[Session 1, June 21, 2007]
[Begin Tape 1, Side A]
PRINCE:
My name is Lisa Prince, today is June 21, Thursday, 2007. I’m at the
Sacramento Archives and Museum Collection Center in Sacramento,
California. I’m here with Mr. Ed Astone, Town Manager of the Historic
District, known as Old Sacramento. Hello Ed.
ASTONE:
Hello.
PRINCE:
First of all, I’d like to start off with a little background information. Ed,
where were you born, and where did you grow up?
ASTONE:
I was born in Fresno, California. Grammar School, High School,
graduated from Fresno State. My family was generally in farming,
except… I was raised by my mother, single mother…there was the three
of us, she worked at the hospital. She taught us good values, and he
[brother] ended up being a big corporate guy, and I ended up being a
Town Manager, so I think things worked out fine. Lived in Fresno until
1961. Upon graduation from Fresno State, in those days it was called
Fresno State College, and now it’s University of … whatever it is. I went
to … my first job was with General Electric Credit Corporation.
PRINCE:
Was that in Fresno?
ASTONE:
No, that was in San Francisco. I always wanted to live in San Francisco.
PRINCE:
It’s a beautiful city.
ASTONE:
So, I cruised on up there in my little sports car and went to work for
General Electric, and that was in February … 1961? …I was engaged to
be married and we subsequently got married September 1st of ‘62, at the
Carmel Mission. We lived in San Francisco, moved to Belmont. I didn’t
really like what I was doing for the big corporate General Electric and
decided to change careers.
PRINCE:
What were you doing with General Electric?
ASTONE:
Oh, I was administrative, I was running an office, I was in the credit
business, and I thought, I’m not sure … the financing credit … and I
thought, I’m not sure this is what I want to do …so …
[unintelligible]
One class that really had an impact on me was a class titled “Land
Economics.”
PRINCE:
Land Economics
ASTONE:
That I just found to be so fascinating, and it required me to do a …
[unintelligible]
Fresno Redevelopment Agency, we were not above moving back to
Fresno and living. By this time, nine months and twenty-nine days after
we were married we had our first child … planned parenthood
[laughter]
PRINCE:
Was that a son or a daughter?
ASTONE:
Daughter.
PRINCE:
And her name?
ASTONE:
Laura … she’s forty-three. She lives here in Sacramento …
PRINCE:
And what’s your wife’s name?
ASTONE:
Chris. And, so I was not thinking just for myself, you know, because we
had this little group, and so I was not happy in the Bay Area. It was too
expensive to live, too expensive to do what we wanted to do … wasn’t
making that much money, had all these responsibilities, this and that. So
we gotta go … we gotta go someplace …
PRINCE:
Sure.
ASTONE:
So I started looking at different jobs and became kind of semi desperate
and I’ll never forget the night I read the Chronicle want ads. Now, this
was a time when I was going through resumes, and … and … in those
days, in ‘64, latter part of ’63, early ’64, the head-hunting was not what
it is today.
PRINCE:
Oh, how was it different?
ASTONE:
Oh, it was more along the lines of support people, clerical, and, you know,
very specific channels of occupations, bookkeepers, accountants, those
kinds of things. It was very structured. So I’m reading the want ads in the
Chronicle and here is my job.
PRINCE:
You found it right then.
ASTONE:
I found it right there. It said Urban Renewal Trainee, Sacramento
Redevelopment Agency, call …yada, yada, ya …so I said, “Chris, here’s
our job, here’s my job.” She says, “Why do we want to live in
Sacramento? I said, “Well, why not?” you know, it’s a lot like the Central
Valley, anyway … so, went through the process, was hired, became an
Urban Renewal Trainee on May 1, 1964, and went through that whole
process, and learned a lot about redevelopment, and then eventually was
given the task of dealing with all of the projects under the Sacramento
Redevelopment Agency, which in those days were just downtown, that
had old buildings. So it was all the rehab buildings along R Street, the
hotels along J Street, and Old Sacramento, because they had made a
change. They had an architectural historian, a planner, that were heading
up Old Sacramento. Both these were old guys and I believe, well they both
retired and shortly thereafter they both died.
PRINCE:
Who were they?
ASTONE:
Clyde Trudell was the architectural historian, and …
PRINCE:
Now, was he the original Project Director for the Sacramento
Redevelopment Agency?
ASTONE:
No, he was the original architectural historian working on the Master
Plan of Old Sacramento.
PRINCE:
Oh, I see.
ASTONE:
And then Don Kline was the Chief Planner. So they were no longer
involved and … in retrospect … thinking back, it was at a time when the
planning was done. The imaginative planning was done. Now it was time
to implement.
PRINCE:
So this is when you came in …
ASTONE:
I was already there on the staff.
PRINCE:
In 1964?
ASTONE:
This was a little bit later than ’64.
PRINCE:
Oh, okay, so did you work under Clyde … Clyde Trudell and Don …
ASTONE:
No. I actually worked under the real estate manager, Dave Lane, I was
In the real estate office.
PRINCE:
I see.
