Old Sacramento Historic District Oral History Project
Group Interview on September 19, 2007, with
ED ASTONE
JIM HENLEY
TED LEONARD
[Begin TAPE 1, Side A]
PRINCE:
Good afternoon everybody. My name is Lisa Prince and today is
September 19, 2007. I’m sitting here at the Sacramento Archives
and Museum Collection Center with Jim Henley, Ed Astone, and
Ted Leonard, as part of the Old Sacramento Historic District Oral
History Project for the City of Sacramento. So I’d like to start off
and just have you guys introduce yourselves, and just briefly talk
about what you did in Old Sacramento. I’ll start off with you Jim.
HENLEY:
Okay. Well, I was the historian for the project in Old Sacramento,
and I’ve been the manager of the History and Science Division for
a number of years. I guess it all totals to about forty-one years …
it’s too long but, it’s long enough, so I came in late 1965.
PRINCE:
Okay, and how about you, Ed?
ASTONE:
And I had three different roles, in old Sacramento. Early in the
late “60s after serving an internship with the Redevelopment
Agency I became the Project Manager and then they changed it to
Project Director until the late “70s. And that was responsible for
packaging and marketing the buildings and selling the buildings
off, and all that kind of stuff and compliance with the regulations
and this and that and working closely with Jim and then Ted, and
then for a few years there I was a consultant and still involved in
certain aspects of Old Sacramento. Then I came back in “94 as
Town Manager and just concluded my career with Old
Sacramento.
PRINCE:
And you are retiring, you have just retired.
ASTONE:
I’ve just retired.
PRINCE:
Okay, and Ted Leonard –
LEONARD: I came into the project in 1974, the year of the first traditional Jazz
Festival. I came to the Agency as the Agency Architect, which
meant that I was involved in Old Sacramento in the preservation,
reconstruction, rehabilitation, demolition of Old Sacramento, and
arguing with Jim, and putting up with Ed [Laughter]. When Ed
left – that was in what, ’77 I think, something like that, then I
assumed Ed’s role. That was the first time I really had an
appreciation for what Ed had done, and so I assumed that role, and
later, I was very glad to see that Ed came back as a consultant and
then ultimately became the Town Manager, until I retired I was
both the Agency Architect and the Agency’s Project Manager for
Old Sacramento.
PRINCE:
You were very busy, in those days. Okay. Well, I had an idea.
Originally I had thought about asking a set of questions and then I
came across this article in Sacramento Magazine from 1984.
Maybe you guys remember, the article is titled, “Is anybody really
running Old Sacramento?” [LAUGHTER] And, I just thought, and
actually Jim had shown this to me earlier – I don’t know if you
remember Jim.
HENLEY:
I remember well.
PRINCE:
He said it’s interesting because a lot of these issues remain the
same issues today, so I went through, I noticed that the three of
you guys had been interviewed for this article. It was written by a
woman named Virginia Kidd, I don’t know if you remember her,
or knew her …
HENLEY:
Uh huh [nodding]
PRINCE:
So what I did, is I pulled out some points in there and I’m just
going to go ahead and start of with them – they may be addressed
to one or all of you, and so we’ll just go from there okay? That
sound all right?
HENLEY:
Sounds fine.
LEONARD: Do we have choice?
PRINCE:
Not right now, maybe later …
[LAUGHTER]
ASTONE:
Didn’t I tell you?
PRINCE:
What?
ASTONE:
How difficult they were gong to be?
PRINCE:
Yes, you’re right, you’re right. Okay. Here’s a quote from Ted
Leonard, ‘“Talking about Old Sacramento is like talking about an
elephant,” remarks Ted Leonard, who as the city’s old Sacramento
Project Director ought to know, “you can say it’s big and gray and
wrinkled, sure, but there’s so much more.”’ – So, tell me about that
statement. Do you remember saying it, or how did you mean that?
HENLEY:
What part of the elephant were you studying, Ted?
[LAUGHTER]
LEONARD: Ed Astone went on a Safari and has a great picture of a five-legged
elephant –
ASTONE:
That’s not appropriate to talk about here! That was an abnormality.
[LAUGHTER]
PRINCE:
You didn’t want that one to get out …
ASTONE:
No, but I think Ted was right, I’ll interject something, for Ted,
because I used to always have to interject stuff for Ted …
[LAUGHTER]
ASTONE:
No, Old Sacramento was like an elephant, it was large, it had a lot
of things going on and everything that was going on was
coordinated, just like that which I perceive an elephant to be.
PRINCE:
Do you think that comes from the old saying about the elephant in
the room that maybe people don’t talk about, or, is it something
completely different than that?
LEONARD:
No, not so much that. I think it has to do with, in fact I know it
had to do with it when I stated that. People looked at Old
Sacramento and they saw what they saw, but they didn’t know,
really, what Old Sacramento was all about – the general public.
