Midtown Mania: The Central City is Hot, Hot, Hot!

Those of us who live and work in the central city realize the rapid growth and popularity the area has experienced over the past several months; but, for those of you who've been out of the loop lately, here are a couple of recent articles that shed some light on what's happening in and around the Midtown marketplace:

Friday, December 14, 2007
The East Sacramento anomaly: Homes in established neighborhoods fly off market
Sacramento Business Journal - by Michael Shaw Staff Writer

Last month, Dann Ingrim, co-manager of Lyon Real Estate's downtown Sacramento office, went to market confidently with a 985-square-foot, three-bedroom house priced in the low $400,000s. It sold in three days at full price.

Sacramento is bearing the brunt of what some are calling the worst housing slump since the Great Depression, and houses three times that size have been sitting on the market for half a year. But this home is located in East Sacramento, one of the city's venerable neighborhoods along with others such as midtown, Land Park and Curtis Park that have in many ways resisted the ravages of the housing downturn. (Story Continued)

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February 2008
Midtown Rising
By Jan Ferris Heenan From Sacramento Magazine

While downtown Sac was getting all the press, midtown was quietly doing its thing development-wise. Now, it’s ground zero for all that’s hip. Lofts. Restaurants. Boutiques. Wine bars. Midtown’s got it all. How’d this little urban neighborhood suddenly become so hot?

Retiree Ray Cruit knows a little something about midtown Sacramento. His mom grew up at 20th and O, and as a young boy he spent a lot of time in the neighborhood in the ’50s and ’60s. The produce deliveryman’s Model T was a fixture on his grandparents’ street, and walking to Mario’s Italian Cellar on L Street for dinner was a big night out for Cruit and his family.As a teenager, he joined his buddies at Memorial Auditorium time and again to see the likes of The Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones at $4 to $5 a seat. Once the curtain came down, most concertgoers went home. “There was a hofbrau nearby, but that was about it,” Cruit reminisced recently.

These days, the retired hospital worker lives in Tahoe Park. Still, he frequents midtown several times a week, hunkering down at Old Soul Co. off 17th Street with a cup of fresh roast and a word puzzle or dining out in the evening with his wife, Rachel. “Now we just walk down the street and pick a place. There is so much variety,” Cruit says. “It’s really coming back.”And with a vengeance. The massive swath of midtown (a mile from 16th Street to Alhambra Boulevard and nearly twice that from B Street south to V) is in full bloom, with restaurant, retail and residential construction at its most robust in the area since Sacramento’s early days. (Story Continued)