I’m sure many of us took a look at yet another Bee piece on the rail yard development issue. It’s so damn alluring because it’s such a huge tract of land just waiting to be pillaged by developers; it’s tailor made (or Taylor made if you were to be punny) to be an extension of both downtown and Cal Expo (did I hear monorail extension?); and it taps into all the things that make us Californians, our history (the railroad), our mentality (get rich quick scheme for everyone involved) and our morality (manifest destiny).
Let’s stop for one moment though to think about what this site actually needs. Do we need more high-rise housing, more entertainment, more Paragary’s and Mikuni’s establishments, more places at which to buy things? With housing developments already folding in downtown, what makes developers think that people actually want to live in overpriced downtown apartments? We’re Californians, we like space. The only people that want to live together, drink together, party together, sleep together and cheer together, all in the same neighborhood are college students. Yes, that’s right, college students.
This is why I propose the rail yard be turned into UC Sacramento. Every one of the projects you are looking forward to in the rail yard, from stadiums to housing to restaurants, can be incorporated into a plan to build a new, affordable, state of the art, highly thought of university, with a top ten school in government and public policy (couldn’t we use some local folks who could actually help run the government?) and sports teams that kick ass. First thing we do is hire away Noam Chomsky from MIT, then Bobby Knight as our basketball coach, then get Malcolm Gladwell to be the chancellor. It’s about time that we let the world know that we are the capital city of one of the world’s largest economies, and it’s about time that we started acting like it. What better way to signal that than a world-renowned institution of higher-education? No better way that I can think of…other than the Kings making the playoffs.
The Sac Rag 
Seats, if you create a petition for UC Sac, I’ll be the first to sign. If you look at the major cities across the U.S., they are distinguished by their schools and their schools’ sports teams. How does Boston get 7 top tier schools and we get 1/2, for example? Because the railyards area is fairly small and most of it will go to housing and retail, I’d put my tax money on a smaller private 4 year institution and drop it on that new plan where it currently says arena and arena parking.
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