And that was one of the shortcomings, and in my opinion is still
part of the shortcomings. They see it from their own perspective
… we’ve not done a good job of educating the public as to the
significance of each of the buildings. We’ve attempted, and
particularly through Ed’s efforts as a consultant, tried to get a
better business mix so the shopping there wasn’t like any other or
every other historic district. So, yes, from that description it was
an elephant – everybody knows what an elephant looks like, but
they don’t really know about elephants.
PRINCE:
I see, okay, that makes sense …
HENLEY:
Yeah, I would add something to that and that is, I think nobody
really quite understood what this gray beast was – call it an
elephant, or call it whatever it was – certainly the Redevelopment
Agency was working in an area that was foreign to them, they
weren’t very knowledgeable for that matter, Old Sacramento is
probably the first, if not one of the first historic urban renewal
districts in the United States. There was no precedent for it, and so
therefore, they didn’t quite know what they were getting into. On
the other hand there’s another factor to it too, unlike like other
project areas in Sacramento, Old Sacramento is forged out of a
compromise and a very heated fight. A real community struggle
over I-5, and so it has that baggage that goes with it, and it has a
large degree of inexperience – a lot of dependence on consultants
coming in and telling them what to do.
PRINCE:
Consultants from other areas of the state or the nation?
HENLEY:
Some from all over the nation.
ASTONE:
And, they were not all that smart …
LEONARD: No …
ASTONE:
It took – this is a unique concept, this is a unique area. You just
don’t find projects, historic district projects anywhere in this
country where there’s been the total recreation of a scene around
existing historic buildings – you’ve got a little bit of this and a
little bit of that, and I guess Williamsburg is probably one of the
closest, and everybody says, “Well, why can’t you be like
Williamsburg?” Well, fine, have Rockefeller drop ninety-eight
million dollars of 1960 dollars, you know, into the area, and I think
things would have been quite a bit different.
LEONARD: And put it under one management group and essentially one
ownership. That was considered, apparently.
PRINCE:
That was considered …
HENLEY:
Actually, government has a large measure of blame for this too, for
this confusion that goes on because government usually asks
consultants to give us comparables – show us where it’s worked
somewhere else, show us a model to follow, so usually they’re
being pushed to say, it can look like Larimer Square in Denver, or
it can look like Pioneer Square …
LEONARD: In Seattle …
HENLEY:
In Seattle, or underground in Atlanta. But the point was, it isn’t
like those. It’s not identifying the uniqueness of the experience;
it’s trying to make it into a mold of what somebody else’s
experience has been. And that’s a bad way to approach a project
like this, it is unique, and it should be treated like a unique project.
PRINCE:
Yes, and I think what you say, Ed, is real important about Old
Sacramento, in that – I remember when I interviewed you earlier,
you had gone to these places and looked around and thought, well,
this is cool, but we can never do anything like this …you know, we
don’t have that kind of funding, so there is an aspect of basically,
sort of flying by the seat of your pants, and trying to figure out
what you’re doing as you go along, and at the same time working
with all these different governmental entities and …
ASTONE:
Oh, a lot of it was on the job training, and within the context of this
master plan that – and [to Jim] I thought you’d started earlier than ‘
65, as a student?
HENLEY:
Yeah, ’64 as a student.
ASTONE:
You were involved with the Candeub master plan under Aubrey
[Neasham] weren’t you?
HENLEY:
No, no, I didn’t work for Aubrey
ASTONE:
Oh, okay, I thought you had, geez, I’ve given you far more credit
then.
[LAUGHTER]
ASTONE:
Anyway, but the master plan was done, and you know, today – if
you go back and read that master plan, and then you read the next
important document that came out of the master plan, which were
the words in the redevelopment plan – the ordinance – they were
right on, they set the framework for doing exactly what we had to
do and exactly what we did, recognizing that there were going to
be compromises throughout this thing simply because it had to be
based on private investment. Now you take that out of the
equation and you put institutional investment in there, and you’ve
got a whole different scenario of development. But, the minute it
was recognized that there was no Rockefeller, there was no big
benefactor to underwrite this thing, and that it was going to rely on
the marketplace, that set the stage for a lot of what took place.
LEONARD: But there was early consideration apparently for a master
developer, which undoubtedly would have been outside funds
controlling whatever was going to happen here, which did not
necessarily address the significance of Old Sacramento.
HENLEY:
Yeah, I remember the debates over the single versus the numerous
to do the thing – I have to admit, I go back and forth between that
might not have been a bad idea and …
LEONARD: In hindsight …
HENLEY:
In hindsight … and then saying, oh, I don’t think so. And I don’t
know which side of the fence I’m on right now, because the simple
fact of the matter was, when we were looking at it – the quality of
the master developers was so bad, and their ideas were so
Hollywood-like, and so, so, cartoonish …
LEONARD: Main Street Disneyland …
HENLEY:
…that it was intolerable, and I have to admit that my argument that
I made – whether anybody was listening or not – was, I argued for
individual developers on the grounds that Old Sacramento was
developed by individual developers, at least that kind of chaos
would continue, and unfortunately it continued in spades. That
kind of chaos actually got out of hand.