ASTONE:
But, when it came time to fill the position that who was going to be
involved and do the stuff that needed to be done to implement, not
only Old Sacramento, but some of these other projects. Then, Bob
Bradford, who was the Executive Director, called me in and told me
what he wanted me to do. That was January of ’66, and I muttered
some sort of a obscene statement … like “Holy whatever” …
[laughter]
and then he was very supportive, and I said that if I was going to …
and the emphasis was on Old Sacramento, the industrial corridor along R
Street was taking care of itself, the hotels were being taken care of by
other people. So, we needed to get Old Sacramento up and rolling. We
had adopted – the City had adopted the ordinance, that, in 1966, amended
it in ’67, and we had the legal authority to proceed. We had the Urban
Renewal Grant from the federal government, to proceed. Some things
were cut and dried. We’re going to completely redo the infrastructure, the
storm drainage, and the power lines and all that kind of stuff …
PRINCE:
Sure.
ASTONE:
And then we would eventually do the curbs, gutters, and sidewalks. And
then sooner or later, somebody was going to do something with the
buildings.
PRINCE:
I see.
ASTONE:
So, there were three of us that worked as a team … and no one ever sat
us down and said, “You are the team, you are the Old Sacramento team”
But we had very specific responsibilities; Jim Henley was the historian,
He had all of the historical facts, all of the historical information, the
historical justification, and the historical conscience …
PRINCE:
That’s important …
ASTONE:
…to make sure the other two of us didn’t run amok. Okay, the other one,
the second one was Bill Gentry, who was a civil engineer working in the
engineering department of the city. The old-timers at City Hall didn’t
want to mess with this deal …it was too far beyond their interests. They
were interested in staying within the city standard specs for driveways,
for curbs cuts, for streets, rebuilding streets, and all this. And here we’re
building whole new streets and boardwalks? What the hell, how are you
going to build a boardwalk?
PRINCE:
So, do you mean, they wanted to stay, like with the original city grid street
patterns?
ASTONE:
No, no, no. The old guys didn’t want anything to do with this so they
dumped it in the lap of Bill Gentry, who worked with the planners … ?
__________engineering, to develop the plan. To completely redo
everything from building front to building front throughout the whole
area.
PRINCE:
Okay …
ASTONE:
Allright. So, we got the historian over here, the conscience that’s telling
Gentry what should be cobblestones and what should be boardwalks and
how it should be built there and the ramps and this and that. And then
you’ve got the engineer here that’s working with the city engineer…
person, Bill Gentry, working with the engineering firm to translate all that
into construction drawings … I mean … huge… volumes of sheets of
plans. Okay, so we’ve got the public area being spoken for and then
we’ve got the historian. Let me back up.
PRINCE:
Okay.
ASTONE:
No, no, no, the third person was me.
PRINCE:
Right.
ASTONE:
Okay. I was going to be responsible for [chuckle] what we called in those
days, “Owner Participation Agreements.”
PRINCE:
Owner Participation Agreements. What did that mean?
ASTONE:
That meant that since there was no need to buy all this property, to buy
any of it – to go work with the owners to redevelop their own properties.
But, in order to do that, we felt the need, I, more than anybody, else felt
the need to have a package.
PRINCE:
To present to them?
ASTONE:
To present to them because it was very clear we were going to have a very
strict set of architectural … doo-dads, here to be followed if it was an
existing building, it had to look like this. If it was a vacant site, it had to
be rebuilt to look like this and we needed those drawings. Now, Old
Sacramento was very well documented by photographs. So Jim and Dr.
Neasham had accumulated … all the other people who were in the
historical research, had accumulated all these photographs, had narrowed
them down to very specific ones, and said that this is the best photographic
evidence for that building. This is the best photographic evidence for that
vacant site on which this type of building should be built. So we turned all
that stuff over to an architectural firm out of Berkeley, Demars and Wells.
PRINCE:
Demars and Wells.
ASTONE:
Vernon Demars and John Wells and all of their cohorts, Bob Hill, and
other people that I’ve long since lost track of … who did a fabulous job
of putting together these schematic plans, so that when I would meet with
you, a property owner, and say, we want you to redevelop your property.
Now, in most cases I was meeting with a second or third generation owner
who had no interest in spending money on this trashy old building, or this
vacant site. They just wanted to be left alone because they were milking
it, it was either a flop house or a bar, or a parking lot, or a junkyard, or
however it was being used as a derelict area – as part of the derelict area.
So, they would say, “You’ve gotta be kidding, you’ve gotta be kidding.”
I’d say, “No, no. We really want you to redevelop your property and this
is what it’s going to look like.” [they’d say] “Well we don’t want it to
look like that.” [I’d say] “Well, this is what it’s gonna have to look like
because it’s the master plan, it says this is what it’s supposed to look like
and the ordinance says you gotta follow the master plan, so if you’re going
to do anything on your property, this is what it has to look like.” [they’d
say] “ Well no, I want to put a six-story building there.” “You can’t.”
“Well, why not?” “Because the ordinance says you can’t. The ordinance
says you’re going to follow these architectural guidelines.” “Well, you
blank, blank, blank …” you know, and then he got very personal, and
started swearing and this and that. I said, “However, now that it’s clear
and you’re not interested in developing, we’ll buy you out. We have the
resources to buy you out.”
PRINCE:
That was the eminent domain.
ASTONE:
Well, no, no, no.
PRINCE:
No?
ASTONE:
No, we were negotiating a purchase, comma, under the “threat” of eminent
domain. There’s a big difference. There was a strategy that had been
followed, earlier. See, I’m trying to go forward but I’ve got to go back.
PRINCE:
Yes.
ASTONE:
Okay. In order for us to negotiate, because we knew we were going to be
negotiating with ninety percent of these people.
PRINCE:
To get the properties …
ASTONE:
To buy them, absolutely. I was just going through this naïve gymnastics
and being called all sorts of ugly names.
