Issue date: 9/25/08 Section: News

Residents from areas surrounding the campus listen to city planners talk about bringing more businesses to 65th and Folsom Blvd. [Click to enlarge]

A concerned resident asks City Planner Alan Porter how the proposed expansions might adversely affect the residential neighborhoods. [Click to enlarge]

City planners met with the Sacramento State community to discuss future building projects around the west area of campus.

The meeting on Wednesday was a first step in the new collaboration agreement signed at the beginning of the year by Mayor Heather Fargo and President Alexander Gonzalez.

Planning and design stages have begun for an expansion of Ramona Avenue, a street west of campus that currently ends at the Southern Pacific railroad tracks. The city hopes a new development area can evolve by extending this street to State University Drive.

Alan Porter, senior planner for the City of Sacramento, said the expansion of Ramona Avenue is still a number of years off. Porter said the logistics of running a street beneath Highway 50 and the railroad are difficult, but surmountable.

More difficult, Porter said, is the construction of the infrastructure necessary for the building project throughout the area.

Little funding is in place to move forward with planning. Porter said it will depend largely on businesses and industry to generate funding for most of the project.

City planners showed illustrations of what the area around 65th Street and Folsom Boulevard might look like 20 years from now. The illustrations showed streets lined with trees and medium high rise buildings similar to the East Side Lofts.

A tram servicing the area and connecting to the Sac State campus was included in the plans. Preliminary cost estimates of the tram are around $15 million.

Derek Fleming can be reached at dfleming@statehornet.com

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