LEONARD: We came very close at one time, to having, you might say a master
developer group of three developers who were the primary people
who were either property owners or under some type of a contract
relationship with the Redevelopment Agency. Some of that was
good, and some of them were absolute disasters and debacles.
ASTONE:
I think what we did and how we did it was right, for the moment,
and there was strong support all the way across the line, from the
mayor, council, city management, and everybody to do it on this
individual basis, and these little fires would pop up now and then,
but we would kind of stay the course, and, uh, and it became
developed. One of the shortcomings has been the quality, or lack
of quality, of the ideas and integrity of the property ownership.
And that’s a major problem today in 2007.
PRINCE:
Do you think that has gotten worse through the years? It’s been
forty something years now …
[ALL SPEAKING AT ONCE] Oh, yes, without a doubt, Oh yeah,
ASTONE:
Without a doubt, however, let’s not second-guess ourselves to the
point that we made the wrong decision in the beginning, this has
been an evolutionary thing, and now the challenge maybe is to
figure out a way to bring the ownerships under more specific
control and you don’t need to buy everybody, and there are a lot of
ways you can do this. Ten years ago or so, Ted instigated a study
that – I forget under what set of circumstances – but what would it
take to consolidate ownerships?
LEONARD: Yeah, and how…
ASTONE:
Yeah, and we concluded at that time, everybody that was buying
into this concept, or that was looking at it – and it really didn’t
have anything to do with compromising history – this was strictly
an ownership situation, that for I believe it was sixty-six million, it
might have been eighty-eight million, but it was somewhere in the
neighborhood of less than a hundred million, uh, you could buy
and control about eighty percent of the property, and the ones that
– or seventy percent – the ones that we felt did not need to be
purchased were those that were owner-occupied, Fanny Ann’s, The
Firehouse, the Fats, and then there were a couple thrown in who
shall go unnamed that we felt it would be impossible to deal with.
But we were talking to those people, Ted and I were talking tot
hose people, to the property owners – “Would you sell, if we came
along with money, would you sell?” And most of them said, “of
course I would,” because the ownership benefits have not been that
significantly big. And then we got sidetracked, we couldn’t figure
out a way to raise sixty-six, or eighty-eight million dollars.
PRINCE:
Who would have been the purchaser of that? Would it be the …
ASTONE:
We didn’t get that far.
LEONARD: Well, we touched on that, and that was some of the very early
conversations regarding one of the clauses in the redevelopment
agreements. There was this clause at the end of virtually all of
those agreements that assumed, presumed, that there would be
some type of an ownership organization, and that they had to
participate. There were owner participation agreements that those
people signed that. There were participation clauses in all of the
contracts where the Agency had selected developers, and I
remember vividly that it was, Ed, I think myself, and we were
kicking it around, and I went to our Agency attorney and I asked,
“What would it take to enforce this?” He said, “Well, first of all
you have to have an organization. “Well, we have an organization,
everybody signed it.” They had never met. We were up in the – I
can’t remember which building, there were three or four of us up
there, and as I recall it, the organization was formed right there if I
remember right, I think everybody put a dollar into it or something,
and in order to run the document, that the Agency wrote, sent out
to all the property owners, saying, “blah, bah, blah, in honoring
your agreement and so forth this is to notify you that this
organization has been formed.” Which became the Property Owner
Association.
ASTONE:
But that’s an operational kind of a thing …
LEONARD: But, it was the closest we ever came to having an entity to deal
with.
ASTONE:
Today, there exists the Historic Old Sacramento Foundation. It a
501 C3, and it’s backed up by the Old Sacramento Business
Association, 501 C6 – mutual benefit. Those are the two
organizational framework units that can buy and operate Old
Sacramento. Okay, let’s not stumble over the notion that there’s
no money yet, you know, haven’t we heard this in the city of
Sacramento- especially in relation to Old Sacramento that money
follows good ideas, so let’s make the idea really a good one. And I
think, if I could suggest something that portends what the future
should be about in Old Sacramento? That’s one of the major policy
issues – major.
PRINCE:
Right, too many cooks?
ASTONE:
The wrong cooks. Let’s get the right cooks, God – what a play on
words that is [LAUGHTER].