PRINCE:
Did that happen often? Were there a lot of people that had been there
for generations and were not interested in going along with the plan?
ASTONE:
Oh, of course, they were not interested in anything other than just milking
their property, and they had no interest in expressing enthusiasm for a
vision of what this area could be. There were only a few of us that were
out there peddling this thing. So, when it became obvious that we were
going to have to negotiate to buy all this property, the forerunner of Cal
Trans, the California State Department of Highways, was getting ready to
purchase property for I- 5, and there was a building on the corner of Third
and I Streets, which is, just outside of Old Sacramento, it’s right where the
motel is [was] when you’re coming in to Old Sacramento.
PRINCE:
Uh hum, yes.
ASTONE:
It was a restaurant, and it was owned by a Mrs. Luigi. And it was a place
called, the Español. It’s now, it’s been operating out on Folsom
Boulevard forever, and the food is very, very good.
PRINCE:
I’ve heard of it.
ASTONE:
And if you walk in there you’ll see the model of the original building.
Okay now, so their offer, and I could be off a few dollars here, but the
intent is still there. The offer from Highways was to buy their property for
$240,000.00. They refused it, they said it’s worth a million, five-hundred
thousand, or whatever it was … worth a lot more. So they proceeded to go
through trial. Go through an eminent domain trail.
PRINCE:
Okay.
ASTONE:
I sat through every day of that trial.
PRINCE:
And when was this, Ed?
ASTONE:
Probably, ’66, 1965.
PRINCE:
Okay.
ASTONE:
I sat there and I watched the theatrics of an eminent domain trial. And,
all of a sudden this thing is all said and done, and after fifty-two or fiftythree trial days – that’s over a lengthy period – the jury comes back with
an award, $ 250,000.00. Ten thousand dollars more than the offer.
PRINCE:
Oh …
ASTONE:
Woo … so, of course we were elated because we felt that the rules of
eminent domain constrained the way in which you should set value. You
set value on the way the property exists today, not on its future
expectations. And they were saying, it’s worth so much more because of
the future expectations.
PRINCE:
You mean after the area would be developed …
ASTONE:
After the freeway’s in, and after Old Sacramento becomes a hootin’
tootin’ place, and after the hotels have been developed, and all this stuff.
I mean, that was the misconception about eminent domain. The moment
of value. So, anybody that we then proceeded to negotiate with, we made
them fully aware that the precedent, right over here, was X value per
square foot, and that’s probably on the high side, because that was a
functioning building, you don’t even have a functioning building, your
building is wrought with building codes, and this and that, you know. So
we ended up buying all but five parcels through negotiations, never went
to court. But it was always the threat of eminent domain, okay?
PRINCE:
Using this precedent as an example …
ASTONE:
Using this precedent over here, because that’s what would happen in
court.
PRINCE:
I see.
ASTONE:
We would use that as precedent. Okay. So then we began to buy this
property. Well, being an urban renewal project, and a redevelopment
project under state law, we had the obligation of re-locating businesses
and residents. So, we had a big budget to … and we had three or four
people on our staff, one or two that dealt with the elderly residents, and
one or two that dealt with the businesses. And we ended up relocating
everybody that needed to be relocated. This was a volatile issue…
PRINCE:
Yeah …
ASTONE:
… because, who we were not obligated to relocate and did not relocate
were the drifters, the homeless, that were just drifting around, floating
around, all that. So, if you looked at the area in ’65, you know, Marshes of
Two Street is a good example, you will see a plethora of human activity
down there, just hanging around, standing around, doing nothing.
Businesses were open, the shoeshine shop was open, the bars were open,
the Union Gospel Mission was open, and so on and so forth. If you look
at it five years later, in 1970, you’ll see that everything was shut down.
There was nobody on the street. Nobody.
PRINCE:
And when did the project actually start? When did some of the land start
to get cleared, and some of the buildings sold and so forth, because in ’65
…
ASTONE:
Right around 1970. It’s difficult to pinpoint a specific site, a specific date,
because we got legal authority and financial wherewithal to do it in 1967,
and then we went into the final planning, and then we went into
negotiations, and then we began to sell off property. We had to buy, clear,
and all that, and we did the Morse Building in 1969.
PRINCE:
Okay, and that was the first model building, correct?
ASTONE:
First model building, first demonstration building, it was our
demonstration building. And then we sold off Fanny Anne’s, we sold off
a building for Fulton’s Restaurant, we sold off a building for the Lady
Adams Howard House, for the D.O. Mills Restaurant, and it just went off
from there.
PRINCE:
Sure …
ASTONE:
All this time, now, all this time, keep in mind … keep in mind, the
Firehouse Restaurant was there, operating as this first-class eatery, and
that started in 1960.
PRINCE:
In 1960 it was there?
ASTONE:
In 1960.
PRINCE:
So all the construction went on around that operating business.
ASTONE:
Absolutely, you could say, for the first seven to eight years, the front door
of the Firehouse was never used, everybody came in and out the back way
then, because the back end was the parking lot. Then the owner, Newton
Cope, built the courtyard, and bought the property on the corner, cleared
that for a parking lot, and now he had this beautiful courtyard back there.
And we had something to take people to, and show, “this is what the rest
of this area is going to look like.” And they’d go, “You gotta be kidding,
what are you … what kind of pills are you on?”
