Strikes!

Peter Calthorpe, the "renown" San Francisco architect, built Laguna West as a Transit Oriented Development project in the early 1990's. The whole point was a human scaled, mixed use development within walking distance of quality transit. Following a few scornful letters to the editor I wrote to the Sacramento Bee regarding the project and Elk Grove in general, the Great Tsakopoulos opined in a later piece that he helped develop "the first walkable community built in the U.S. since WWII."

On the whole, the project is a total fucking failure.

15 miles south of Sacramento, it's indeed walkable. Walkable to Nowhere. You can walk to the Laguna Interstate 5 interchange if you want, only to be handcuffed by the CHP if you pedestrianate down the freeway. Laguna Blvd. itself is a Great 6-Lane Divider, dividing the residences to the south to the supposed job centers to the north, making walking across it to your job a wholly dissatisfying experience and one fraught with danger, so I've not ever seen one resident do it. The Laguna interchange regularly hosts thirty six thousand vehicles per day, filled with chronically speeding housewives late in dropping off their kids and inattentive husbands commuting to Sacramento to work. Light rail plans have long since been scrubbed -- the community will never, ever see any train service whatsoever. The whole of their residents commute to Sacramento and the Bay Area. As my bus commute takes my through the famed Laguna West, I've only ever seen a handful of people drive their cars near the bus stop and walk to board the bus; this is the extent of "the first walkable community built since WWII." What a total crock of shit.

Regarding the job development on the north side of Laguna: well, I admittedly stand in awe at the potential this had, but I am totally underwhelmed by what actually did get built. Tsakopoulos and Phil Angelides both lured Apple and JVC (among others) into the development and for years we actually had some manufacturing in the city! Elk Grovians actually built stuff rather than just consumed it!

But wouldn't you know it, JVC pulled out a while ago. Another out-of-town corporation with absolutely no loyalty to the locality decided (for whatever goddamn reason they chose) to pull up stakes and bail. They used to produce 3 million CDs and DVDs per month and employ just north of 100 people; today, those 100+ manufacturing jobs [likely] reside in Cambodia whilst it's the same Americans who are consuming those CDs and DVDs.

JVC also, presumably, paid development impact fees to site the facility there; fees to provide sewer, water, natural gas, police and fire service, roads, what have you.

Cut to the present. 2008 sees the reincarnation of their old manufacturing facility into Strikes! Bowling. Actually, it's called the Strikes Family Entertainment Center. So instead of 100 decently paid manufacturing jobs, now we get one multi-millionaire developer, one multi-millionaire owner, and scores of wage slave attendants and fast-food servers earning far less than required to buy even the most decrepit Elk Grovian piece of shit starter home...and certainly nowhere near any capability to buy in the more expensive Laguna West "development." All these wage slaves commute in by their own private motorized vehicles from elsewheres. So much for "walkable."

And now! The City of Elk Grove has announced to the Strikes! owner that he's on the hook for $536,000 in developer impact fees...the owner who had no idea this was coming (supposedly). Mayor Hume says it's "just been a communication breakdown between parties...but you still owe us a half million dollars, please."

The owner and developer "assumed" that JVC paid that shit two decades ago. Nope, the city and mayor want their own slice of our growing retail/service sector pie.

I have been to Strikes!, once, and not likely ever again --the beer prices are completely fucking outrageous...and these prices don't even reflect the "impact fees" supposedly still due. I would say primarily I do not enjoy Warehouse Entertainment. Several hundred patrons stuffed into a big-box venue surrounded by five acres of parked cars. Poor, poor Strikes! may have to close up shop because of these fees, according to our Elk Grove Citizen. Of course, the city, while demanding hundreds of thousands in fees, won't possibly allow it to close simply because the city has no other jobs other than bowling alley attendants. They think that keeping all these low paid jobs in the city will keep millions in payroll tax receipts rolling into their coffers, so they won't let it fail.

Personally, I see the total need for Elk Grove to double dip, to charge Strikes! for development impact fees -- primarily because they don't have jobs that are worth a shit, jobs whose payroll taxes will pay back all that road upkeep their South Sacramento employees use, jobs that will pay back the scores of police service calls, jobs that will pay back all the local vandalism and mayhem those South Sacramento employee's friends bring. All those employees aren't buying new cars at the Elk Grove Auto Mall either..can't afford them...they're driving Sacramento County Paul Blanco beaters. Perhaps the owner and the developer are buying new cars, but they won't bother buying any of that suburban housewife shit offered by our Auto Mall. A Honda Odyssey? Please.

Charge away, my fair city.