LEONARD: Too many cooks in the kitchen …
HENLEY:
I actually have a little different take on it. To me it seems like – I
don’t personally doubt that the originating concept of Old
Sacramento wasn’t a good concept, because it was. I think what
happens is a series of mistakes for events that occur, milestones
that were passed, where people just simply didn’t know any better,
didn’t understand the ramifications of what was going on. Here’s
the way I look at it – the way the thing is set up, the Agency
became the responsible entity to put this project together. And the
Redevelopment Agency is a – for lack of a better term – a
construction company. They build things, they see things, projects
done – they don’t operate stuff. And the assumption is the city’s
going to be responsible for the operation and the regulatory
control, afterwards the Agency’s going to get a bill. I don’t think
they did a very good job of talking to each other and I’m not
throwing any stones at either side – I don’t think either side was
very good at talking to each other about the issues of operations
versus constructing the project. Secondly as those things started to
happen, the Agency created these owner participation agreements
for each of these projects, and they did put in some language that
was real sledgehammer language, they could in fact go in and force
these people to do things, but after you get a little further along and
you look at it, and the problem comes up, it’s really kind of a
mosquito problem – you’ve got a thing that’s biting you every
once in a while, that’s a little problem with a developer, or with a
particular project, and what do you have in your arsenal? You got a
sledgehammer, you don’t have any mosquito repellant, you have a
sledgehammer. So the agreement doesn’t allow you to go in, short
of in a draconian way, to have any kind of enforcement, so pretty
soon, instead of dealing with it on that development level there a
trend to the city in saying we’ll do it by ordinance, or do it by some
other way, and they’re ill prepared to come in because they don’t
understand any of it. They don’t understand what’s going on when
they have to come in. So you have a lot of confusion in the
development of the project. And I think most of the problems that
we have today in Old Sacramento, are problems that weren’t
addressed a long time ago. They could have been addressed and
solved a long time ago, and they weren’t.
LEONARD: Possibly not anticipated
HENLEY:
And really not anticipated, that’s actually fair – I agree, I do
believe that’s absolutely right, plus we have one other enormous
wrinkle – and that may be an error, if you want to use the term, in
the original concept – it would be two-thirds of redevelopment
project and one-third a state park. That set up a we and they thing,
and the we and they thing goes to this day.
LEONARD: Uh hum, still …
PRINCE:
You means in terms of….common goal or …
HENLEY:
There’s no chain link fence between the state park and the rest of
old Sacramento, but in many ways there’s a huge a Berlin Wall,
but it’s not visible as a chain link fence.
PRINCE:
What do you think, Ed?
ASTONE:
Well, I think Jim is overdramatizing something that
organizationally is there, it’s there, it really is, and it’s …
PRINCE:
You mean cooperation between those …
ASTONE:
Oh yeah, in the last ten years I think it’s gotten worse instead of
getting better. However, for the people that come down there to
enjoy Old Sacramento, they don’t see that. They might see the
effect of it in some minor way, but they don’t really … there’s no
visible sign of the wall, none whatsoever.
LEONARD: It’s a philosophical wall
PRINCE:
Using that framework then, does it really effect how old
Sacramento is operating?
HENLEY:
Oh sure.
ASTONE:
Yes.
LEONARD: Yes, yes.
PRINCE:
Okay, it does, so then I guess my question would be whom it is
meant to serve, the operations – obviously the people that visit,
right? Ed, you say that people that visit don’t really notice that.
They don’t know that there’s this barrier there, whether it’s
philosophical, or a Berlin Wall, or whatever it is …
ASTONE:
They just see the effect of it
PRINCE:
What’s the effect of it?
ASTONE:
Well, you’ve got a beautiful amphitheater [ALL TALKING AT
ONCE] a beautiful, natural amphitheater that’s been there for forty
goddamn years –
PRINCE:
The grassy knoll?
ASTONE:
The grass – and we’ve used it out of a hundred percent of that
time, we’ve used it two percent, one percent. It’s on state property,
they have rules and regulations about what you can use it for, it
should have always been used as an outdoor amphitheater and it
should have been moved to development as an amphitheater
without compromising the 1849 scene, or just as an interim
development. It’s crazier than hell, that when we put on special
events – when I used to work there – we’d do it in this postage
stamp thing called Waterfront Park, instead of, and we create an
artificial theater.
PRINCE:
And you were unable to use that nice big field, because why?
Because it was a state property and they did not want to …
ASTONE:
Well, first of all there were rules against using it for certain things.
And then they had – they layered fees on it, and it’s come and
gone, it’s very inconsistent. Let me throw out an overall policy
conflict that I think exists, and will only get worse, and that is,
aside from the three people you’re sitting with, count the number
of people in this community that have a direct responsibility in the
management and operation of old Sacramento, in any way, shape
or form, that have a real passion for the area. They just don’t exist.
They just don’t exist – they’ve got a little passion here for this, a
little passion there, a lot of it’s self-serving passion. But who is
standing back looking at the big picture with a real passion for the
area? And I don’t mean political passion; I mean a deep-seated
historical perspective passion.
PRINCE:
The desire to see that the historic district works …
ASTONE:
Enhanced, changed, bettered, completed… da dah, da dah, da dah!
PRINCE:
Is it complete? Or will it ever be complete?
HENLEY:
No.
ASTONE:
No, no
LEONARD: No, no, no
PRINCE:
This article in 1984 asks why is it taking so long, it’s been twenty
years … “Is Old Sacramento complete, and why has it taken so
long?” I’m thinking, it’s not complete now.
LEONARD: No.
PRINCE:
So, what are they at three sites left to develop or is it more than
that?
