The shovels are in the ground and K Street between 8th and 12th will soon once again have cars. But there will be no parking, no curbs and gutters, and 11th will still be people only.
So business was booming in the 80s and the place is desolate now, but somehow adding cars is going to bring people back? Because they’ll be able to see from their cars what K Street from 8th to 12th Streets has to offer? But then they’ll have to park somewhere else and walk back? Color me unconvinced.
What do you think? Will cars on K Street return the block to its former glory?
The Sac Rag 
No.
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Come on! Does the city have any idea what it’s doing, or is it like me when I’m planting a flower bed – just put a shovel in the ground and hopefully something will turn out?
The whole point of opening up K to cars again was to drive business to the store fronts, but the only reason why the store fronts would get business is because people can drive up and park directly in front of the store! Are people supposed to just drive by and see there’s a store and then go searching for a parking space that’s still a block and a half away?
I don’t see the Apple Store and Banana Republic flocking to the blight-infested K-street any time soon considering that, despite the construction, K street is STILL not car-friendly. Maybe working on ousting the slum lord that controls all of the retails space in that God-forsaken area would be the first step in making the street attractive again?
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Historical tidbit: “Unconvinced” was a pucey-mauve with hints of beige that Crayola(TM) issued back in the 1950s. They had to rename it in the mid-1970s when a bunch of pucey whiners complained that the name was a racial slur for people of their shade.
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Nope. Just latest dumb idea following up a bunch of other dumb ideas regarding this area.
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I think it is nice that the Harley dudes will now have somewhere other than Capital Ave to blast their loud pipes.
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Cars on K has NOTHING to do with helping businesses by making them easily accessible and has EVERYTHING to do with simply getting the homeless and the light rail transplants off the street and hopefully making people more comfortable to dine in the patio areas of the businesses. It actually makes all the sense in the world if you think about what they actually want, which is people able to go to K st without being hassled.
By the way, I don’t agree with the NIMBY philosophy, I’m just explaining the purpose. And for what they want, I actually think it will work.
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Of course it’s not going to work. What would work even mean in this context? What stores are people going to be driving too? The mall is Macy’s, 24Hour and a bunch of randomness that no one is interested in. K Street itself really has nothing left to speak of. Like someone referenced above, the only way there is any change of consequence is if the city buys out Mohanna. And even then, who trusts the city council to do the right thing? They’ve fucked up everything they’ve attempted. Besides, what’s really the point of fixing up K Street? So it can steer people away from other areas that are actually doing well? Fixing up K Street, and for that matter building a new arena, is not going to make Sacramento a tourist destination. They’re just talking about having people go to downtown instead of midtown or other surrounding areas. People in the Bay Area, let alone Kansas City or Seattle or Denver, are not going to suddenly make plans to come to Sac because there’s an Apple Store and Z Galleria on K Street.
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K Street wasn’t particularly happening in the 1980s–or, despite what many would have you believe, in the 1960s before the pedestrian mall went in. I don’t think it will particularly affect the presence of street people, or fill vacant storefronts, any more than the presence of cars deters street people or fills storefronts on adjacent J or L Streets.
Adding parking would be useless. There are about 5000 parking spots within a block or so of the area being opened up to traffic, not counting the tens of thousands in private or state lots. If every inch of curb on those four blocks of K Street was turned into parallel parking spaces, you’d end up with a whopping 90 extra spots–and most of those would be taken up all day by commuters, unless they were metered and limited to an hour or less. So no, adding street parking is just redundant. The current level of pedestrian traffic during the day (and at night on the 1000 block) barely fits onto the new pedestrian-only areas as it is.
Thinking of K Street as a “mall,” as a shopping destination like Arden Fair or the Roseville Galleria, has never worked. That model broke in the 1950s when the suburbs and their own malls were built. Fixing K Street will mean turning it back into an urban neighborhood–and promoting urban amenities of the sort that you don’t find in the suburbs. Believe it or not, on the 1000 block they’re doing a pretty good job–and whenever I go down there I see some idiot driving down K Street anyhow, so maybe making it official will save those idiots a ticket.
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The reason the businesses don’t get that much traffic is simple you have to pay to park anywhere downtown go anywhere else in the city you don’t have to pay to park simple
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