Sacramento Business Journal-"Ambitious Oak Park project taking off"
By Mark Anderson
July 20, 2001

A nonprofit led by a former NBA all-star is preparing to start work on a major renovation of the historic center of Oak Park, bringing in businesses, offices and excitement that the area hasn't seen in decades.

After three years of planning, Kevin Johnson's St. Hope Development Corp. is preparing to transform the long-vacant Woodruff Hotel and the neighboring Guild Theater into a commercial district with a theater, bookstore, cafÈ, barber shop and large restaurant with outdoor patio. It's a $4.4 million project, with the Sacramento Housing & Redevelopment Agency providing $2.5 million in loans and grants. St. Hope will provide the rest.

Johnson calls the project 40 Acres, and he hopes it will attract people from outside Oak Park to visit the area -- and offer people who live in the district something close to home. Construction could start anytime, with the first attractions to open next summer.

"When my mom was growing up, this was the heart and soul of the area," said Johnson, a millionaire who grew up in Oak Park and retired from professional basketball two years ago. He now works as an analyst for NBC and is spearheading development projects in Sacramento and Phoenix, where he played for the Suns.

"This was the center of the neighborhood," he said. "If we are going to bring it up, we are going to do it here."

But reviving a corner that has been bleak since the 1960s is no sure thing.

"It is a very unproven location. It's close to downtown, Land Park, Curtis Park and East Sacramento, but it's not somewhere people are used to going," said Randy Paragary, owner of 10 local restaurants. He has offered to help Johnson make the project work.

"It is going to be one of those pioneering locations," Paragary said, "that someone has to take a chance on."

Sacramento's first suburb: Oak Park, Sacramento's first suburb, was once a prosperous area with a trolley stop, three theaters and many shops and businesses. It had begun to slip by the 1960s. When Johnson was growing up in the 1970s, the center of Oak Park was bleak and faded.

Johnson has been working to revitalize the area since his first year in the National Basketball Association. In 1989 he founded St. Hope Academy in Sacramento, an intensive after-school language arts and math program.

"We can help the kids in the area, but we also have to help the area economically," said Quonzeles Byrd, head of St. Hope Academy. "We have to do a lot more, and bring more businesses and jobs to the area."

The upstairs of the Woodruff would be converted from a hotel to 12 market-rate apartments, and a neighboring Victorian home would be moved and converted to an office.

As part of other projects nearby, Johnson has already renovated a 91-year-old Victorian home, and plans to convert a vacant office and two other homes to commercial uses.

The Woodruff, Guild and several nearby homes are vacant. Much of the rest of the area is empty lots. By converting the homes to offices and creating an attraction at the Woodruff and Guild, Byrd said, the area would become a jobs center as well as an attraction.

The renovation would open the 220-seat Guild for more than 100 events a year, including shows by its own repertory troupe, films and concerts. That would draw customers who would then discover the cafÈ, restaurant, bookstore and hopefully other businesses, said Karol Schmidt, director of the St. Hope Guild Theater.

St. Hope Corp. also has secured properties around the neighborhood for more offices and plenty of parking.

"When all this starts happening," Schmidt said, "we are going to need lots of parking."

Bank signs 5-year lease: After founding St. Hope, Johnson's first commercial investment in the area was the old Sacramento Bank building, now the U.S. Bank branch at 3rd and Broadway. The bank recently signed another five-year lease.

"That is good news, and that shows it is working," Johnson said. The branch is across the street from the Woodruff building.

"McGeorge School of Law is two blocks away. That is a strength in the neighborhood, but the students there don't come here now," Johnson said. "We want them to get connected to the project."

He wants the same from students at nearby Sacramento High School and employees of UC Davis Medical Center.

"We see this as a huge win. It will serve the community and it will also bring people into the area," said Anne Moore, executive director of the redevelopment agency. "If you look down at it from above, there is going to be a lot going on there. What's valuable to Oak Park is creating this unique space with all these services. We want this to be a catalyst draw for the community."

The agency owns the Guild and Woodruff buildings. It would transfer them to St. Hope Development Corp. over 30 years as part of a development disposition agreement in which St. Hope maintains and preserves the buildings, and the agency has a say in how they're used.

The agency got the buildings in a foreclosure three years ago.

"We're trying to bring back some commercial uses," Moore said. "The area has a lot of history, and these are both very unique buildings. I'm glad we haven't lost them."

Better times on Broadway: The larger area has seen several new projects in recent years. Two years ago, Potter-Taylor Properties Inc. built a shopping center at Broadway and Stockton Boulevard. It has a Food Source supermarket, Hollywood Video store and Walgreen's drug store.

"We are satisfied with the result. It has been successful and the community has really accepted it," said developer Lux Taylor. "We develop shopping centers. What Kevin is doing is going in and focusing on the community. I think he's doing a great thing. He's trying to develop a community and not just develop a shopping center."

The expansion of UC Davis Medical Center has triggered the development of offices. A new restaurant was built on Broadway, and the street itself has been completely reworked by the city over the last few years, said Terrence Johnson, president of the Oak Park Business Association.

Terrence Johnson, no relation to Kevin Johnson, co-owns Visions Window Coverings in Oak Park and is a member of the Oak Park Project Area Committee for the redevelopment agency. The area will get traditional-style lighting for seven blocks, and St. Hope's project is in the middle of that corridor.

"For the last two years, we've been developing urban design plans and we've been targeting intersections for what we would do under the best-case scenario," said Terrence Johnson, "and this is about what we were hoping could be done."

St. Hope has been discussing the restaurant idea with Paragary. 40 Acres -- the name evokes the unfulfilled U.S. pledge in the 1860s that freed slaves would receive 40 acres of farmland and the loan of a mule from the government -- calls it the 3rd Avenue Bistro.

"We've been talking about it. I've offered to help," Paragary said. "It is a complicated and challenging project."

Paragary just got back from a wedding in Dallas, where he noticed that older buildings in that city's downtown are coming back as new entertainment zones.

"The problem we have had in Sacramento is that we have been tearing everything down," he said, adding that a location in the Woodruff would have character.

He also emphasizes that he is far from being a partner in the 3rd Avenue Bistro.

"(The location) is one where you need to jump in and make it work, and Kevin is probably the one who can jump in and make it work," Paragary said. "I would hope the people in Sacramento would be looking for something different."

The neighborhood has seen some incremental improvements over the past five years, said Terrence Johnson. "To use an unsightly analogy, it's like a scab. The edges are healing over and it's getting better, but on the inside there is still a scab."

The increasing development in the area is a good sign, he added. "You've seen every city in the nation go through this. The urban areas come back to life because they are affordable. Sometimes you have to brave the environment, but it is getting better."