All posts by Jeremy Bryne

Moving on Out to Sacramento

Housing, ,

When it comes to the Silicon Valley tech start-up revolution, of course people in the industry want to be in San Francisco where it seems to all be happening.  But when it starts becoming less viable financially other regions begin to look quite a lot more attractive. One of these is Sacramento.

Prices are so out of control in San Francisco that according to the U.S. Census, there was a higher number of people moving out than in.  The numbers just don’t make sense.  For what you pay in the Bay Area, you can get double the space in Sacramento County, 80 miles northeast of San Francisco.

As noted in a recent article in Mansion Global,

“The median price of a condo in San Francisco is now hovering around $1.176 million and it’s $1.6 million for a house, according to first quarter data from Paragon Real Estate Group. By contrast, the typical home in Sacramento selling for $1 million is a single-family house spanning about 4,500 square feet with four bedrooms and an office.”

Plus in general, the cost of living is 33% lower in Sacramento, CA than San Francisco, CA.

 

Enhancing Quality of Life in Sacramento

Featured, ,

How do you go about enhancing your quality of life?  For 20-year-old Clay Stevens and 19-year-old Dylan Hill it’s simple: post signs up around the County with one question: “If you were given one year to live, how would you live it?” On the sign is the website: How Would You Live It, directing the public to an event on a documentary that is being shown at Crest Theatre on April 30.  They are trying to get people to “really just kind of take life and live it,” without sweating the small stuff. As well as enhancing people’s quality of life, Chris’s friends are trying to increase awareness about the importance of bone marrow donations which they did on another website by getting a further 10,000 individuals to join the bone marrow donor list.

On a smaller – but still important – level for making Sacramento a better place, a project is currently underway to clean up trash on the streets.  Given that the area has a large number of homeless, this is a continuing issue but this does not excuse the necessity to clean up our sidewalks.  Especially when one considers the consequences of not cleaning up and how that negatively impacts tourism, quality of life and even business.

Earlier this year a 6-month program called Better Way Anaheim was implemented in order to kill two birds with one stone as it were.  $60 gift cards (to be exchanged at grocery/department stores) were given to participating workers for every 5 hours they spent cleaning up city parks and painting trash cans.  Likewise, Downtown Streets Team provided funding for 25 homeless individuals to work four hours five days a week collecting trash around North Sacramento in return for gift cards for food/living expenses as well as housing assistance. This program was so popular that within less than 2 months there was already a waiting list of more than 12 people.

Both these cases are examples of taking bad and turning it into something good and having a positive impact on people’s quality of life.

Poor People’s Campaign

Culture, ,

The Poor People’s Campaign – a national event established back in 1967 by Martin Luther King Jr. – is on its way to Sacramento.  This is  now 5 decades after King’s assassination and the legacy is living on through the Campaign.  Steering committee member Faye Wilson Kennedy pointed out:

“You may be living a good life now but if your money, if your source of income dries up or your resources dry up, you’re going to have more in common with that person that’s homeless than you realize.”

Fascinatingly – and perhaps somewhat disappointingly – it seems that not much has changed since the project began 50 years ago.  As Northern California National Moral Revival of the Poor People’s Campaign’s Kevin Carter said:

“Back then, it was three pillars which were justice, jobs and equality. Now we have 4 pillars. What we’re talking about now is poverty, systemic racism, the war economy, and we’re talking about ecological devastation. While the local group has been around for several years, this is the first time it has connected with other civil rights groups on a national level.”

Another really important factor of the project is to try to get everyone in the community at large to realize that no-one is immune and everyone has their part to play.

 

Sacramento Bee Awards!

Community, , , , ,

The California News Publishers Association just awarded The Sacramento Bee 11 honors!!!!

In its 2017 California Journalism Awards contest, The Sacramento Bee came out with two 1st place honors as well as a staggering 9 other awards, from over 3,000 entries from various news journals. Other competitors included newspapers that have a readership circulation of up to 150,000.

One of the 1st place honors was awarded to writers: Cynthia Hubert, Ryan Lillis and Phillip Reese for their coverage of youth and education in their story: “In the killing zone: Why can’t we keep them safe?” which investigated and try to understand the high level of teen murders in Sacramento County.

Hallmark Inn Prepping for Makeover

Business news, ,

The Hallmark Inn, located at UC Davis, has some new owners and with them a new, modern finish. Renovations will begin this summer. According to the new owner, Sacramento’s Presidio Companies, the renovations will include the modernization of all guest rooms and common areas, including the lobby and meeting rooms.

