[Session 2, June 28, 2007]
[Begin Tape 3, Side A]
PRINCE:
My name is Lisa Prince, and today is Thursday, June 28, 2007. I’m here
at the Sacramento Archives and Museum Collection Center in
Sacramento, California, on behalf of the city of Sacramento, for the
Historic Old Sacramento Oral History Project. And I’m here again with
Mr. Ed Astone, Town Manager of Old Sacramento – the historic district –
and we’re here for our second interview. Good afternoon Ed.
ASTONE:
Good afternoon.
PRINCE:
How are you?
ASTONE:
I’m fine, thank you, how are you?
PRINCE:
Good, good. Well, I wanted to recap a little bit on our first interview and
hopefully clarify some issues that maybe need a little more elaboration.
We had ended our last interview – you were talking about Joe Serna and
his role in bringing you back to Old Sacramento as Town Manager. And I
was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, maybe why he
wanted you there, or how that all came about.
ASTONE:
Well, he had just been elected mayor and he was looking at a lot of
different activities that he felt needed to have some sort of change, new
energy or whatever, and he targeted Old Sacramento. It was not
languishing in a state of disrepair or anything like that, it was kind of just
moving along with three different organizational elements at work. One
was the State Park that would always be somewhat separate. Then the
other two were the – included the city’s activities of development and
maintenance, and code compliance – the recognition of the need for
repairs and replacements and all of those things. Those are the kind of
traditional city activities. And then there was the other part – the
marketing and the promotional aspects that was a separate merchants’
association kind of function and that was completely separate. And there
was interdependence and more of a need of a connection between those
two – the city activities and the merchants’ association in order to get
more bang for the buck and all the clichés. Now backing up a little bit –
there had been a consultants’ study in the eighties and it was called the
Halcyon Report. And we all had input into that and one of the policies
that the consultants felt was basic to Old Sacramento was centralized
management. So when Mayor Joe and I had discussions, he wanted as
much centralized management as possible. He wanted a single point of
accountability. He wanted to be able to pick up a phone, call someone
responsible and get something corrected that needed correcting, get
something done that needed doing, and all those kinds of things and he
didn’t feel he had that with the city over here – the waterfront
management office doing what they doing and the merchants’ association
doing what they were doing. So that was kind of basic to it. So I was
hired and started.
PRINCE:
As Town Manager.
ASTONE:
As Town Manager, April 1st, 1994.
PRINCE:
Now was there, before you left the first time in 1977 – did there exist a
sort of centralized management there?
ASTONE:
Yeah, it was through the Redevelopment Agency. I was the Project
Manager. Then when I left Ted Leonard, who was the staff architect for
SHRA – Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency – became the
Project Manager. He had responsibilities having to do with planning and
development but not operations. So you really had in ’77, after I left, you
had the Redevelopment Agency doing its planning and development
activities – which included selling off land for development – for building
renovation and building reconstruction. Separate from that you had the
city doing baseline maintenance. Baseline maintenance. The same level
maintenance down there that they were doing elsewhere in the city.
PRINCE:
So this was when the project was already rolling and businesses were
functioning and so there was a need for …
ASTONE:
There was a need to clean the gutters and alleys and all that stuff.
PRINCE:
So the city was taking care of those, like you say, baseline operations.
ASTONE:
And there was a volunteer merchants’ association – it was actually called
the Old Sacramento Citizen’s and Merchants Association.
PRINCE:
Now is that still there?
ASTONE:
No. But in 1978, one year after I left, I became president.
PRINCE:
Oh, so you were still involved with it …
ASTONE:
Still involved …
PRINCE:
So you were president.
ASTONE:
Yes. And we were responsible, or what we did, what we took on was
raising money to do fun things – promotions. One of the no-brainer kinds
of operations that we did, only because it did not take a lot of organizing
effort and a lot of money, was we had mock elections on the Friday before
Halloween. And we elected a slate. If someone wanted to run for
something then they just ponyed up a couple of bucks and put their name
on the ballot. And we had Mayor, Vice Mayor, Constable, Sheriff,
Madame, oh, just a variety of things. And on the Friday afternoon and
early evening before Halloween, for many, many years, we had voting
booths down there on the sidewalk and every dollar contributed was a vote
– there was a poll tax, and we raised several thousands of dollars because
the candidates were out there trying to get the public to contribute money
and go vote and they were putting up money themselves, and you know,
this and that. Some of the people really wanted to be mayor, and really
wanted to be sheriff and really wanted to be whatever. And the Citizens
and Merchants Association did that. Oh I can’t even remember – some of
the other – oh, we put up Christmas decorations, what else did we do? A
lot of volunteering – a lot of things that are at the Little League, PTA
level.
PRINCE:
So these were fundraising efforts? What did the funds go to?
ASTONE:
Fundraising – F.U.N.D. and F.U.N. both. The money was selfperpetuating. It went back in to do different things. Yeah, we had a
regular structure, we had officers, we had a board of directors. It was not
an organized, it was not a 501 C3 – probably it should have been, but it
wasn’t. We weren’t that smart at that time.
