The two sides are so close now, it would be a shame not to reach the finish line on one of Sacramento’s most important infill projects. <\/p>\n
The City Council on Thursday night did the right thing, moving ahead with Curtis Park Village, a proposed collection of houses, apartments and shops on 72 acres of a former railyard near Sacramento City College. <\/p>\n
The council’s 9-0 vote to approve the project’s environmental impact report sent some clear and worthy signals. First, council members take neighborhood concerns seriously. While certifying the EIR, they simultaneously passed a resolution that puts on paper several key concessions won by Curtis Park neighborhood leaders. <\/p>\n
Second, the council does want contaminated soil buried under a proposed 6.8-acre park. <\/p>\n
The state Department of Toxic Substances Control needs to take that direction to heart as it approves an updated plan for nearly 170,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil on the site. <\/p>\n
And third, the council supports infill development. Several members talked about how the fate of Curtis Park Village would set a precedent – for good or ill. <\/p>\n
Developer Paul Petrovich and the Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association deserve credit for giving ground to get this far. Kudos also go to Lauren Hammond, the district’s council member, and Mike McKeever, a Curtis Park resident and executive director of the Sacramento Area Regional Council of Governments, for their shuttle diplomacy over the past week. <\/p>\n
Those negotiations produced compromise or near-agreement on nearly all the outstanding issues. For instance, Petrovich agreed to limit any retail tenant to 65,000 square feet, effectively ruling out big-box stores, and to cap the total commercial space in the initial development at 170,000 square feet. <\/p>\n
Petrovich agreed to add more secondary streets, and also agreed to grant the city an easement for a pedestrian bridge linking the project with City College. All the changes move the project closer to the traditional neighborhood center that many residents want. <\/p>\n
And most significantly, Petrovich is now pledging, if he gets the DTSC’s blessing, to bury the toxic soil first under five acres to be developed later, then under a village green and lastly under the park, if there is still more to bury. <\/p>\n
There is time for further negotiations before the council votes on rezonings for the project, probably in September. <\/p>\n
After nearly four hours of debate Thursday night, Hammond was so relieved that she sang a few bars of “Amen,” that old spiritual. It’s not quite time for everyone to break out in celebratory song. But if Petrovich and neighborhood leaders keep talking – and city officials keep nudging – that time could come soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The two sides are so close now, it would be a shame not to reach the finish line on one of Sacramento’s most important infill projects. The City Council on Thursday night did the right thing, moving ahead with Curtis Park Village, a proposed collection of houses, apartments and shops on 72 acres of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-512280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}