[laughter] “No, really, it’s gonna happen, you know, it was pretty pumped
up …
PRINCE:
Were these private investors you were hoping for, that you were taking
around and …
ASTONE:
We did not have the need to do a whole lot of advertising, because people
were knocking our door down. There was another phenomenon that was
happening while we were in our marketing phase and that was Ghiradelli
Square in San Francisco, and people could go down there and see what a
fabulous setting that was. One of the first sizable, adaptive re-use
buildings anywhere, and beautiful brick and ivy, and this and that, and
then you come back to Sacramento and meet with me, and I’d give them
an opportunity to have a small piece of that, a very small piece of that.
PRINCE:
So you used that as a model for Old Sacramento, basically …reuse of the
historic buildings? So, now, I know that when I went on that little tour
with you last week, you showed me some of the reconstructed buildings,
and restored buildings, how did that work? I guess I mean were there
buildings that were physically moved, from say, Third Street?
ASTONE:
No.
PRINCE:
Nothing was moved? Everything was rebuilt?
ASTONE:
The ones that were, under the redevelopment, under the master plan, there
were buildings that were re-located, but they were torn down, and rebuilt
over here in a setting that was an unnatural setting because they were
never side by side like they were here. But they were important enough
buildings where they should be represented within the area. And those
were the ones on Second and L, the south side of L Street.
PRINCE:
So was the aim for more of a historic representation …
ASTONE:
Well, no, other than those, where there was some flexibility, everything
else was tailored to what was on that site by photographic evidence. And
this is where those Schematic plans came in and were so helpful because
the schematic plans then became the focus of my discussion with you as a
prospective developer wanting that site, to build a new building on that
site, and here’s what it’s going to look like.
PRINCE:
So those schematic plans were basically the blueprint for whatever site,
and those came directly from the photographs that had been …
ASTONE:
They came from the photographs, and the research that Jim had done as
interpreted by the architects. Now, we could have done it several different
ways. One of the ways that was considered was to give different architects
the photos… make big copies of the photos, give them the photos and say,
here’s what we’re looking for, on that site, come back with your set of
plans. We were going to get everything all over the ballpark. Instead of
having, taking the initiative – and I think this proved to be a very wise
decision – to have the same people make the same value judgments, and
the same judgment decisions, that this was the way that building looked
and should be interpreted onto a set of plans … with this kind of a cornice,
and this kind of a pilaster and this kind of a doorway, and this kind of a …
and all those kinds of things. So those plans were invaluable. Whether it
was a restoration building, because most of the buildings that were there
had been stripped of much, if not most of their ornamentation.
PRINCE:
I see, so some of the buildings that were actually restored – some of the
ornamentation was taken from those photographs – and like you were
talking about – the specific ornamentation that would have adorned those
buildings?
ASTONE:
The Morse building is a classic example. I can show you a video, a film
that has now been put on video, it shows a foundry in Lodi, making the
cast iron pilasters for the fronts of the buildings from a carving that had
been done from the plans, because those pilasters were an important part
of the building and were not to be found, were nowhere around.
PRINCE:
So, they made a design, based on the photographs and what they had,
based on the historical research that had been done, and then actually
made them?
ASTONE:
Cast them, yeah.
PRINCE:
Okay. So, let me get a little bit to … you mentioned Dr. Audrey
Neasham. Did you work directly with him?
ASTONE:
Oh yeah.
PRINCE:
And how was it working with him? I know he was the state historian for
awhile, or regional historian for …
ASTONE:
He had more credentials, it was wonderful, he was an amazing man, and
what he got the biggest kick out of was the enthusiasm of us young guys.
He knew we were not historians. But here we were going to do something
that I think he felt quite strongly about, that we were going to work to
bring into reality these things that were in his head, these aspirations, these
goals, and the dream that he had for this area. And he, I think he got a big
kick out of that. Didn’t necessarily agree with everything we did.
PRINCE:
Right. What was that dream he had, do you know? I mean can you break it
down simply?
ASTONE:
Well he felt, and I think this is clearly stated in the redevelopment, or in
that master plan, that Candeub and Fleissig master plan, that this area was
unique. It was unique because of the amount of collection, or the number
of buildings that go back to the gold rush period, and the founding of the
state, and the early transportation, and all of the credentials about Old
Sacramento, that there was this unique collection and something should be
done with it, and it should not be relegated to the dump heap because
you’re going to run the freeway right down the waterfront, because that
was the original plan. So, he was part of the advocacy to move the
freeway. Not necessarily to its present configuration, but don’t tear the
buildings out. So, over a period of time, his vision for this area was
achieved. And he could go down there in his, later on in his life and
experience something that he had dreamt of and had very strong feelings
about. Probably didn’t agree with everything we did because you end up
having to make compromises, and being a historian, he would have much
rather seen us spend a lot more money, which we didn’t have, we were not
funded like Williamsburg with a big Rockefeller grant or anything like
that. We did what we could with what we had. But in the end I think he
was very pleased.
PRINCE:
What do think he would have preferred if the funding had been available?
How do you think he would have liked to see it done differently?
[End of Tape 1, Side A]
[Begin Tape 1, Side B]
ASTONE:
Things that may or may not make financial sense. You know,
blacksmiths, the spinners with the wheels, stuff like, you know, more of an
interpretive thing …the kind of thing you see at Williamsburg. Instead of
….fern bars in old mercantile buildings and things like that.
PRINCE:
Sure, sure. What about you Ed, what did you think about historic
preservation. That was one of my questions, I wanted to … I noticed that
you had taken some courses at, was it the University of North Carolina?