PRINCE:
But it was still – maybe a pseudo community of Old Sacramento that sort
of had its own functioning center?
ASTONE:
Highly energized and highly charged, yeah.
PRINCE:
Huh. So you were still, so then you didn’t really leave Old Sacramento
then …
ASTONE:
Oh no, I had an office down there. I went from one side of the street to the
other side of the street.
PRINCE:
How was that – sort of being on the other side of things? Did you feel that
you had more freedom to try to make things happen in a different way?
ASTONE:
Well, yeah, because if you remember the city felt that my job was
unnecessary and that I was unnecessary and that it was time to do things
differently. But I got busy doing other things. I physically stayed in Old
Sacramento for almost ten years, and then went uptown, and then went out
by my house and that’s where I was when I was doing a lot of the
consulting. But I would, I started doing, in ’77, I started doing consulting
work in San Diego on Gas Lamp Quarter. I worked on that for ten years
running back and forth.
PRINCE:
Oh, so you were traveling quite a bit in those years and still involved
somewhat in Old Sacramento.
ASTONE:
Oh, very much so because I was – along with other people – I was one of
the instigators of the Halcyon Report. And that was like a strategic plan.
We felt – that – and what they did is interview everybody.
PRINCE:
In Old Sacramento?
ASTONE:
In Old Sacramento – everybody that they could find that had an opinion
about Old Sacramento, whether they were a property owner, business
owner, a politician, or whoever.
PRINCE:
What sorts of questions were asked in that interview?
ASTONE:
Oh, what’s not there that should be there. What’s wrong, you know, how
could it be better, what’s needed and a variety of things.
PRINCE:
What kinds of responses did you get from that?
ASTONE:
Well, one – there was a need for a more cohesive organization. Another
one was that there was the need for better, bigger, and more well-planned
and implemented promotions and special events and marketing. Another
one was there was a need for a higher level of maintenance. One of the
things we talked about maintenance was – what’s the thing that strikes you
most alarmingly when you go to Disneyland, especially if you’re there
when the gates first open. You walk in and that place is pristine and it’s
clean and it’s freshly washed and watered and all that type of thing. And
we felt that Old Sac probably could never be quite that good, but wouldn’t
it be nice if we set as our goal, that by ten o’clock or eleven o’clock in the
morning Old Sacramento was picked up, cleaned up and ready to receive
the visitors? We talk about that now – thirty years later.
PRINCE:
It’s still an issue.
ASTONE:
It’s not an issue – it’s a policy, a goal. Maybe that is an issue but it’s still
on the table.
PRINCE:
That brings me to a question. If it’s a policy and a goal too, I kind of
wondered about – you’re talking about Disneyland or, you know this idea
of having it be clean and pristine for obviously commercial purposes to
bring more visitors and that was an original idea for Old Sacramento,
wasn’t it? To have it be a commercial district – so to have this historical
aspect to it, it was to draw visitors to this sort of theme park type of
historic district? Do you think – is that safe to say?
ASTONE:
Oh sure. It was a theme park without rides and without – in the early
days, well, throughout the life of Old Sacramento the setting has been the
attraction. We have several museums. The one is the Railroad Museum.
We have the Discovery Museum --- that started out as the History Center,
telling the story of city and county history and now it goes off a little
broader than that. Then the Military Museum was developed, the
Schoolhouse Museum, the Eagle Theater was built. The Hastings
Building – that in different times in its evolution has had the Supreme
Court Chambers open as a Museum setting. If you were to read the
Master Plan – the Candeub and Fleissig 1963 –‘64 Master Plan for Old
Sacramento – it has all of these museums listed as being basic to the plan
to the implementation, to tell the story of the history of the area …
PRINCE:
So the interpretation part …
ASTONE:
… And we really haven’t quite done that. It’s an indictment against all of
us that we have not successfully pulled off the broad museum concept.
And all you have to do is look at that master plan and you’ll see them all.
There’s not a telegraph museum down there – once a year we have the
Pony Express re-ride that brings that back. But that was short lived, what
sixteen months? eighteen months and it was replaced by the telegraph.
We have no telegraph museum and that was in there. We have the
carriages and the horse-drawn vehicles that act as kind of a living
museum. It’s easy to sit here and say all the things that are not there that
were basic to the plan. Frustrating. But we have to get past that and think
about all the things that are there.
PRINCE:
So that brings me to my next question. Originally you had said that when
the parcels were bought – the buildings were – you had given prospective
buyers this package that specified how the building was going to be …
ASTONE:
How it was going to look, yeah.
PRINCE:
… according to this master plan that had been approved through this
ordinance by the city. So now was there a review process at that point
when people actually did invest and start to build, was there a review
committee?
ASTONE:
Oh yeah. We had staff review. And it was Jim Henley, and the architect,
in the early days it was Wes Witt, and then in the early seventies Ted
Leonard came along and replaced Wes. We had the pleasure and the
effectiveness of having very few people on the review side of the plans.
We didn’t need a committee. We needed learned, intelligent, experienced
staff people. The only time we ever needed a committee was if developers
disagreed with the interpretation of the review. And there was established
a variance review committee.
