“I do believe we have the opportunity in the next two or three years to carve out a strategy, to put a plan together that can have some real meaning.”
–Deputy City Manager Mike Locke, on building downtown housing. Perhaps I’m pessimistic today, but statements like this make me despair Stockton will ever make its downtown a living, breathing neiborhood again.
Yes, the market’s dead — but when it was booming at a historic high, Stockton built nary a market-rate housing unit downtown. Yes, the General Plan Settlement Agreement mandates infill. But developers don’t want to do it. And I continually run into Stocktonians who tell me with complete assurance they never go downtown because it’s a death trap.
And now, decades after the first studies about reviving downtown, three more years of talk.
I believe city leaders are sincere about moving the downtown ball forward. I just believe even more forces conduce to the dismal status quo. OK, yes, pessimistic today, definitely.