ASTONE:
Went back there and took a course at their Institute of Government called,
something like Historic Site Planning, something like that. And I sat there
… now our master plan had been done … and so I was on the verge of just
being up to my neck in implementation. So I took a trip, made the rounds
of the Washington D.C. offices, Fredericksburg, lots of other burgs like
that, ended up in Williamsburg, stayed there for a week, went on to Chapel
Hill, took this class. I was gone almost a month. And it was a fabulous,
fabulous immersion into historic preservation. I didn’t know it.
PRINCE:
Well, it was a fairly new trend, wasn’t it, in terms of taking a district and
actually … coming with the urban renewal plans throughout the country
after World War II, I would say, that was a new …
ASTONE:
We were very unique. Because what there was, there was Boston,
Philadelphia, the residential areas of Arlington, even Fredericksburg was
more heavily residential, than commercial buildings. In Williamsburg
they were doing commercial uses, however, they had people in there
making candles, and selling fig ice-cream, and these things that were in
those days was not that common or acceptable unless you were trying to
duplicate history and I knew that the way in which the redevelopment plan
had been written we were going to have to make some compromises with
history. So, your question was what I thought about historic preservation?
I thought it was fascinating. I thought, man, look at this, this is so cool.
Look at these buildings, look at the way we’re building the board
sidewalks, and the way in which we’re putting in the gas lights, and the
way in which we’re doing this … and I thought, this is amazing, it’s
almost like a little monopoly game that you’re doing, you know, and I had
the working relationships with Jim Henley, and Bill Gentry that were just
fabulous, they were wonderful people to work with. We had a lot of fun,
we learned a lot. And the thing that was unsaid by the people that I
worked for, the people at the Redevelopment Agency was, “We really
don’t know what you’re doing, and we don’t think you know what you’re
doing, but you’re doing a fine job. But we will tolerate a mistake made
because of stupidity, we will not tolerate any mistakes made of illegal
activities, so don’t be afraid to go for it, don’t be afraid to propose and do
things, but, it’s okay to be stupid, just don’t be illegal.” I thought, “I could
do stupid, very definitely.”
[laughter] So, we tried a lot of different things. The way in which we did
the Morse building was to be an example, and we never did it that way
again because that set of standards, that was too expensive and there was a
better way to do it.
PRINCE:
So that was in 1969?
ASTONE:
’69.
PRINCE:
And besides the Firehouse Restaurant that was there, that was basically the
first demonstration -- historically accurate …
ASTONE:
And now we had a shell of a building, and we used it as a hall for rent ,
and no toilets, and the people that were having parties in there and having
art exhibits had to bring rent-a potties, port-a potties … and umm …
PRINCE:
Was that because the plumbing hadn’t been done yet?
ASTONE:
We just didn’t want to make the decision as to where to put them, because
it was going to have to change and be duplicated, or rebuilt later on when
someone came up with a more specific use.
PRINCE:
Because it had to be historically accurate, or?
ASTONE:
No, no, we just didn’t know where it should be. I mean you put it over
here, and the first thing that the next buyer comes along and says, “ Guy,
those restrooms are in the wrong place, they should be down here, now I
have to bear the cost of tearing those out and building them over here.
PRINCE:
I see.
ASTONE:
So, we eventually built toilets in there. I should find out if they’re still in
there in the first floor. We put a theater up in the top floor, Bauhaus
theater, and let them use our bathrooms downstairs. We had a travel
agency in there, sharing the first floor space. But, our goal since we had
shut the area down, and if you remember the scene in 1970, of Second
Street in that channel three movie, channel three video, where there was
nobody on the streets, there was nothing.
PRINCE:
This is 1970. Again, everything’s been cleared.
ASTONE:
Everybody’s been cleared out, cleaned out, and shifted around, and now
we’re ready to start building, you know. And we wanted people to be
comfortable coming back down to Second street so we began to have
parties and functions and things like that.
PRINCE:
Sure.
ASTONE:
Yeah.
PRINCE:
Now could we go back a little bit?
ASTONE:
We keep going back, that’s fine.
PRINCE:
I’d like to know, you’re from Fresno, and grew up there, went to school
there, and then San Francisco, did you spend much time in Sacramento,
ever when you were growing up? Or were you pretty new to the area
when you came here?
ASTONE:
I, before moving here, I was in Sacramento three times.
PRINCE:
Oh, and did you ever go to the West End?
ASTONE:
Nope.
PRINCE:
What did you think of it when you …
ASTONE:
Wait …wait, wait … let me tell you about the three times I was here, why
I was here.
PRINCE:
Okay.
ASTONE:
I was here three times. First time was to play baseball against Sacramento
City College in Land Park. That was the first time, I thought that a kind of
a cool place to play.
PRINCE:
Okay, sure.
ASTONE:
Next time was to bring my girlfriend up here to catch the train to go to her
home in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
PRINCE:
Okay.
ASTONE:
And then the third time was two weeks later, to come back, pick her up off
the train, and take her back down to the valley, where she lived. That was
it, that was the extent of it. Now, I grew up in Fresno. Fresno had a West
End, had a skid row, had a derelict area, and in high school I worked right
in the middle of it, for the Fresno Macaroni Factory. I was a macaroni
maker.
