By Michael Fitzgerald
Record columnist
The exciting building project announced by Ten Space is more than a big deal for downtown. It is the beginning of a new chapter in city history.
The ambitious project — 1,400 housing units and 400,000 square feet of commercial space in a 15-block rectangle — marks a shift away from decades of costly sprawl and downtown neglect.
“We believe this is how Stockton is going to go from the big black eye, the bankruptcy, to being a place where visitors come. A lot of visitors,” said Zac Cort, president of Ten Space (formerly the Cort Group).
It’s a 21st-century project: dense, walkable, bikeable, convenient, transit-oriented and fun; which is to say not a zombified city center that many people fear and avoid.
It’s Stockton going from 0 to 15 blocks of newness (and repurposed oldness) in one burst of mixed-use housing, urban ag, retail, light industrial, green spaces and who knows what.
It’s as if bankruptcy snapped the city out of a half-century spell in which Stocktonians could do nothing about downtown but complain. And planners do nothing but accommodate greenfield development.
The location is certainly intriguing. “No one ever thought we should go east,” Cort said of the project area. “And I completely thought we should go east.”
The western half of downtown is hangdog. But 20,000 day workers give it some life. The eastern half is like a movie set after the accountants closed down the production.
But that can change. Our ancestors bequeathed us a perfectly serviceable downtown grid and numerous buildings full of organic Valley character.
Ten Space is proceeding along the lines advised by the Urban Land Institute. The ULI in 2012 said downtown rebirth can work if a project builds on the success of the Cabral Station project and stretches up Miner Avenue.
Ten Space also hired the Concord Group, leading researchers. Concord found pent-up demand for downtown living, said David Garcia, also of Ten Space.
“They were kind of blown away that someone hasn’t brought something to downtown Stockton,” Garcia said.
The developers also report lots of anecdotal support from Stocktonians. People hungry for downtown living.
“It’s not just about building buildings,” said Tim Egkan, Ten Space’s third partner. “It’s about giving people a community and the sort of a lifestyle they want.”
A human scale neighborhood, a know-your-neighbor kind of place, with spots a person on foot can reach, the way cities were laid out from time immemorial … until a couple of generations ago when planners seemed to lose interest in humans and switched to designing for cars.
The Great Recession changed American culture, Egkan said. “The things that millennials, especially, hold dear to the heart are achieving a walkable, fun downtown environment. The strip malls and big box stores are a thing of the past.”
First up: resurrection of the 12-story Medico-Dental Building. Also the block it stands on. What a kick. That building is Stockton’s urban high-water mark, a symbol that our predecessors surpassed us. Filling the ground floor with retail, and the tower with market-rate residential units, all for sale, signals that our generation can swing for the fences, too.
Ten Space will also negotiate to take four vacant hotels off the city’s hands. If they can be saved, they’ll be saved. If they’re white elephants, they’ll be ushered to the elephant graveyard. All good.
“We have found the city absolutely supportive,” added Cort.
Garcia agreed. “After the recession and the bankruptcy and the housing crisis, the city really had to look at itself and ask, ‘What have we done wrong?’ And I think a big part of that is that we stretched out so far. That stretched services out and costs a lot of money …. So now I think the city is much more open to hearing about infill development.”
The project is also a shift in the city’s self-conception. A sense of itself as a bedroom community “close to everything” but, well, ahem, not itself a worthy destination.
A cool downtown could change that. It could be transformative for the entire city. It is the change in substance that could change the city’s image.
“Since we’re close to everything, why don’t people come and visit us?” asked Cort.
Good question. Because for 50 years Stockton’s blighted and half-vacant downtown has been a crummy symbol of a city that cannot get it right. That era just ended.
— This story originally ran in The Record, you can access it here. Contact columnist Michael Fitzgerald at (209) 546-8270 or michaelf@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/fitzgeraldblog and on Twitter @Stocktonopolis.