The Citizen Hotel Blog

Today we are featuring a guest blog post from Amy Dempster, our Director of Sales. Enjoy!

This is a personal post for me, although it has a great impact on my professional life as well.  You may be following the very long saga that is the redevelopment of the 700 and 800 blocks of K Street in downtown Sacramento.  Just in case you’re out of the loop, the city is finally, after years of expense and effort, ready to select a developer to begin working on the most derelict sections of K Street, in the heart of our city, smack between the State Capitol and the Convention Center.  Whatever is built into these two blocks should act as a catalyst to additional K Street and downtown development and will become an integral part of our identity and collective history in this city for many decades to come.

I have lived in the Sacramento region (almost) my entire life.  In fact, so did my father, and my grandmother and her mother.  Memories of Sacramento throughout the years are vivid and beloved in my family.  My dad cruised K Street as a teenager and went to the state fair when it was on Stockton Boulevard.  My grandmother danced with the sailors at Memorial Auditorium during WWII and worked at the Owl Drugstore on K Street in the 1950’s.  As a teenager myself, I played in a local youth symphony that was part of the grand re-opening ceremony for the Downtown Plaza in the 1990’s and my Senior Prom was held at Lincoln Plaza (aka the CalPERS building).  To say that I have an emotional attachment to Sacramento would be an understatement.

So, when I had the opportunity to come onboard the preopening team for The Citizen Hotel, I jumped at the chance.  Of course it would be exciting and challenging to open a new hotel, but more than anything, I felt such an emotional connection to the project.  This was Sacramento’s first skyscraper, a building that had seen 80 years of business come and go – including me on sales calls to my clients who worked in the building over the years.  This was an opportunity for me to be a part of something special that will still be a part of this city 80 years from now – not to mention my family’s ongoing history here.  My uncle opened the Holiday Inn Capitol Plaza in 1979 and I opened The Citizen in 2008.  Special.  To me.

So what does that all have to do with K Street’s redevelopment?  Rubicon Partners, the developers of The Citizen, have proposed an ambitious project to the city for these two blocks.  To learn about it in more detail, go to www.boqueriaca.com.  I have worked with them directly for the past two and a half years and have seen, first hand, the care and attention they put into everything that they do.  No detail is overlooked and nothing is done in haste.  They are a group of local businesspeople who are truly invested in this city – that’s why they have proposed a civic amenity in the middle of K Street.  They too, make Sacramento home for themselves and their families and are thinking big about how the next generation will see downtown.  Will they grow up and move away to San Francisco and Seattle and Los Angeles or will they stay in Sacramento?

I don’t think anyone would argue that any improvement to K Street would be a great improvement at this point.  But let’s decide, here and now, what we can do to make our city really special.  What will make the tourists come to Sacramento and spend their money? What will make 20 and 30 somethings like me move downtown instead of commuting from the suburbs? What will make people living in other cities decide to move to Sacramento because this is a great city, with great places?  I think it is Rubicon’s project and I hope you do too.

If you agree, please take the time to send a note to city council – you can do that with your name and one click of your mouse right here:   http://boqueriaca.com/?page_id=88.  Better yet, come to Tuesday’s city council meeting at 6pm and let your voice be heard – now is the time to decide what our generation’s legacy will be for downtown Sacramento.