Friday, September 04, 2009

City officials tell K Street hotel developer to show them the money

The clock’s ticking for Bob Leach and his development firm USA Hospitality Inc. Leach has until the end of November to present Sacramento officials with a viable financing package to build a 23-story hotel and a parking garage on city-owned property on 8th Street, between K and L streets.

And just to add some pressure to the $136 million project, the city is working on a concurrent request for proposals for other developers to submit plans for what they can do with the land, which will be released at the end of November if Leach’s plan doesn’t work out.

In addition to racing the deadline to tie up financing, the city also wants Leach to tie in the façade of the adjoining Bel-Vue Apartments — a 99-year-old structure — into his parking garage.

Printed in this weeks Sacramento Business Journal

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Well is this a surprise? It appears to me that the city is not thrilled with Bob Leach's proposal and is open to other plans in how this land can be used. I'm sure a hand full of developers are getting lined up for a $31 million subsidy. I'm also certain they will do a better job of using the Bel-Vue facade than attaching it to a parking garage. Good luck Bob.

5 comments:

gilli said...

Good move by the city to force the developer to "show them the money". If Bob can't make it happen, let's hope some worthy developers step up! Great blog site by the way! Very impressive photographs!

Sean A. Villagracia said...

Is there any word out on who the other potential developers are that are lining up for this site? The hotel isn't a bad idea but at the same time we do have quite a few of those...

Zwahlen Images said...

Thanks Gilli, I'm glad you like them.

Guerilla: we should know more about other developers sometime in Nov. if not sooner. I also like the hotel that Bob is proposing but as I have ranted quite a bit about in the last few weeks, that monster parking garage terrible. 10 other high-rise in Sacramento built in the last 20 years have managed to tuck parking into the towers and still make the project feasible to construct and more inviting to people on the street, so I don't understand why they are copping out and not doing it in the same fashion with this one.

Sean A. Villagracia said...

Not to mention the fact that parking garages that are seperate the building are absolute block destroyers. If this does get built or anything else there for that matter they need to plant that thing right beneath the building.

wburg said...

Interesting spin on the council's comments--they picked up on Waters' comment about only saving the facade, but not Cohn or Tretheway's comments about adaptive reuse of the entire building. "Saving" the facade isn't preservation, it's a parody.