PRINCE:
Oh …
ASTONE:
I made macaroni … under the “Perfection” brand … all that the name
implies. [laughter]
So, I would see all of these characters on the streets, in those days, they
were bums. That was the vernacular … they were bums. Today they’re
disenfranchised, and homeless, and you know, a lot of other more
sensitive names. So, I was not above hanging out in these areas, and this
and that. So, when I came to work in Sacramento, I was at Fourth and J, in
the California Fruit Exchange building, and the freeway was not under
construction. A lot of clearance had taken place. The buildings on the
east side of Second Street had been mothballed, but nothing else had
happened. And … so as I got involved in the work of redevelopment, I
became kind of fascinated with what was going on down on the
waterfront, and Second street. I was shocked to find out that there was a
riverfront.
PRINCE:
Couldn’t see it …
ASTONE:
Well, you couldn’t see it because of the sheds that were along the
waterfront, because of all the human waste that was hanging out down
there and this and that. So, as we began to do more of the planning, it
required me to spend more time down there, so I became more
accustomed to it, you know, It was no big deal, never a threatening
situation. Found a dead body in a building.
PRINCE:
Oh … ?
ASTONE:
Partially decomposed. I’d never seen that before, and nor have I seen it
since.
PRINCE:
Was that just during the clearing of a building, or just exploring the area?
ASTONE:
I was actually in the building to determine how much pigeon poop there
was because that was going to be part of the demolition process, and you
had to take certain precautions of masks, and all that stuff.
PRINCE:
So had most of the buildings been either bought, or …
ASTONE:
We were in the process of it, yeah.
PRINCE:
Were there any abandoned places down there at that time?
ASTONE:
Abandoned by … what do you mean, abandoned?
PRINCE:
By owners, or were …
ASRONE:
That just walked away from them?
PRINCE:
Yeah.
ASTONE:
Oh no. We never had anything totally abandoned, they were unused, many
of them were vacant and we knew where the people were. You, know,
and we’d go find them, and … you got to do something with them,
because my responsibility was to have something happen on everything.
Get something done. We gotta do this thing.
PRINCE:
Sure, sure. So when you came in with the Sacramento Redevelopment
Agency, Clyde Trudell was there? And he was the architectural …
ASTONE:
Historian.
PRINCE:
Historian. Okay. So there was this vision already that there was going to
be this preserved historic area?
ASTONE:
Yes. Clyde had a background with Williamsburg too, if I remember
correctly.
PRINCE:
Oh, okay. So now when you went to Williamsburg and those other places,
were you inspired just to see how these types of historic preservation
districts were being created?
ASTONE:
Oh yeah, Williamsburg was overwhelming to me. Oh, wooo, we’re never
going to do this! No way.
PRINCE:
Did it have to do, do you think, with what?
ASTONE:
Well, with the completeness of it. Everybody was in costume. Even in
those days, in ’68, people were in costume, that were working there. And
you’d go into the restrooms and they spoke – the old-fashioned way type
thing. It was different. And I’m thinking, we’re not going to able to do
this. Ours is going to be a step down, or a step aside, It’s going to be
different, but it was easy to get excited. And then you go to the
orientation center and you get a briefing on what you’re going to be seeing
and what you’re going to be experiencing and all that. And one of my
many frustrations is that we never accomplished some of those kinds of
things, in a way that they should be accomplished.
PRINCE:
Can you give me an example?
ASTONE:
Well yeah, an orientation center where the public can go and be welcomed
by someone in costume and be shown a multi media kind of a presentation
about what they’re going to be seeing before they are sent off to go have a
good time.
PRINCE:
Yeah, oh, that would have made, probably a big difference. Do you think
it’s still possible to do something like that?
ASTONE:
Oh it’s not only possible, but I think it’s becoming more and more on the
list, absolutely.
PRINCE:
Good, good. Well, let me see. I’m going to go back a little bit further,
and I’m just wondering if you know the origins of the agency, the
Sacramento Redevelopment Agency. Why was that set up in the first
place?
ASTONE:
There was the Housing Act in the state of California in 1949, that
established the fact that you could have a redevelopment agency, and that
the redevelopment agency could do all these different things, had these
different permissive powers. You know, there’s two types of laws, you
will not speed – that’s a restrictive law. There’s another law that says, you
can, with public money, build public improvements. That’s permissive
law, or legislation. So, redevelopment was more permissive. It was a
permissive type legislation, and it was based on … no it was 1952. 1949
was the landmark legal precedent for redevelopment for urban renewal. It
was a court case – Berman v. Parker.
PRINCE:
Berman v. Parker.
ASTONE:
God, some of these things are like catechism, you just never forget them.
PRINCE:
Isn’t that amazing?
ASTONE:
Berman v. Parker – essentially what the court said was that a municipality
has the right to not only make public space, and areas in the city, decent,
safe and sanitary, but has the right to make them beautiful, and
comfortable, and nice. And therein lies the legal precedent for
redevelopment. That was at the U.S. level. Then 1952, the state adopted
the California Redevelopment Law, then there was a move, a very strong
move to jump on this bandwagon of urban renewal funding from the
federal government to deal with this lower end of Sacramento. And the
lower end was generally defined as everything from Seventh Street to the
river – from the railroad tracks down around the capital. But Seventh
Street was kind of the line …
PRINCE:
Cutoff?
ASTONE:
Yeah. So, for many years, the redevelopment activities focused on project
area sized pieces of that space. And there was the Capitol Mall,
Riverfront Project, Capitol Mall Extension Project, Oh, no, there was the
Capitol Mall Project, the Capitol Mall Riverfront Project, Capitol
Extension Project. And that ended up encompassing everything from
Seventh Street to the River.