PRINCE:
Okay, so it was a variance review committee.
ASTONE:
Yeah, or a variance appeals committee, I guess it was called.
PRINCE:
Were there any instances where that did happen, very many? Or was it a
smooth process?
ASTONE:
Minute. We had one building that had a four- inch parapet height
problem that we needed to reconcile. It was just – you know you get
carried away when you’re dealing with historic restoration and
reconstructions.
PRINCE:
Yeah. So is it the same review process now? Or has it changed at all?
ASTONE:
No, no, now it’s relatively simple. We have – the design review is three
people – the design review board, and it meets on an on-call basis. It’s
Jim Henley, myself, and usually Ted Leonard, and if Ted’s not available
then we will call in Joe Angelo, who is a local architect that has extensive
amount of experience in dealing with the details of historic buildings. But
if Jim and I can agree – we don’t bother the other people. But Jim and I –
we’ve yet to disagree on whatever the plans are. For example, an engineer
presented us with plans to completely rebuild the rear structure of the
Fanny Anne’s Saloon – the rear stairway structure, and I looked at them,
Jim looked at them, and we saw a couple of little details of things, and we
approved them. Now he will present those to the city – the city, before
they issue a building permit will call Jim or myself, and we will sign off
on the plans.
PRINCE:
I see. So you and Jim are basically the last person to sign off before the
city approves the building.
ASTONE:
Issues the building permit, yeah.
PRINCE:
Okay. Another question – I’m not sure we went over this too much.
When you left in 1977 and came back in 1994 – now I know you were still
somewhat involved, it seems like you were very much involved – so I was
going to ask you if things had changed that much but since you were there,
I’m sure you still saw the changes, but you were a part of …
ASTONE:
We caused change. For example, out of the Halcyon Report it said we
needed a higher standard of maintenance. So we got together with the city
and they said, we find it difficult to, and I’m going to paraphrase this in
the most simplistic of terms …
PRINCE:
Sure …
ASTONE:
“We the city find it very difficult to justify giving Old Sacramento a
unique level of maintenance unless they pay for it.” Okay? So let’s get
them to pay for it, how do we do that? Well, one of the options is to form
a maintenance assessment district. That sounds like a good idea, so let’s
do that, and we did. And we have generated about seventy thousand
dollars since 1987 – about, every year to do enhanced maintenance beyond
the city’s baseline level of maintenance. The city’s baseline level of
maintenance is generally defined as the same level of maintenance that
they do elsewhere throughout the city. What the city does not do
elsewhere is clean alleys, clean service courts, dump trash receptacles that
are along the street unless it’s a park. Okay? So now ever since ’87, the
city has been – we have been doing those things with an enhanced budget
resulting from this maintenance assessment district. Now, we’ve done one
other thing, we’ve looked at some of the problems and we’ve concluded
that the cleanliness of the storefronts was an issue. You had stuff spilled
on the granite sills, all sorts of stuff – ice-cream cones and drinks. Okay,
you had cobwebs, you had graffiti – in the early days – graffiti was not
really a factor. So we said, let’s take some of that maintenance assessment
district money and find a maintenance company, since our guys – the city
guys really can’t do this, or can’t do it as well as the private sector – so
let’s do this façade cleaning project with money generated by the
maintenance assessment district. So now for about seven thousand
dollars, twice a year, we have an organization, a private maintenance
company called Carefree Maintenance and they come down there in a
week’s time they have a swarm of people from six o’clock in the morning
to ten o’clock in the morning – cause we don’t want them down there
during the day – they clean the – if you’re looking down the boardwalk,
okay – my guys – kind of possessive about my guys, the maintenance guys
– we pressure wash the boardwalks and pick up the boardwalks and all
that kind of stuff, then you’ve got the façade of the building, you’ve got
the lower level of the overhang, and you’ve got the post coming down –
that’s what these people clean.
PRINCE:
How long does it take them to do that?
ASTONE:
It takes them a little over a week to do the four thousand lineal feet of it.
PRINCE:
And when is that usually done, is it the same month every year?
ASTONE:
We do it right after Gold Rush Days …
PRINCE:
Okay, in the summer?
ASTONE:
In September, because the place takes a beating in Gold Rush Days, and
then we do it in the spring as we get ready for the year – for the good
weather season.
PRINCE:
Okay. Now, who is responsible for the waterfront, the actual riverfront
area?
ASTONE:
The city. We are – the Old Sacramento division, or one aspect of the
waterfront.
PRINCE:
And how far does that extend, does it go past the …
ASTONE:
That was my question, you didn’t even hear my question, did you?
PRINCE:
What was it?
ASTONE:
I said, what aspect of the waterfront?
PRINCE:
Oh.
[Laughter]
ASTONE:
We’re not supposed to have this much fun doing this.
PRINCE:
Well, that’s too bad.
[Laughter]
ASTONE:
All right. It extends – the Old Sacramento responsibilities extend from the
I Street Bridge down to the Tower Bridge. That’s Old Sacramento.