Presidio is working with the design team at Gettys Group to bring a pastoral, agricultural feel to the new hotel, drawing on Yolo County’s history in agriculture and farmland heritage.

Managing principal of Presidio Companies Guneet Bajwa said: “We are proud to take ownership of this great hotel from the Youmans family. The Youmans owned and operated the property since 1998, and with great attention to service and hospitality, made it a welcoming home for the community at large. We are excited to continue that same sense of community spirit, while also transforming the entire hotel with a distinctive redesign and modernization.”

The company is also considering a new name for the hotel, which will be managed by Interstate Hotels & Resorts.

Sacramento Native Greta Gerwig Wins Spirit Award for “Lady Bird”

Community, , ,

Sacramento native Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird”, an award-winning film, has brought much publicity and artistic interest to its set: Sacramento. Yesterday, Gerwig added another award to her collection at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, with “Lady Bird” taking the Spirit award for best screenplay.

Lady Bird was Gerwig’s directorial debut, and has been nominated for several awards, including Best Feature. In January it was named best motion picture musical or comedy and also won best performance by an actress in a motion picture musical or comedy  at the Golden Globes.

Though Oscar prospects seems slim, it has been nominated for five categories.

The film premiered in Sacramento and Gerwig spoke to the crowd about the autobiographical piece both before and after the viewing.

 

Sacramento: Infused with Culture

Culture, ,

It seems a little disproportional that Sacramento is so rarely publicized given that it has the largest population out of the entire state of California.  But thankfully that could be changing with both filmmaking and concerts.

The movie Lady Bird was recently filmed in Sacramento. Taking home two Golden Globe Awards the story of a teenager in her last days of high school. Although in the past famous movies have been filmed in Sacramento (including Memoirs of a Geisha), Sacramento still has not had the attention it deserves. This is especially strange given that it can be used for pretty much any middle-American location.  With the filming of Lady Bird, $50,000 of business each day was generated for Sacramento.

With the concerts, Sacramento’s Golden 1 Center is thriving these days.  Having sold over 473,000 tickets, this made it the 15th busiest concert venue throughout America (and 35th in the world) in 2017. Those numbers have put it on the map – especially throughout America –  as Vivek Ranadive, owner and Chairman of the Sacramento Kings said: “The world’s biggest acts have a new stage to call home.  Golden 1 Center is a must-play for artists of every genre, creating an epicenter of entertainment for the city of Sacramento and Northern California.”

Making Christmas Work for You

Finance, ,

Christmas can be a time of incredible expense for everyone. There are presents to be bought, festive meals to be made and family members to appease.  All of this costs money and for those who have not budgeted ahead of time, extra revenue needs to be made.

If you missed out this year, start  looking ahead for next, as in Sacramento there are events to guide on how to get through the festive period financially.  One example are the Personal Finance Workshops happening early next year for 5 Thursdays.  Topics discussed include: cash flow increase; asset accumulation; planning your retirement and saving for children’s education.  When ones regular finances are in order, putting aside extra needed cash for holiday seasons like Christmas becomes much more manageable.

One is never too young to start saving money.  That can be seen from one of our very dear local children, 5-year old Faye Segraves who heard about the death of Cal Fire engineer Cory Iverson who was struck down while battling Ventura County’s Thomas Fire.  Her response was that she wanted to give money to kids who had lost their fathers so that they could have extra toys for Christmas.  With her mother Kylee, they set up their own fundraiser in conjunction with the Wildland Fighter Foundation.

If a little girl can understand the value of getting money for crises, then all the more so should we as adults be able to plan (financially) for much of everyday life’s little extras.

Sacramento State Receives $6 Million Donation to Boost Entrepreneurship

Community, , ,

Sacramento State recently received its largest cash donation in history from former Sleep Train owner Dale Carlsen. The $6 million donation was made in support of a new innovation and entrepreneurship center on campus.

After the announcement, Carlsen said: “Right now at Sacramento State and in our region, this is a transformative time. This is the time to grow more entrepreneurs, grow more businesses, grow more jobs in our area, and this is the way to do it. We have to do it through innovation. We’ve got to do it through creativity.”

“The old-school way doesn’t do it anymore” he added. “Changing the mindset at the campus will change the mindset in the region.”

The Dale and Katy Carlsen Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship will include classes and a curriculum from UC Berkley, and will take place in the library’s multimedia room. The university is looking for the right executive director to take over the project and build an appropriate program.

“Our vision is to provide the tools, resources and guidance to achieve it,” Carlsen said.