News

April 28, 2021: Not all planning projects are costly or take years to complete and/or implement. Small, tactical moves can make a big impact in a small amount of time. The Main Street Concept Plan for the City of Colfax is an example where simple tactical design concepts were successfully used to improve a historic small-town main street.

March 31, 2021: The Sacramento region’s goal of becoming a ”global leader for entrepreneurs, firms, and workforce in future mobility” got an electric boost on March 11 with the opening of the California Mobility Center (CMC). The center’s goal is to accelerate the commercialization of innovative mobility technology. 

Developing a cluster of innovative mobility businesses is one of the six key planks of the region’s Prosperity Strategy. That may sound like a lofty goal given that many regions are chasing such companies. But California and the Sacramento region have some big competitive advantages, as the CMC’s Chief Operating Officer Mark Rawson explained. California is the largest market for electric vehicles in the Western Hemisphere; the “Big Seven” automakers and more than 40 percent of mobility start-ups have a presence in California; and the state has favorable policies and regulations. The Sacramento region is the plum location in the state because of its concentration of industry expertise (boosted by world-class research at UC Davis’ Institute of Transportation Studies), access to policymakers and regulators, and its proximity to Silicon Valley, where costs have made hardware development prohibitively expensive. The region also has a diverse and growing workforce and a diversity of communities that serve as market models for the mobility industry.

March 31, 2021: Despite the pandemic, Loomis’ downtown is thriving. Last April, a month into the Covid-19 lockdown, new bistro Reds’ opened in a space on Taylor Road that had been vacant for eight years and it is now a hot ticket. In the fall, a pair of 1988 grads from the local Del Oro High School opened an Ace Hardware in a former fitness studio that is now booming and bringing more foot traffic to Taylor Road. Loomis town manager Sean Rabé said that Ace’s corporate headquarters had predicted December revenue would be $45,000 but that actual revenue had been five times that at about $220,000. March is on track to beat even that number, Rabé said. 

February 26, 2021: Citrus Heights is one of the most land-locked cities in the SACOG region. The city of 83,000 residents is surrounded by other developed communities, including Roseville to the north, Orangevale, Fair Oaks, and Antelope. But just like the rest of the region, it is facing a housing crisis. How to expand when you can’t go out?  

February 26, 2021: The Sacramento region is home to some of the most productive farmland in the world. About 40 percent of the six-county SACOG region is farmland, and it supports approximately $2 billion worth of agriculture. From almonds to rice to peaches, the Sacramento region is the cradle of some of California’s most valuable crops. Yet the region also faces an extreme housing shortage. The SACOG region needs to build more than twice as much housing as it has averaged since 2009 to keep up with population growth, let alone make up for prior shortfalls in housing production. This leads to pressure to convert valuable farmland to housing. 

Of course, it is possible to both house more people and preserve the backbone of the regional economy: by implementing a more compact development pattern. Historically in the Sacramento region, 242 acres of farmland have been developed for every 1,000 new residents but SACOG’s long-range transportation and land-use plan for the region, the MTP/SCS, lays out a plan that would see just 18 acres of farmland developed for every 1,000 new residents.

January 27, 2021: Last Tuesday the Sacramento City Council took a bold step toward becoming one of the few cities in the country — and the first in California — to eliminate traditional single-family zoning.