However, my responsibilities, me and my crew, go all the way down to the
end of the promenade which extends down to just about O Street – well, to
the circle of lights at O Street. And we maintain those and if you’ve
walked along there you’ve seen the plants and the – you know, it looks
pretty good, we do a fairly decent job of keeping up with it.
PRINCE:
Yes, yes, and I’ve noticed at times that – is it city crews, is it part of your
organization to clean up actually down by the water?
ASTONE:
Yeah, we just did that this last Sunday. Sunday morning. We had
seventeen volunteers working with us under our direction and we had
generated – Cindy Stevens in the office had pulled it all together and over
a period of three hours we got people down in that area and they collected
things and brought it to a central point and that which could be hoisted up
to the land without excessive problems was, that which had to be removed
by boat they removed by boat. So we try and do that at least once a year.
PRINCE:
Do you ever find many, like shopping carts or items like that?
ASTONE:
Oh yeah, there were a couple of shopping carts down there, bicycles.
PRINCE:
Do they have to be removed by boat?
ASTONE:
I don’t know how they removed them, I wasn’t able to be there.
PRINCE:
Well, that’s nice. That’s good to have.
ASTONE:
Okay, so that’s the maintenance. Now another thing we did was – and this
came out of the Halcyon Report – you got to promote, you got to market,
you know, you’ve got to promote the place. And that takes money so how
are we going to get our money? Well, I’d been familiar with the Parking
and Business Improvement Area Act of 19, whatever it was, 60. And I
had used, I had done several of these in Assessment Districts elsewhere.
And what they are, what they were at that time were business
improvement districts, and you assessed the businesses, okay? Not the
property. The Maintenance Assessment District was on the property and it
had kind of a tangled formula – half of it was based on the building’s
square footage, a fourth of it was based on your front foot, and a fourth of
it was on your parcel size. Well, in the business improvement district it
was based on your type of business, retail or not retail, if it was non retail,
like an office, flat fee, a very modest flat fee because you had to prove
benefit – it had to be subjected to the fairness test. If I’ve got my Law
office down there, how am I being bettered by the way in which this
money is spent? Not a whole lot but we’ll keep your assessment real low
at thirty-five bucks, or whatever it was. Retail is based on reported gross
receipts, okay, with a cap. You’ve got a minimum you’ve got a
maximum. So we went through that process and it was, it can be volatile.
And, but I’d done enough of these throughout California that I thought I
knew what I was doing and so we went out and sold it and we had
upwards of eighty percent in support of it when we went to the city
council. We had no one show up and say, this is not a good idea. And so,
therein was born the maintenance assessment district. And it generated
sixty thousand dollars or so in 1987 dollars – you know, a pretty chunk of
money.
PRINCE:
Yeah.
ASTONE:
Then we went back in – when I came back full time, we went back, I
forget the date, ’94, ’95, ’96 – and my intent was to double it and so we
went out over a three year period, the first – we increased it thirty percent,
the rate of the assessment – thirty percent each year for three years –
which when you total it up, it’s not ninety percent because your
compounding is actually a hundred and fifteen, a hundred and twenty
percent. So we went from sixty thousand dollars or so up to about a
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which is where it is now.
PRINCE:
Now, was this for promotional purposes?
ASTONE:
It’s to enhance business – the law says it’s too enhance business, so
you’ve got quite a bit of latitude but it is promote, market, provide
entertainment, you know those kinds of things.
PRINCE:
Sure. Can you give me any examples of how those funds were used for
those purposes when you came back?
ASTONE:
Well, what were some of the things we did? We did a newsletter. We did,
you know, communication, we did after, well, some of the parades, we
were very big on a July third parade. In the Sacramento area there is a
little called Carmichael, and in those days they used to have a massive
fourth of July parade and if we went head to head with them on a fourth of
July parade it just wouldn’t work. And the more we talked about it the
more we thought, our purposes could be better served if we do a July third
parade – the night before including fireworks so we did that for many,
many years.
PRINCE:
Is that still happening now?
ASTONE:
No.
PRINCE:
Not any more. Is there any kind of July fourth parade or festivities over
there?
ASTONE:
There’s going to be a pancake breakfast and some other things – the
history of July fourth is like this [waves hand up and down].
PRINCE:
I see, it goes up and down.
ASTONE:
Oh yeah. And it’s focused on people, you know the energy and the
imagination of people, and right now Vicky Baxter is doing a very good
job of getting into the whole thing, but …
PRINCE:
Now is she part of the Living History?
ASTONE:
She is the Executive Director of the Foundation – the Historic Old
Sacramento Foundation, and Living History is under her.
PRINCE:
Okay.
ASTONE:
A phenomenon that came along eight years ago was the River Cats, and
the River Cats have fireworks, and July third this year they’re having
fireworks.
PRINCE:
Do you have a lot of visitors that come to Old Sacramento after the River
Cats games?
ASTONE:
Before, more so.
PRINCE:
Before, for dinner and such.
ASTONE:
Yeah, and beers, yeah. Including Boaters – you know from wherever they
come from and they boat …
[End of Tape 3, Side A]
[Begin Tape 3, Side B]
ASTONE:
… and they go to the game, and go home, by the light of the silvery moon,
it’s a great activity.