ASTONE:
There are three or four sites
HENLEY:
In Redevelopment there’s three or four, then there’s state park –
LEONARD: Yes, state park. I’d like to chime in on what Ed was saying from
the standpoint of the “natural” amphitheater, because there’s
nothing natural about that amphitheater – that was a boondoggle
pulled off by a couple of people, a former engineer for the city,
Bill Gentry, and myself. And talk about a conflict of …
HENLEY:
Free dirt –
LEONARD: goals, whatever you want to call it. The state viewed it as a
premier archaeological site with the level down at the original
level, which was down at the bottom of the alley. The Agency
actually hired, or paid for the archaeological dig – reimbursed the
state, and at that time there was a question as to what was going to
be built. The old Eagle Theater actually is a two- story, or a story
and a half above grade, but one full story below, and the concept
was to build up the ‘49er Scene, which was all the small buildings
that had existed there, all reconstruction. And they would have
been around the periphery of that site. Then there was a question,
what do you do with the rest of the site? Well, somewhere along
the way, because of funding and other considerations, the state
when they started planning their railroad museum, decided what
they really needed was more storage space, more work space, and
they were going to build a concrete slab over the entire area at
street level. They would have shop space, whatever underneath,
and they were going to connect over to the railroad museum site.
Well, that never occurred either, but they had anticipated staff
parking under there – wonderful use – and that was the philosophy
or the direction that whoever was in charge at that time doing that
planning for that area had in mind, so you can see how far off even
they were from their own staff, or their own historians as to what
the site should be developed as. Meanwhile, the Agency had been
pressing them to rebuild, reconstruct the ‘49er Scene. Well, there
was another project that the Agency was involved in that had a lot
of soil to be disposed of. We talked to the state, and the state
decided, or whoever it was at the state, decided that one way to
preserve and safeguard the archaeological artifacts from all the
bottle diggers and everybody else who had pillaged all the other
buildings in Old Sacramento was to bury them deeper, so they had
a site plan, and they were just going to go in there, and we
volunteered all the dirt because we needed a place to get rid of the
free dirt [LAUGHS], and as they had the trucks coming in, Bill
Gentry and myself went down there and we kept hand-waving
where the dirt was being dumped. Their site plan no way
represents what’s there today. We sculpted an amphitheater out of
it, so that’s how our natural amphitheater came to be.
[End of Tape 1, Side A, no Side B]
[Begin Tape 2, Side B, no Side A]
[There is a gap in the interview as the recorder malfunctioned during part of it]
HENLEY:
… showed up on the scene when we were discussing whether we
would put electric lights or gaslights in Old Sacramento. And it
was SMUD versus P.G. & E. – that was the fight. And P.G.&E.
rented a bus and took us all on a tour – took us up to Grass Valley,
shown us the gas lighting, and this young guy with a mop of
enviable wavy hair [LAUGHTER] was sitting in the seat, and he
was a kid, I thought – you know, although he was probably older
than I was. Anyway, he told me, “There’s no way in hell we’re
gonna put gas lights in – it’s going to be electric, we’re modern!”
And I said, “You don’t understand, but you will.” And sure
enough, we put gaslight in [LAUGHS], but he was right in the end,
we ripped the damn things out and put electric in. That’s another
mistake, in my estimation. Those lights were never meant to
provide security and safety lighting - it was an ambience source …
ASTONE:
Yeah, yeah …
LEONARD: But what happened at that particular point in time is that that’s
what was there. There were lights there, the gaslights became a
conduit for electric. It was easy, it was cheap. Natural gas costs
had gone sky high, the city wanted off the hook, P.G.&E was
uncooperative, and there was no other light source, we were having
some crime problems in old Sacramento, and it was a quick fix.
HENLEY:
Well, it was a fix, and not a good one, but a fix.
LEONARD: No, and it changed the entire … it changed the color and I know
that Jim was involved when I was involved, we used to select the
colors on the buildings off of a historic palette and we would look
at the buildings both in the daylight and under the gas lights, and
frankly, when you put the electric lights on, some of those colors
really just [change].
ASTONE:
One of my favorite – I don’t know what it is that you follow in
your personal life, you know, whatever you call those things – and
the gaslights were a mistake. However, he who never makes a
mistake, never makes a discovery.
HENLEY:
Uhm, yeah, right.
ASTONE:
And you do the best you can with the best information available,
but you’ve got to make a decision. You cannot wait – see,
anybody who says, I don’t have enough information, I don’t have
enough – they’re weasleing, they’re weinies, they don’t know,
they’re not implementers, they’re waiting for the perfect solution.
Planners are this way. Preservationists are this way. Let’s wait for
the better solution. No, you go with the best information you have,
and if it’s a mistake, you learn from it. And I will contend over the
years that I made a lot of mistakes, but I think I made a lot more
discoveries than mistakes, a lot more.
HENLEY:
I think that in this particular case with the gaslights versus the
electric, really what it was about – it was a vengeful kind of a
thing. There were people in the engineering department that were
so angry about it, their ties were to SMUD and all that – they
wanted that out in the worst way, and you know, economics are
usually an excuse.