PRINCE:
I see.
ASTONE:
So, once you’ve gotten into that process, now you’re into the planning.
You’re into master planning, the public improvements … you gotta figure
out what the hell you’re doing, what are your goals? What do you want to
accomplish? Well, this area was a bunch of seedy hotels and the seedy
bars, and derelict kinds of uses and prostitution, and muggings, and this
and that and strip joints, and oh … all the things that now in my later years
I hold sacred.
[laughter] But – that’s a joke
PRINCE:
Not in those days [laughter]
ASTONE:
– So, anyway, we, the planners of redevelopment began to look at this
whole area. In those days, clearance was the way to go. And one of the
goals was to create this grand avenue, called Capitol Mall, leading up to
the state capital. And have that our Champs Elysees type of thing, okay?
And to build housing over here – Capitol Tower type housing – and the
banks and the buildings along Capitol Mall, and then it would spread to
the north a little bit, and then when it got over into the downtown area to
do a shopping center – you know, the Westfield kind of a thing. And then,
oh wait a minute, we have all these Chinese family associations, so lets do
a Chinatown here, and then … oh heck, they want to route I-5, where are
we going to put I-5? I know, put it right along the waterfront. Well, in
1958, the Department of Beaches and Parks, which was the forerunner of
State Parks and Recreation, they did an inventory of the buildings down
there.
PRINCE:
Now, was that when Aubrey Neasham was with them?
ASTONE:
I honestly don’t know, he probably was, yeah. But they published three
volumes. One was an inventory, two was the [unintelligible] public
improvements, and three was the directive (?) to do all this other stuff.
PRINCE:
I’ve seen those studies.
ASTONE:
I’ve paraphrased the description of them quite loosely. But they formed
the basis of “Wait a minute, time out, time out. You don’t route the
freeway right down the waterfront because you’ll wipe out the bulk of the
collection of these buildings. Put it on the other side of the freeway
[river]. Well, we can’t do that because your city, your city council says
that they’re negotiating with Macy’s to put in a department store, and
Macy’s will only put in a department store if they have an off ramp right
next to their store, so it means the freeway has to be on this side of the
river. So, okay, well, wait a minute, why don’t we just come under
Capitol Mall, and we go like this, and you go like this out here over the
railroad yards, then you’ve got this little area here called Old Sacramento?
PRINCE:
So you swing it east, instead of going through the historic part…
ASTONE:
You swing it to the east, which meant that you went right through the
McClatchy building.
PRINCE:
The Sacramento Bee – the original Sacramento Bee building …
ASTONE:
And that caused them to [sigh] always be an antagonizer about the routing
of the freeway.
PRINCE:
The McClatchy family?
ASTONE:
Oh, very much so.
PRINCE:
So, just to back up a second to see if I understand this. Interstate Route 5
– the plans were already in place, did that sort of come along at the same
time that the redevelopment agency was putting its plans together?
ASTONE:
Yeah, oh yeah, very much so …
PRINCE:
So the freeway and these plans sort of worked in tandem together, and
then the plans for the freeway were halted while these historic surveys
were conducted?
ASTONE:
They were in the process, well the route had not been finalized yet, so the
plans had not been done.
PRINCE:
Okay.
ASTONE:
There was the awareness effort to cause the routing to take place and then
the plans took place. And, the routing took place, the city council was
satisfied because they could get their Macy’s, the buildings were saved, it
took this full block between essentially Second and Third, and later on it
provided the opportunity for parking underneath the freeway. And the
original Candeub Plan had an overpass – a pedestrian overpass at K Street,
instead of the underpass.
PRINCE:
I’ve seen the drawings.
ASTONE:
So, by the time we really, seriously got started on the redevelopment of
Old Sacramento, everything was … I mean things were already fait
accompli. Now the one thing, one of my first tasks in 1964 was to go over
on the final day of the legislature and to be the – you know this was long
before cell phones and all that – to be the messenger that the bill had been
passed and approved, the only thing it needed was the governor’s
signature, and it came out conference report, which meant it was going to
be signed – that designated one third of Old Sacramento as a state historic
park. So Ed Z’berg was our legislator, so I met him and told him where
I’d be sitting, or he told me where to sit, and so I sat up in the gallery. The
process, you know, you can’t follow that process, especially if you don’t
know what the hell’s going on.
PRINCE:
In the legislature?
ASTONE:
Which I didn’t have a clue. And so all of a sudden they moved, seconded,
and Zeberg turns around and goes like this [raises right hand thumb up],
and I go like this [raises right hand thumb up]. I said, I guess it’s up. So
then I come back to the office, I said, “Z’berg went like this, [gestures] I
went back like that back to him,” and he says, “Great, we got the Old
Sacramento State Historic Park.”
PRINCE:
So then what did that mean in terms of planning?
ASTONE:
All right, that meant that one third of Old Sacramento where the museums
would be … museums are expensive … and there were many stories to tell
– the telegraph, the pony express, railroading, all sorts of early
transportation, the gold rush, the early government, the city, and all those
things. There was the need to tell those stories, and they were all
earmarked in the master plan, that was being done at that time in the state
park area because those are not economically feasible, or viable on their
own, they need to be force-fed.
PRINCE:
So, now you’re talking about the area that the state had purchased
beforehand?
ASTONE:
No, this gave the state the authority to purchase.
PRINCE:
Okay, okay, I see.