PRINCE:
Yeah … I’ve yet to go to one of those. So we talked a little bit about the
problems that were identified when you came back. I was wondering
about problems with crime, was there ever any issue with crime down
there?
ASTONE:
Very much so.
PRINCE:
And when was it …
ASTONE:
Five years ago, six years ago it came to a peak. We had some very – I’m
not sure what the politically correct word is for the type of person that runs
a nightclub but we had the worst of them. And they would – they were
rapacious. Whatever it took to make money, they would do it, and their
deal was, they just didn’t care what the impact of the way in which they
ran their business was on the neighborhood or anything like that. They
would bring in – they would attract a real, ugly, ugly, mean-spirited
crowd. And these people were coming out of the East Bay – the Bay
Area, coming from other Valley towns around here, coming to conflict.
PRINCE:
Oh?
ASTONE:
And, oh, it was wild it was absolutely wild. It was the worst of times.
There is some footage, some video footage taken by the police department
and others that show – I mean you would think that if you didn’t look too
carefully at it you were seeing the rioting in Beirut or the – you know, pick
your other war-torn area – you know, Baghdad, that type of thing.
PRINCE:
Oh, I didn’t realize that …
ASTONE:
It was just horrible! Horrible!
PRINCE:
Seriously. Were these gang members that were coming down and that had
some conflicts right there?
ASTONE:
Yeah, oh yeah, and the more we tried to fight it, the more we were
publicly chastised in the paper, personally, me and the police chief and
others – for being racists.
PRINCE:
Really?
ASTONE:
Because what seemed to be common thread in this whole thing was hip
hop and rap, and the places that did those things attracted a huge crowd.
Now the problem was the businesses thrived on drama – this is my own
personal opinion – they thrived on drama, so they had a house that would
accommodate two hundred and fifty people by every common sense, legal
standard that’s all the number of people you could get into their nightclub.
And there were people there from the city making sure that they didn’t
have any more than that. Well, because of their advertising, the way in
which they advertised, and their egos, and this and that. Well do the math.
For every person that’s in there are three that are out. And the three that
are out are having a good time, knocking heads, fighting, raising hell, and
this and that. Oh my God, You just cannot imagine what it was like five
or six years ago.
PRINCE:
And so what changed it?
ASTONE:
Well, systematically, the nightclub owners aren’t that smart – they really
aren’t. They know how to make money – cash money – by charging a
cover charge and taking the cash, you know, and this and that. But sooner
or later they all screw up in one way or the other. They did, they do, and
they finally get shut down for whatever reason, and several of them were
shut down, that changed the atmosphere. Other ones were talked to by
other night time businesses, restaurants and the people that were trying to
operate a decent place, and were convinced that maybe they shouldn’t do
the business the way they’re doing it. And in two cases, maybe they
shouldn’t even be in business down there – and in both cases, people left.
PRINCE:
I see.
ASTONE:
Sold their businesses.
PRINCE:
Okay.
ASTONE:
So it’s just something that you’ve got to stay after, you’ve got to stay after.
PRINCE:
Do you think that problem was resolved?
ASTONE:
To the greatest extent it is because when things look like their building a
little bit of momentum, we throw a traffic plan down there that just shuts
the area down on Fridays and Saturday nights. And makes you walk in.
And that’s not the bad guys want to do, and gals.
PRINCE:
They want to drive in …
ASTONE:
They want to drive in they want to have their wheels right there, and they
want to be cruising and this and that so … we’ve learned a lot, and the
police department – Darrell Fong, Captain Fong deserves a lot of credit
because he’s been with this thing right from the start.
PRINCE:
And he’s still?
ASTONE:
He’s there right now, and he’s captain in charge of the metro unit, and he’s
very, very conversant on the problems and what to look for …
PRINCE:
And you think he’s handled things …
ASTONE:
Oh, fabulously! Let me go back to this public racist charge.
PRINCE:
Oh, okay, public racist charge
ASTONE:
because I didn’t even know that I was called …
PRINCE:
Now, when did this happen?
ASTONE:
About five years ago.
PRINCE:
Okay.
ASTONE:
So we have this big summit meeting. I’m called to a meeting.
PRINCE:
By the city council?
ASTONE:
No, no. This was in the police chief’s office.
PRINCE:
Oh? Okay.
ASTONE:
Venegas, Art Venegas. So he has a meeting, and he has all of his higher up
brass in there, and me and a few others, and he’s got representatives of the
NAACP, who are demanding an accountability of what’s going on.