LEONARD: There’s another interesting political shenanigans, if you want to
call it that. In the city engineering department, there were a lot of
engineers who essentially, their educations were underwritten by
the Spink Corporation … longstanding …
[TALKING AT ONCE: “NO KIDDING,” OOH, OOH]
LEONARD: My wife told me, “Don’t say anything that I might have to testify
about,”
ASTONE:
That’s CIA stuff …
[LAUGHTER]
LEONARD: But, those people have an allegiance to Spink. And Spink, more
likely than not, became the consulting engineer on a lot of
redevelopment projects and other city projects.
ASTONE:
But they did good stuff.
HENLEY:
Yeah, they did good work, there’s no problem with that, in fact one
of the best people that came out of Spink, left Spink, was a young
engineer then, Gene Pierson. Excellent guy to work with, -another one whose philosophy was we can do it, we just have to
figure out how.
HENLEY:
Well, in some kinds of projects, they were virtually the only
engineering firm in the region. If you were into big water
reclamation issues and all that stuff, they were the only player in
town. They did massive subdivision stuff forever and they became
a dominant player. Just as occasionally, you get an architectural
firm that becomes the dominant firm in a community, and
everybody else pales by comparison. But you’re right, I think that
most people in the engineering department with the city actually
got their roots at Spink, or they went to work for Spink when they
retired, or whatever – they became the major employer for new and
retired engineers. [TWO PEOPLE TALKING AT ONCE]
ASTONE:
In the last thirty seconds are we ever going to talk about where do
we go from here?
PRINCE:
Yes, let’s talk about that. [to Jim] Do you have something else that
you wanted to address?
HENLEY:
No, I was going to ask about the third of July, but I like this, where
are we going?
PRINCE:
Well, that was one of the questions I wanted to ask, what you guys
imagine for the future of Old Sacramento. How do you picture it?
If you could say, you’d like to see whatever -- changes you’d like
to see, how could it be made better? What would you say, Ed?
ASTONE:
Okay, first of all, you cannot capsulize that, you know we’ve
talked two hours now, and it would take another two hours to
verbalize what all that needs to be done. If this city was really
smart, what they would do, once Jim retires, and settles in –
provide a little bit of money, and provide a contract for the three of
us to write a white paper on Old Sacramento – what should
happen, without political constraints. And our contract connection
should be right at the city manager level, and this thing may never
go anywhere, but it would be the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth. And it’s what really should happen to fulfill
the commitment. I don’t know if Jim would be interested in doing
it, I don’t if Ted would be interested in doing it, I would not be
interested in doing it without them involved, but there is so much
that needs to be said by us, and heard by people, and something
done with it.
LEONARD: This sounds like the philosophy of it’s just as easy to hang three as
it is to hang one.
ASTONE:
It’s not going to be vindictive, it’s not going to be, “those assholes
didn’t do this and didn’t do that,” or anything like that, it’s going
to be – here we are …
LEONARD: This is a point in time where we are …
ASTONE:
Say, January of 2008 we begin to author this thing, and we pull
together different parts of it and we lay it out there, and we sign it
off, and we submit. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
PRINCE:
Well, it just so happens, I was going to ask you if – well, I think
your idea is a good one – so now I think I’m not going to get the
answers because you’re going to want to be contracted for them …
[LAUGHTER]
ASTONE:
No, no, Lisa, we’ll give you the answers, but it would take another
eight-hour session, or a ten-hour session, or something, and it
would not necessarily be in an organized format, it would be
verbalizing …
PRINCE:
… a very long time, I know, absolutely …
ASTONE:
Jim, how do you feel about something like that?
HENEY:
I think that the sadness is that there is a certain amount of
collective knowledge among us – I don’t want to say wisdom
because I would be terribly self-serving, wouldn’t I? There’s a
certain amount of collective that we have that no one else has got.
PRINCE:
Well, I would say wisdom, because you have the experience to go
with the knowledge.
HENLEY:
Well, there are some other implications I’m not sure I want to go
to, but the – clearly, what is happening, is with Ed leaving, and my
leaving, whether they see it or not – there’s a big sucking vacume.
ASTONE & LEONARD:
HENLEY:
Oh yeah.
And, I think they do see it. I think they clearly do see it. I don’t
know that they necessarily yet know how to react to it. I think you
probably have some people that say – “Oh, thank goodness they’re
going, now we can go do our thing, that we’ve always thought was
the right thing.” Maybe without any prior knowledge, which we
would put a lot of weight on, but I think there are some other
people that are kind of going in a really different direction, saying,
“Well all right, there’s been a lot of politics in the last few years
that make it impossible for things to happen. So maybe now, some
things can be moved forward because there won’t be that political
wrinkle … and they may be good. I’m not saying it would be bad
or good, might be good.
PRINCE:
Are you saying you’re the political wrinkle?
HENLEY:
We are the political wrinkle. Of course we are, of course we are.