ASTONE:
Okay, think in terms of ’64 – the state plan was done, and at the same time
the final plan was being generated, and the final plan talked in terms of all
these different museums, and they were being subsequently placed in state
park area, and this and that and so on and so forth. You notice the original
master plan for Old Sacramento has a nine-hundred car parking garage
where the railroad museum is …
PRINCE:
Oh?
ASTONE:
Oh.
PRINCE:
Well, what happened there?
ASTONE:
Well, it was determined that we could put a lot of parking under the
freeway, more parking under the freeway than had been thought. And
second of all, who was to turn their back on the opportunity to have a
world-class railroad museum? So, what was … now, timing … I’m one of
the few people who has a grudge, [laughter] about this, and it really kind
of pisses me off …
PRINCE:
Tell me about it …
ASTONE:
…and that is that the original intent was to create these museums as a way
to encourage the private sector to build the buildings, renovate the
buildings, bring their business down here because you had these museums
to play off of … well, all of a sudden we’ve got the area and nothing’s
happening. We get the, we … the redevelopment agency staff and other
people, helped to get – and Jim – the Junior League involved to foster the
development of the Eagle Theater. So the shoe’s on the other foot. The
private sector is moving the state into action on the museums, and the
private sector was formidable in advocating the development of the
California State Railroad Museum … along with the state wanting it and
along with the … what do they call them … what’s the guy that’s a
railroad buff ? The puffers, or whatever the hell they’re called …
PRINCE:
The foamers?
ASTONE:
Foamers, yeah.
[laughter]
And here it is, the railroad museum didn’t open until 1981. Holy Crud!
That’s ten years after Fanny Ann’s opened. Where was the strategy? We
failed miserably because of what was happening at the state and what was
not happening at the state. So, the thought that in the big picture you stand
back and say, one third of this area is going to be a state park – that’s
where we’ll put the museums, that will enable, that’ll be catalytic to
getting the private sector to build over here.
PRINCE:
It was the other way around.
ASTONE:
Flip it 180 degrees. The private sector built over here and advocated a gift
to the state for the state, with the state, for them to do as much as they
could.
PRINCE:
So, what finally prompted the state to …
ASTONE:
Oh, they finally got around to it.
PRINCE:
They just finally got around to it? Did they build their parking lot? Was
that done …
ASTONE:
No, they didn’t build a parking lot.
PRINCE:
They didn’t?
ASTONE:
No, no, there’s no parking lot down there.
PRINCE:
So the parking lot under the freeway … that’s the city?
ASTONE:
City. We built that, the city redevelopment agency built that.
PRINCE:
So that land just sat there then, the state’s land nothing was there?
ASTONE:
You mean on the north side?
PRINCE:
Where the railroad museum is now?
ASTONE:
No.
PRINCE:
For all those years?
ASTONE:
No, it was empty.
PRINCE:
Wow. Did that happen to a lot of other places? I know the state has the
B.F. Hastings building …
ASTONE:
Well, they couldn’t ignore the B.F. Hastings building because it was going
to fall down. So they got that going, but that’s the only other one. The
place where Scalet Jewelers is now was built a little bit later, the Eagle
Theater sat there by itself for quite awhile, the building next door was
built, and then it stopped. And then the passenger station was built, and
then the waterfront, some of the waterfront stuff was built. Ted Leonard
will be a good source, when you talk to him, about the evolution of some
of that state park property.
PRINCE:
Uh huh. Well, one of the other questions I had for you was, about the
different agencies that you were involved with – that you had to work
directly with – the city, the county, the federal agencies …
ASTONE:
Didn’t do anything with the county.
PRINCE:
You didn’t do anything with the county?
ASTONE:
No.
PRINCE:
Oh, okay …
ASTONE:
Strange, isn’t it?
PRINCE:
Yeah …yeah, so the county didn’t have …
ASTONE:
They were not plugged into our process. They were plugged into Jim’s
process for the development of the history museum. That’s now called the
Discovery Museum.
PRINCE:
Because of the [county] historical society?
ASTONE:
No, just because they get the county money.
PRINCE:
Oh. Okay. So now, I wanted to ask you a little bit about the … this new
type of federal funding that enabled the project to go ahead, and I guess
this was happening in lots of major cities around the country …
ASTONE:
Oh yeah.
PRINCE:
… and so but, there was something unique about it here in Sacramento.
Can you tell me anything about that?
ASTONE:
Well, okay, yeah, I think I know where you’re going with this. First of all,
the urban renewal financing, the urban renewal funding was on a twothirds/ one-third basis. Two-thirds of your project’s cost would be covered
by a grant, and then the other third would be covered by a loan. So you
got one hundred percent cash from the federal government, but you had to
give the one-third back, that was under the loan. So where are we going to
get the money for the one-third? Or, better than that, it did not have to be
a loan, it could be an in-kind credit. So where are we going to get the
money? The local money to build something that was a project cost that
could be applied to in-kind services. The state of California passed
legislation, and I forget the year creating the process of Tax Increment
Financing. And therein lies the answer to a lot of the stuff that we did,
because what you were doing … you really can’t stay with Old
Sacramento, you’ve got to stay with the larger project because Old
Sacramento was part of a project. So the larger project had office
buildings, retail stores, Macy’s, Chinatown, all these other different things.
And, it was going to generate … excuse me, that same area before any
redevelopment activity was generating a hundred thousand dollars in
property taxes – that’s the wrong amount, but just for the sake of
discussion –
[End of Tape I, Side B]