Because, I’m nothing, I’m low man on the totem pole, I’m just a little
implementer over here …
PRINCE:
Town Manager
ASTONE:
… that’s stirring the pot a little bit. Yeah. But the NAACP was firing
these salvos at the police department for being racist. Well, on the police
department you’ve got black officers, you’ve got Mexican officers, you’ve
got, you know, Asian officers, you’ve got everybody. So it’s a little
difficult to level too much of a charge at them. How about that
everybody’s doing their job and we just have a bunch of mavericks and a
bunch of mean spirited people that come down here who are not only
African Americans, but are Asians, and Chicanos, Mexicans, Latinos –
whatever the right word is – and they’re conflicting? So we went through
this whole thing. And I just, oh, I was going crazy, because everybody
was skirting an issue, and the issue was – they were saying there is no
place for people to go that want to hear and want to experience rap and hip
hop music in a setting that is other than confrontational. And I said why is
that? Why? Why isn’t there a nightclub in a setting where – and I don’t
care if it’s in Old Sacramento, downtown, out in the suburbs, or wherever
– why isn’t there a really well- run nightclub where the patrons that want
to go – because we’re smart enough to know that we’re talking ninety
percent law-abiding citizens, and ten percent, or pick your percentages, a
very small percentage are the mean spirited bastards that we have to deal
with. All right, and they’re screwing it up for everyone so why isn’t there
an effort on the part of you leaders here to figure out a way to put
somebody, or get somebody in business that can run a nice nightclub,
entertainment business in a setting that is where it’s controlled, oh, “that’s
a good idea!” and everybody agreed and that’s where it was left.
PRINCE:
And that’s where it was left?
ASTONE:
Yeah. Never happened. Never happened, and so the Sacramento Police
Department has done a great job of finding out about things, anticipating
them, and they end up doing whatever they can as early as they can to shut
it down. Just since you and I talked there was a promotion going around
that there was going to be gangster night at Café New Orleans in Old
Sacramento, and you read the ads and it’s everything that it’s kind of back
to where we were five years ago. So, Captain Fong send out an email –
one of the first things that we think that we can do to combat this is to
institute the traffic plan. Okay? Make people walk in. All right? That’s
easily done and it only costs a few thousand dollars to have security out
there and use our barricades, okay? So, that’s as far as it got, with the
exception of somebody said to one of the bar owners, who has a bar that is
not a problem, “Why don’t you go talk to that bar owner, and get a –pull a
plug on this thing? It’s not going to be good. It’s going to be July 5th, it’s
going to be confrontational.” So yesterday I get an email. The event’s
been cancelled. Okay – two point: one, five years ago we weren’t doing
things like this, we were not ahead of the curve – the next day, July 6th is
the day we would be talking, “What in the hell happened?” Well now,
here we are two weeks out front, and we’re talking about it, and one guy
takes it upon himself because he knows that he has a vested stake and
when the baby gets thrown out – you know, he has a baby too and his
place is going to get thrown out.
PRINCE:
Right, sure.
ASTONE:
So, anyway. What was the other point I was going to make? We
anticipated it.
PRINCE:
It was preventive.
ASTONE:
Yeah, yeah, preventive, yeah. And that’s good, that’s a display of I think,
the business community has come together.
PRINCE:
And it also sounds to me like, you know, you’re working with committed
and involved members of that community. So they definitely have a
vested interest in it so they’re more likely to want to do something about it
preventively.
ASTONE:
Yes. Because, you see, they know that when we put the traffic plan up
when Captain Fong …
PRINCE:
It’s going to affect their businesses …
ASTONE:
Oh, it keeps their customers out too and they don’t want that, so from a
self-preservation standpoint, they jump into it. And it again, we weren’t
doing that six years ago, that was not being done six years ago. Now, the
point I was going to make – I’m not so naïve to think that with all the
publicity that’s been out on the emails and the internet and this and that,
we’re still not going to have a lot of people show up and wanting to go to
gangster night, and there’s not going to be a gangster night, so you’ve got
to be able to anticipate that.
PRINCE:
So now, you were talking about bad press, and I’m going to sort of switch
gears here with that question. And you had mentioned something – going
back in time now – about the McClatchy family. I was curious about their
reaction when the Sacramento Bee, the original Sacramento Bee building
on Third Street, I believe it was, was demolished. They had really fought
hard to save it, or wanted to see it saved but it didn’t happen …
ASTONE:
Well, no, they had fought hard for the routing of the freeway to not be
along the west – along the Sacramento waterfront, and it was just …
PRINCE:
They wanted it in Yolo County, on the other side of the …
ASTONE:
Yeah, yeah. And it was just ironic that not only did their advocacy efforts
come to no avail, but where the freeway was put went right through their
building site on Third Street.
PRINCE:
How did they react to that – through their newspaper, did they?
ASTONE:
Oh they editorialized, oh my goodness, if you were to spend some time on
the microfiche with the Sacramento Bee, and looking at the editorials,
every year they editorialized against the freeway route.
PRINCE:
So this is the early 1960s then …
ASTONE:
Oh, into the seventies, probably into the eighties, yeah, what a dumb idea,
yeah, absolutely.
PRINCE:
Did they feel that the project that actually went forward, I’m just
wondering if they felt that they were left out of that, if they resented that?
ASTONE:
Oh, no, no, no. They were very much participants in the History Center,
and the … there’s a lot of McClatchy … Jim could tell you a lot more
about this than I can.
PRINCE:
I’ll ask him about it.