Now the third thing which I believe is really possible, and I think
really could happen, is there’s an opportunity for change. There’s
an opportunity for taking organizations that semi function, don’t
function, are counter-productive, and bring them together at one
time in one more or one or two, or maybe three, instead of a dozen,
cohesive elements, and I think there’s a chance to hire a true
Historic District Manager. A person who’s trained in historic
district administration – we’re not having to build it out now, well
there are a few, but I mean, basically, we have a lot of management
issues to deal with still in Old Sacramento, and there is a chance to
bring somebody in that has a lot of skill, and some of it may be
interpersonal political skills, may be a lot of things, plus a
knowledge about how other districts function and operate. And that
could be very useful. I’m not saying that – and actually, I heard
you – we have that knowledge collectively between us, but we’re
leaving. So, to have somebody who does do this would be –
ASTONE:
Now what level of confidence do we have that the operation,
reorganization, and the management of old Sacramento will be at
any level other than reactionary, and political expediency, instead
of what really needs to happen? I have no confidence. None
whatsoever.
LEONARD: Unh-uh …
HENLEY:
I have a little.
ASTONE:
You have more than I have, but I really don’t. So, that’s why I – I
really haven’t pre-thought this – us three getting together and
coming up with a paper. It kind of just evolved in my head as
we’re sitting here today, that that’s the missing link here – to tie
what really should happen to what may happen because of political
expediency. And that’s scary, that bothers the crap out of me.
Now there is talk about a Historic District Administrator but even
the way that person is brought on, may not be in the best interests
of old Sacramento, and what really needs to happen.
HENLEY:
Yeah, and to be honest, I would bet you we would have different
opinions about how that ought to happen.
ASTONE:
Well, I think we would have a closer alliance of opinion than you
might think.
HENLEY:
Yeah, I would bet we’d have no problem with the qualifications, or
the skills, or the job description, or that sort of stuff. But, all those
other things put aside, there is a political process and the political
process will have to play out in it and rather than fight it too much,
I would be much more interested in trying to shape it a little bit in
the right direction.
ASTONE:
But, let’s recognize, at least the three of us recognize, that as we sit
here on September 19, 2007, there is no operational and
management plan that is proactive – it is just reactionary.
PRINCE:
And what is it, now that your leaving, what’s – there’s no real
central management …
ASTONE:
No, there will be people serving certain roles, adequately or
inadequately, in whatever way they can, so, but I’m not sure that
there is a – if you look at the community’s interest in Old
Sacramento – step back from the shareholders and the
stakeholders, step back from the city management and department
heads and all that stuff, and look at the asset of Old Sacramento to
the community, there are not a lot of people representing that facet
of the thing. It’s been too insular. So, let’s figure out where it
really needs to go from that standpoint, and some absolutely
innovative and imaginative and practical things would come out of
something like that, they really would.
LEONARD: Things are going to happen because they’ve happened before – is
some bean counter is going to get involved, and they’re going to
look at the value of what’s here, how much revenue comes off the
area, they’re going to compare it with Arden Fair, or the
Downtown Mall, and they’re going to make an assessment as to,
well, what should it be doing on a return per square foot cost,
compared to this, and then they’re going to start presenting those
numbers and somebody else is going to pick it up and say, “who is
responsible for getting this thing turned around?” I see it just go
into another cycle.
HENLEY:
Actually, Ted’s hit on something that I think is probably the
critically important issue about old Sacramento, and that is it is in a
sort of wasteland -- there’s a situation where some people think of
it purely as an economic model, “how does this compare with a
shopping center?” on the other hand, there are some people who
view it as a cultural community resource, and their problem is, is
other cultural resources in the community look upon it -- ie. the
preservation community – look upon it as being an inferior
product, not up to standards as to the way they would do it today,
and so it doesn’t – it’s struggling for support to be able to express
itself in a meaningful way.
LEONARD: Every time we went for budgets, and Ed knows this – you never,
ever, get what you ask for. What it takes …they just don’t get it.
ASTONE:
There was never the recognition that, that – we’re always being
related to other things in the city that were not relevant.
PRINCE:
Such as?
ASTONE:
The baseline level of maintenance. You know, they would only
fund the baseline level of maintenance. Well, what the hell is the
baseline level of maintenance? We would begin to look at a park
they mow grass – we don’t have grass, they sweep a street, we do
have streets … They empty garbage cans, but we don’t have trash
enclosure every fifty feet on a street, I mean there’s just no
relevancy, and it’s always been that way. To compound the
problem – and this has driven me crazy, absolutely crazy – that’s
why I’m getting out of here, I mean I have gotten out of here
before he [Jim] gets out of here [LAUGHS], and that is, the people
that leave have all this knowledge, and they leave virtually nothing
behind. No training, they’re not trained – the new people that
come in – and they have to start all over again … oohh!
PRINCE:
See, that’s why I thought you guys would be valuable …
[EVERYBODY TALKING AT ONCE]
LEONARD: … and you laugh, because it reads like twenty years ago.
