Million Dollar Condos in Stockton?
From the Stockton Record:
Paul Blumberg, a redevelopment manager for the city of Stockton, said developing residential downtown is now a top item in the city's agenda.The Record also has an update on the Manteca sewer story:
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There already are plans for the Grupe Co. to build 156 condominiums and town houses on the south bank of the Stockton Deep Water Channel. "I think that's such a coup to have Grupe downtown, and I think it will draw other developers," [Peggy] Massey [director of economic development for the Downtown Stockton Alliance] said.
She points to a good start for the Sheraton Hotel project, with its condos on the top floors. Jeroen Gerrese, vice president of the Sheraton Stockton at Regent Pointe, said that since marketing began in October, there have been purchase deposits put down on 28 out of the 42 condos that will occupy the top three floors of the seven-story hotel.
Prices range from about $250,000 for a 663-square-foot, one-bedroom condo to $1.2 million for a 2,275-square-foot, three-bedroom condo.
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He [developer Dan Cort] believes many people would like to live in downtown Stockton as an affordable alternative to pricey housing elsewhere in town if the city can create a truly comprehensive safe environment in which to live, work and play.
"The people who will live down there will create safety," he said. That safe environment would have to start with getting rid of the "criminal element" - mostly parolees - attracted to the area from throughout the region because of cheap "single room occupancy" hotels available to them, he said.
City leaders are reacting to the slumping housing market by making significant changes to Manteca's growth policies in hopes of maintaining home building and retaining thousands of construction jobs.
Manteca's move might be a signal that the continuing downturn in the housing market could have a substantial impact on communities that depend on that growth. It remains to be seen whether other cities will follow suit with their own policy changes or incentives for builders.
On the surface, the changes appear mundane: Developers will have an extra year to choose when to build homes after reserving units of city sewer capacity. And the city next year might allocate more sewer units than its current growth ordinance allows, aiming to stimulate building during an expected slow period for construction.
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The idea, city officials said, is to give builders some breathing room, perhaps letting them hold off on construction until the market improves. Supporters of the change said that, had the city chosen to let sewer reservations expire, construction workers and other employees in the development community would be out of jobs.
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City Councilman John Harris said the city's decision is a chance to give both Manteca and its developers more options in an uncertain market. "It's just a one-year Band-Aid, as I see it," he said.
19 comments:
I think I've seen it all now.
Stockton Homicide Map
Contra Costa Times:
Q Many people say that comparing residential to commercial real estate is like comparing apples to oranges. Are they that different?
A There is some impact. ... Commercial is extremely healthy throughout the East Bay and the north I-680 corridor. But in some markets, commercial real estate and job creation have been directly affected by the slowdown of residential. We see it in East County and the Central Valley -- Stockton, Tracy and Lathrop. Building materials companies, contractors, commercial employment were affected. The decrease in demand caused those companies to stop leasing space or expanding so much that the submarket in East County actually softened and prices have gone down.
All right, this will give the criminals downtown somewhere to break into after going to the movies. If you have never been to downtown Stockton, it is surreal. You have a brand new theater with sushi restaurants, et. al and a parking garage. Right next to the building with broken windows and boarded up doors. It is almost a race to see who will win - The govt spending ungodly sums of money to try to draw in business or the blight from the older building running down the new. My bet is on the latter, just because Stockton is broke now and they can't keep spending the money to draw new businesses.
This again goes to prove my theory that the Four Horsemen of the Housing Apocalypse are coming to California in 2007.
A million for a condo...in Stockton? No knock on the city but this seems like paying $100/per share for Pets.com.
Article on unaffordabilty...kinda shows people who "can't afford" homes or who are on the sidelines that appreciation at the levels the past 7 years won't be occuring anytime soon. Really no reason to be a new buyer nowadays. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070110/ts_nm/housing_affordability_dc_1
The whole of freaking stockton not worth a million bucks.