ASTONE:
Yeah he knows the story much more intimately than I do. But they did not
carry any reporting animosity because of that decision. They reported us
they were kind, they were complementary, they did some fun things, some
funny things, you know? Some of the ads that some – well, we did a lot of
stuff with the Sacramento Union too – but the Bee did a good job, they
didn’t carry any grudge or anything like that, except editorializing that
what a dumb place to put the stupid freeway.
PRINCE:
The freeway. It was against the freeway, not the project of Old
Sacramento.
ASTONE:
Oh no, not at all.
PRINCE:
Well, what about their building – was there ever any talk of actually
moving the Sacramento Bee building, or rebuilding it in Old Sacramento?
ASTONE:
Well, part of it is in the History Center.
PRINCE:
Oh. Oh, in the History Center?
ASTONE:
Yeah, if you stand back and look inside there, there’s part of the façade’s
in there.
PRINCE:
Oh okay, so they did get parts of their building in there. I see …
ASTONE:
Yeah, they were, Eleanor McClatchy was very, I never met the lady, but
she was very close to a lot of people – Jim and others in the historical
community, and again, they can tell you much more than I can, but I
never, I cannot recall ever feeling that the Bee was being unfair. When
they criticize us – the collective us – chances are, if you can set your ego,
and you personalities aside, and take an objective look at what they were
writing about, we probably deserved it. Absolutely.
PRINCE:
Yeah, huh. I’ll have to look at those editorials.
ASTONE:
We had the pleasure, in Sacramento of being a two-newspaper town at
those times. We had the Bee and the Union. And the Union was very
responsive, you know they were headquartered originally in Old
Sacramento, and so it was easy – and they were the underdog, they were
fighting the big, you know, Goliath. So they were very responsive to a lot
of different things. But we didn’t show favoritism we asked both of them
to cover the events, and both of them to do this and do that, and we also
knew that for every person that read the Union, there were probably ten
that read the Bee.
PRINCE:
That’s right. So they both covered it.
ASTONE:
Yeah.
PRINCE:
Well, let’s see. Another question I had is – is history preserved in Old
Sacramento, and how would you describe that history?
ASTONE:
Without a doubt history is preserved. That history is preserved in the
buildings and in the setting, in some of the activities. In the feeling that
the public gets when they immerse themselves into the area – just like
today – so yes, without a doubt, the history is preserved, and it’s
presented. The waterfront, if you were to put the waterfront on a
percentage basis, it is probably in the neighborhood of ninety to ninetyfive percent in appearance much like it was at some capsulized time period
between 1852 say to 1870.
PRINCE:
Okay, because that’s the specific period, right?
ASTONE:
Well, 1849 to 1870, but the waterfront was a little rough and ready, and
muddy, and we needed to – we actually chose a later period for the
renovation or the depiction of the waterfront.
PRINCE:
Was that a different project? The riverfront project, was that different
than the Capitol Mall Project Number Four?
ASTONE:
No, it was part of it.
PRINCE:
It was part of it?
ASTONE:
Part of the Redevelopment Plan, yeah.
PRINCE:
Was the time frame different for the waterfront then? Because I know that,
like you said …
ASTONE:
In implementation?
PRINCE:
Right. In how it was built, in how it was re-built.
ASTONE:
No. The difference was in priority. We talked a lot about this, and critics
today would judge us as having down the wrong thing.
PRINCE:
Why do you think that is?
ASTONE:
Because we did not concentrate on the river – we did not start on the river
and go into the buildings and all that. We did the buildings for fear that
the suckers were going to fall down if we didn’t do something with them.
And so we started with the buildings and did the buildings, and that started
in 1967, and went into the eighties, when the waterfront was done.
PRINCE:
Then the waterfront isn’t really part of that 1849 to 1870 scene.
ASTONE:
Oh yeah it is, yeah it is.
PRINCE:
Because you’ve got the Delta King there and you know, the docks and
everything out there …
ASTONE:
Well, yeah, if you read the Redevelopment Plan, it says our target period
is 1849 to 1870, and in essentially all things, with the proviso that you can
make those decisions that are necessary for the successful
commercialization of the area because that’s the only way it’s ever going
to happen. So you make judgment decisions – you try and make judgment
decisions based within the historical context as much as possible. And
you can’t always do that when the Delta King comes along and wants to
park there and be a hotel and a restaurant and become an icon of
Sacramento’s waterfront, even though that was a 1935, or a 1927 boat and
was very important to the Sacramento historical scene – you don’t say,
geez, we’d rather have a manufactured replica of the Chrysopolis since it
shows up in so many pictures so would you kindly take your two-hundred
and eighty-five foot boat and go away? So you got to make those kinds of
judgmental decisions, and you live with your decisions. And you know,
history, current history will be the judge, over a period of time, whether or
not we made more right decisions than wrong decisions, and so far I think
we’re coming out that we made a lot of good decisions, and only a few
bad decisions.