PRINCE:
Well, that what this article shows us, but I think that with your
collective knowledge, and your wisdom, and your experience, the
pitfalls you’ve already fallen into – how helpful would that be for
new people coming in to try to do something with this, you know, I
think it would be very helpful to guide then in certain directions,
where they’re not going to make the same mistakes, or other
mistakes.
ASTONE:
Lisa, the only way it would work, for us to put down in some
organized, collective way would be without political interference,
and secondly, it would not be up to us to go sell this.
LEONARD: No.
ASTONE:
It would be self ______ it would be fact, issues, notions, and it
would just have to have the confidence from the people that wrote
it that they knew what the hell they were talking about. I don’t
think we’d go off on too many tangents, but we would just
highlight and prioritize something that are not now a high enough
priority.
LEONARD: You know, we attempted to do that at one time, not in the same
sense of for the same, we, passing it on, but almost as a work plan,
and we established things that should be done, not particularly a
timeline, but we rated them on a priority. Very few of those things
ever got accomplished under that priority list as being the same
priority, some that were way down here [GESTURES] ended up
up here, and some that probably three of us would agree would be
a top priority, it probably isn’t on the list of anybody else.
HENLEY:
Hum, interesting.
LEONARD: Yeah. Well, that’s kind of the way this project was drawn, just …
PRINCE:
Yeah, well, I think that’s a good idea, what do you think of that?
HENLEY:
Which idea?
PRINCE:
Ed’s idea – putting your heads together and coming up with some
sort of guide for the next generation …
HENLEY:
I think it would be fine, if there really was an interest in it. I
wouldn’t want to do it if somebody wasn’t going to read it. I don’t
waste my time or somebody else’s resources.
LEONARD: Ed has an interesting point though – if it’s done as a white paper
under the City Manager’s office, it’s almost due diligence on the
part of the City Manager to do such a thing …
ASTONE:
Yeah, yeah …
PRINCE:
I would think so …
LEONARD: … and for him to use it as a tool to possibly even shape city
budget, because God help you, don’t get it into the hands of the
City Council, because as we discussed, one of the real drawbacks
is our council system where if you want a dollar here, everybody
else has to have a dollar, so you never, ever, have enough money to
do anything anywhere.
ASTONE:
See, one of the most often asked question of me is, “who’s taking
your place?” and I go, “Well, technically, the job has already been
split up and part of it’s going to Annabeth, and all the localized
stuff in the old Sac Management office will go to her, and we’ve
already split off the promotional and all that other stuff, over to the
Foundation and Vicky Baxter, and this and that.” And they go,
“Well, that’s not a very clean division of …” and these are
reporters, and people like that, and I say, “Well, that’s just the way
it is.” Here, Jim’s demise is very logical and very clean. He’s had
Marcia here for the better part of six months, and that’s a
wonderful process …
PRINCE:
Nine months.
HENLEY:
Almost nine months.
ASTONE:
That’s a wonderful process, but why that wasn’t seen as being
important in Old Sacramento, I’m not sure …
LEONARD
I was fortunate in a way that the project I was working on were of
such a nature, that the ones that I was interested in, when I left the
Agency, the projects didn’t go away, they stayed with the Agency,
I just went to the private sector and worked on the other side of the
table on the same projects. And that was a nice transition, but the
thing that I have heard at different meetings with city people,
particularly the mayor, and other people in the city management
staff who are not in city management staff anymore, but there has
always been a desire, and maybe it was a political push from who
knows where, that Old Sacramento has always received
preferential treatment and it is a part of the city, and Old
Sacramento needs to acknowledge that it’s a part of the city, and
therefore it should be treated just like the rest of the city, and I
think this is coming from neighborhood activists, like Oak Park,
for instance, and who knows what other districts, that there’s too
much money going to Old Sacramento, and I’ve heard that for
years.
ASTONE:
You know, how can you really say that when the net infusion of
money is between $250,000 and $300,000 a year – that’s all. That
is all. That’s the city’s out of pocket cost to operate …
LEONARD: But there’s a perception when it goes through budget cycles and so
forth, why is Old Sacramento being treated as a separate entity? I
could never rationalize that it was, because our budget lines used to
deal with, Del Paso, It used to deal with Oak Park, it used to deal
with – I can’t think of all the different areas, and Old Sacramento
was just one on the list.
PRINCE:
Well, I think I’m going to have to tie it here you guys, for today,
It’s been a really great conversation, I think there’s so much more
to cover, I hope I can entice you all to come back for another
session, maybe? Maybe, maybe not.
HENLEY:
Maybe, maybe not.
LEONARD: Lisa, can I get you to take a picture of the three of us?
PRINCE:
I will take a picture of the three of you and I thank you …
ASTONE:
How about the four of us?
PRINCE:
Thank you Jim, thank you, Ed, and thank you Ted. It was a
pleasure to have you here to talk with today.
ASTONE:
Thank you.
[End of TAPE 2, Side B]