Yea dumbass, lets build a Condo-Hotel in the middle of a rotting steel city, surrounded by miles and miles of cows and sell them for a million each ... yea, solid business model, lets see where else its been so succesful. vegas, Reno, Phoenix, scottsdale ... yea ... great. This will be just like those, but like, more ghetto-ier.
Cool.
Cow_tipping.
yeah, and Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction
What an effing waste of money!
Downtown Stockton is referred to as Dodge City by the cops.
Where else do you see cars with no rear window? It is easier for the tailgunner to shoot to the rear when there is no glass in the way.
Delusional Pipedream !!
I've never been to downtown Stockton but I can tell you downtown Sacramento is pretty bad with all the predators roaming around.
The only reason gentrification occurs is because the people who care about the area have some important reason to move / live there.
If it comes down to a contest between criminals & yuppies, my money is on the criminals; they are more numerous and have more rights in CA then the average citizen.
Law enforcement just keeps em in line enough to generate continuing arrests for job security.
I mean hey, c'mon, get real here !?
You & I can spot a scumbag a mile away, and so can an officer, but no way are the LEOS going to get efficient all of a sudden & clean the streets. That would lower the crime rate, and then there would be (shudder ) layoffs.
Same with ER responders.
Don't you ever wonder why every minor trip n fall gets a full brigade of fire trucks, ambulances, dog catchers, etc ?!
It's either roll em or lose em for next years budget . . . gotta justify the numbers !
Slightly veering off-topic, but still related to life's daily routine.
Dowtown Sacramento? Downtown Sacramento is hardly dangerous or run down. There are some homeless people, so if the homeless frighten you then I would stay away. But it's nowhere near as freaky as many of the surrounding suburbs.
I've seen worse, when I was going up I-5 last summer.
This was the middle of the Sacramento Delta, between Tracy & Stockton; nothing but I-5 and flat farmland (with the occasional rice dryer) clear to the horizon. Not even the industrial stink of Stockton.
Then, at this middle-of-nowhere offramp somewhere between Tracy & Stockton, standing like the ruins of Ozymandias in the desert, there's this 100 acres or so of empty McMansions. All yuppie pink, with ten-foot-deep back yards, walled and gated, like an abandoned movie set from Over the Hedge. No sign any of them had been lived in.
Flanking this abandoned Over the Hedge set were two HUGE billboards pimping "INVESTMENT Real Estate!!!"
And all around, the empty farmland stretched clear to the horizon.
Die Flipper Scum.
That would be Lathrop or Manteca, depends on which way you were looking from the freeway. These are the bedroom communities that have grown by leaps and bound and are destined to become foreclosure wastelands.
Downtown Sacramento scary? You've got to be kidding.
Now, Stockton is a pit. I'm all for improving rust-belt towns, but $1 million downtown condos are not where I'd start, especially since $1 million buys you something decent in San Francisco, even in these inflated days. For $1 million, I expect to NOT have mendicants on my doorstep, nor shootings within less than a block from my front door.
Something decent in SF
2300 sf no yard 100years old $1180k on 21st Ave. Hopefully nobody peed on the sidewalk on your way to the bus.
HappyinSF: "Thats not pee, thats character"
Sippin, in SF, $1 million will get you a 1- or 2-bedroom condo in one of the non-pee'd-upon sections of downtown, like Russian Hill or a flat in a TIC in many neighborhoods. When you limit your search to single-family homes, you're demonstrating your provincialism and lack of understanding of the big city.
Airspace - my bad
As a former resident of Stockton (left in 1988), I have to say it's the WORST city I have ever lived in. Crime is rampant, especially downtown where the hookers and drug dealers roam. Some refer to Fresno as ghetto town...not so, Stockton carries that label well. These "planners" have NO real world experience about financial matters and should be required to live downtown...oh, and don't forget to stop at Home Depot to get the required iron bars window coverings. Back in the 80's when I was a member of Downtown Stockton ROtary, we were in the process to create a upbeat slogan for the city. The top choice was "Stockton, Someplace Special" and which later was just shortened to "Stockton, Someplace".
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