s objectives as “locating jobs in a way that shortens commutes” and putting more retail near peoples’ homes to reduce non-work auto trips.
When asked if this will affect the county’s business-recruitment choices, Economic Development Director Paul Hahn insists “the Blueprint should have little to no impact on our ability to attract business.” The Blueprint may not encourage big-box stores, but it presents many new opportunities, given all the ground-floor retail space built into mixed-use developments. Economically speaking, “implementation of the Blueprint is nothing but a plus,” he says.
The “not in my back yard” mentality seems to be the biggest obstacle to high-density growth. “[People] are generally reluctant to embrace the idea that there might be more cars or more development,” Dickinson says.
The county isn’t actively seeking to add 100,000 housing units, its maximum build-out, by 2050. “It’s not a goal or quota,” says Robert Sherry,
county planning director.
Infrastructure poses another problem. “The Blueprint relies heavily on infill development, which most people agree is beneficial,” says Roberta MacGlashan, a county supervisor and SACOG board member. But it’s hard to carry out because of “what it means to infrastructure, including roads, sewers, water ... you want to make use of these resources where there’s already an investment,” but they may lack the capacity or be in disrepair, MacGlashan says. Many of the roads are already as wide as they’ll get. “What happens to them when we load them up with more development?”
None of the signatory governments are legally bound to follow the Blueprint, which relies on voluntary compliance. However, it’s SACOG’s responsibility to draft a Metropolitan Transportation Plan, which it derives from various general plans, that complies with the federal Clean Air Act.
If regional growth patterns create a noncompliant transportation system, the Capital Region risks losing federal transportation funds. According to McKeever, this is “the closest the Blueprint gets to a regulating component.”
What are the implications of projects that don’t comply with the Blueprint? One such project, being planned in another jurisdiction, proposes several thousand fewer housing units than Blueprint standards call for.
“It’s difficult to figure out how to provide cost-effective transit service to the area,” McKeever says.
Furthermore, he adds, the need for those missing housing units doesn’t go away, so they’ll be built somewhere else. If they wind up being far away from employment centers, the difficulty of meeting clean-air standards only increases. McKeever would hate to see one noncompliant project set a precedent for others.
The county needs mixed-use developments to generate sales and property tax revenue in the wake of three incorporations in the past 10 years.
Dickinson, who also serves on the SACOG board, says SACOG may consider the possibility of withholding transportation funds from noncompliant jurisdictions. “That’s the one potential hammer” SACOG wields as an enforcement mechanism, he says.
Sherry is quick to emphasize that the county is not actively seeking to add 100,000 housing units by 2050. “It’s not a goal or quota,” he says, but only a statement of the county’s holding capacity.
The county is, however, committed to growing denser. It needs mixed-use development for new property and sales tax revenue in the wake of three incorporations in the last 10 years that removed Citrus Heights, Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova from county tax rolls. With some of its wealthiest communities wanting to follow suit, the county needs new sources of income to finance its municipal service responsibilities to the ones that remain.
Besides, Dickinson says, “We want to grow in a way that preserves our resources.”
Arden-Arcade, Inc.
The people of Arden-Arcade believe in their incorporation drive. You could feel it in the air Feb. 15, when some 200 residents of the would-be city congregated in Arcade Church, on Marconi Avenue, to celebrate the success of a petition drive that could qualify their cityhood measure for the ballot as soon as November 2008.
The church was a fitting site for the event’s quasi-revivalist atmosphere. El Camino High School’s pep band entertained the many baby boomers present with retro rock hits like “Carry on, Wayward Son” and “Crazy Train,” its 50 adolescent voices piercing the air with Ozzy Ozbourne’s signature cry of “Aye aye aye aye!”
Several members of the Arden-Arcade incorporation committee took turns touting the advantages of cityhood: more police, streamlined licensing and permitting, reliable street repairs and local control.
Carrying on with them were elected officials from two of the county’s wayward children, Citrus Heights, represented by councilwoman Jeannie Bruins, and Rancho Cordova, represented by Mayor David Sander.
They verbally pelted the county bureaucracy with a mixture of potshots and faint praise, their message clear: Incorporation has been good for Sacramento County’s young cities, and it can work for Arden-Arcade.
Committee chair Joel Archer, a financial adviser, revealed the economics behind the push. According to his figures, Arden-Arcade — bounded by Auburn Boulevard, Ethan Way, Fair Oaks Boulevard and Mission Avenue — generates $33 million annually in tax revenue, of which the county spends 40 percent, or $13 million, elsewhere across its far-flung territory. Keeping that money “home” could give the new city a general fund surplus exceeding $100 million by 2016, minus revenue neutrality payments to be negotiated with the county.
And yes, he assured everyone, they could pick a new name for their city, whose moniker is evidently not popular among them.
Archer called for a drum roll, and the number of petition signatures appeared on a screen: 13,591, which was 4,000 more than necessary. The band broke into its fight song. Archer, Bruins, Sander and the other speakers clapped their hands with the beat and urged the audience to clap along.
After the meeting, committee member Frank Ramirez addressed Arden-Arcade’s intention of signing on to the Blueprint upon cityhood. A former planner for the city of Sacramento, he doesn’t want to see development change Arden-Arcade’s existing neighborhoods.
The community is largely built out, but Ramirez says “you’d be surprised” by the number of small, open parcels, which he opposes combining to allow big-box stores.
“We have these, and they’re fine,” he insists, but they draw people from outside the area, increasing traffic congestion and pollution. More importantly, “people [in Arden-Arcade] are enamored with the hardware and mom-and-pop stores.”
Ramirez says Sacramento County’s historic growth pattern has “created a nightmare” that begs for a transition to high-density, mixed-use development. This is what the Blueprint calls for, and he says the city of Arden-Arcade — by whatever name — is ready to add its voice to the regional dialogue.