(Relocated from the arena thread, since we were talking Railyards as a university location.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianSac
Love the idea of the Railyards as a College, at least part of it.
Perhaps an arm of UC Davis, Santa Clara University, Stanford, UOP. I prefer UC Davis which could morph into it's own UC Sacramento eventually. How about another west coast Emerson College? Have you seen the new Emerson College on Sunset in Hollywood? TWO VIDEOS.
http://la.curbed.com/archives/2013/0...new_campus.php
Natural progression, UC Berkeley started Davis, UC Davis starts Sacramento.
It could be a great fit, I see no reason why downtown, west sac, railyards doesn't develop into a high profile private tech environment of very small to medium size private companys, Not only tech, but private companys to change up the employment force downtown beyond mostly state workers.
A good mix of an anchor University, varied employers, lots and lots of residences to keep the place affordable for low wage earners along with high end housing.
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UC Davis is part of the University of California system--it was the second UC campus, followed by UC Riverside, Los Angeles and so on, the most recent being UC Merced in 2005. Creating a new UC would require action by the UC Board of Regents, and it's unlikely they would open another school so close to an existing UC campus, in a city where that UC already has an established presence (UCDMC, which is UC Davis' medical school.)
The problem with "tech" companies is that tech startups tend to be relatively small in terms of employees, so even a place with a lot of tech companies may not employ very many people. It's also hard to pry Silicon Valley money out of Silicon Valley, and Sacramento-area money tends to loathe the idea of doing anything downtown, with a few notable exceptions. But industries that actually build or make things don't have the glamor of tech, which is why West Sacramento tends to nab things like soy sauce and spice factories, microbreweries and other food-processing industry. The Railyards has room for quite a bit--hopefully the new owner hasn't totally abandoned the idea of housing (the last I heard, he planned on reducing the initially projected 10,000 housing units to maybe half that, at most) but his past experience with industrial properties like McClellan suggest that he might be open to potential industrial uses.
Sacramento does still build things, however: Siemens just scored a contract to build diesel-electric locomotives for American HSR lines elsewhere in the country.
http://www.dw.de/siemens-wins-us-hig...-ge/a-17503466
One possible facility that could be located in the Railyards, if the city is willing to seriously amend the Railyards plan, is to turn 50 or so acres of it back into railyards--a maintenance facility for Amtrak "Capitol Corridor" and "San Joaquin" trains, to facilitate running more of each train, as the existing maintenance facility at Oakland has reached its capacity. Two proposed locations for the facility were in the "Centrage" site north of East Sacramento, or just west of Business 80 south of the American River, but the former is planned for the "McKinley Village" development and the other site is envisioned for an expanded Sutter's Landing Park. The only other location that is suitable for rail facilities serving both Capitol Corridor and San Joaquin trains would be the eastern half of the Railyards, in the portion east of 7th Street. This facility would help support expanded regional transportation options, and create quite a few jobs in a professional sector that is currently under-represented--and there's a certain circular irony in converting the 19th century Railyards, even in part, into 21st century railroad shops.