Volunteers help clean up around several businesses in downtown Sacramento that had been damaged during national protests over the weekend in response to the May 25 police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man in Minneapolis.

During normal times, McClellan Park is busy with 18,000 employees working for the 220 businesses on campus, which has 9 million square feet of building space. But due to the coronavirus, only the warehouses and a few offices remain open.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said that “some retail, manufacturing, and logistics businesses” would be allowed to reopen beginning May 8. Comstock’s spoke with Downtown Sacramento Partnership Executive Director Michael Ault about what a limited reopening might look like in the Sacramento region. 

California’s essential workers will get new workers’ compensation protections under an executive order signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom — a move that could cost the state billions of dollars in claims from COVID-19-infected workers.

California is ready to partially reopen major sectors of its economy as early as this Friday, including retail shops and the manufacturers that supply them, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on May 4. 

Comstock’s has been following four businesses that have been helping to drive the resurgence of Sacramento’s central city in recent years. Here’s how they’re faring a month into the shutdown.

Social distancing may be good for public health these days, but it isn’t good for the California economy.

Coronavirus testing has been plagued by confusion, delays and chaos, with the number of available, usable tests far outstripped by the need. The situation, health care providers and experts say, has impaired their ability to know how many people have the virus — but a significantly larger number, they suspect, than that confirmed by state and federal officials.

On a bleary Monday morning in Sacramento with the Dow Jones industrial average tanking, on its way to a 2,997 point drop and its worst day since 1987, Greater Sacramento Economic Council President and CEO Barry Broome offered advice for local business owners that he knows won’t be popular.

Six utilities serving more than 21 million Californians have announced that they will not shut off customers’ power for nonpayment as the coronavirus continues to disrupt daily life.