PRINCE:
Sure. And I think it brings us back to your objectives and goals – what was
this area going to be? And I know the master plan that I’ve read, or
looked at specifically said that it would be a commercial district set within
a historical framework – a self-sustaining district. So therefore, I think
what – some of these things we’re talking about – you had mentioned in
our last interview about compromises that you knew you were going to
have to make. And after you had visited Williamsburg, you know, you
realized it wasn’t going to be like that, you had to make compromises. So
do you think that – you spoke of some compromises you and the team in
Sacramento would have to make in order to fulfill the goals of
redevelopment, especially when compared to other grant-driven historic
districts, like Williamsburg. What, ultimately were some of these
compromises? Do you think they were worth it in the long run? And do
you think that some of these compromises may have undermined the
original goal of historic preservation, or not?
ASTONE:
Not.
PRINCE:
Okay.
ASTONE:
I’ll take you through the scenario of one. We had – the initial installation
was that all the streetlights would be gas lamps, the gaslights. So we
installed with P.G. &E’s participation, gaslights. Oh, how flickering,
romantic that was, you know? Provided virtually no light, people would
hit the posts and break the filaments, not the filaments, but the ash that
was burning, and the light would go out, and then you had leaky gas. It
was a nightmare! An absolute flippin’ nightmare! All right, from the
standpoint of safety – found over the years, you can justify an awful lot of
stuff if you use the words safety and security – so, over a period of time
we went through the whole electrification of the streetlights. And
recently, well, actually three phases, one we went from gas lamps to
electric lights. We went from one level of electric lighting to another level
of electric lighting, and then recently we added security lighting on the
boardwalk to add a higher level of light to the boardwalk. And it’s all
within the presentation of history. These are not stark white lights, these
are sodium vapor that are kind of an amber light. So next time you’re in
Old Sacramento at nighttime, and you’re walking along the boardwalk,
look up and you’ll see how we have supplemented the street lights with
this other lighting system. And it’s fabulous it’s absolutely fabulous.
PRINCE:
So that’s an example of something you wouldn’t see in, say,
Williamsburg.
ASTONE:
Oh God, No.
PRINCE:
And you knew that the compromise was justified for the reasons you give
– for safety.
ASTONE:
By my standards of compromise, yes, yes.
PRINCE:
Okay, well, we don’t have a lot of time left but I did want to ask you just a
couple more questions, And I wanted you to kind of tell me what – maybe
a couple really interesting stories that you remember from your time there.
I’m sure that you have probably thousands, but you had mentioned
something about John Erlichman, I wondered if you wanted to talk about
that one, or Sis Kennedy if you prefer …
ASTONE:
Sis Kennedy. Let’s talk about that one.
PRINCE:
Okay.
ASTONE:
Sis Kennedy was wonderful lady who knew everybody in town. And she
was one of these people that would convince you to do things that you
didn’t even think you knew how to do, or wanted to do. She was the
chairperson of the Pony Express Bicentennial, and what that meant was to
take the little stipend of money from the Sophie Comstock Memorial fund.
There had a been a person who had left the city, like a thousand dollars
back in the gold rush, or subsequent to the gold rush. And her – the court
documents about that money said that she – that the city has to use the
money in a way to pay tribute to the role that the horse played in the early
development of not only the city, but the state, the west, all that, okay? So
we went to court and we got the court to decree that – to use that fund – it
had grown to forty thousand dollars, or whatever it was – that that money,
if it was spent on building a Pony Express monument or memorial to the
Pony Express – that was acceptable. So, Sis Kennedy along with a whole
raft of people – and they’re on the wall down there on a plaque, including
myself – set about to generate money as one of the many bicentennial
projects – 1976. So we all went through this process of figuring out
whether it should be selecting a sculptor, Thomas Holland, who happened
to be from Southern California and he was a polo player. And really was
able to capture the muscular presentation of horses. If you look at that
statue carefully, my God, it’s just magnificent. Anyway, so they got my
bicentennial money, they got this money, they got that money, and pretty
soon, I don’t even remember how much it was – a hundred and fifty-six
thousand, two-hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars, something like that
was generated, and the statue was made, was sculpted. And it’s situated
on this big rock and the only problems we’ve had over the years have been
minute. The whip has been stolen, I think on two occasions. That’s really
about it. I got reckless this year and put a Santa’s hat on the rider and no
one did anything about that so he had a Santa’s cap on for a month.
PRINCE:
Really, it stayed there that long?
ASTONE:
That’s the kind of fun thing you get to do. Anyway. Sis Kennedy died in
1983. Wonderful lady, and she liked me because I was the youngest
person on the committee and I would do a lot of things. I would get stuff
done. And a lot of the people that were on this committee were the types
that schools are named after, grammar schools, streets are named after
them and they were state librarians and this kind of stuff, but I was a
gofer, so Sis and I always got along really well. So anyway, we jump
from ’83, the passing of Sis to last year – the latter part of 2006 and
SMUD wanted to do a project this year to commemorate their sixtieth year
of being in operation so we went through the whole process, and they
picked one of the projects I had listed – in fact it was the top project – was
to light the statue at night, so they did. And they gave me a beautiful print
by a professional photographer of the statue being lit at night. So I
thought, “Heck, what am I going to do? I know what I’ll do, I’ll send this
to Sis Kennedy’s son,” who happens to be Justice Anthony Kennedy of
the U.S. Supreme Court. So I got his address and I sent it off. One
morning, Cindy, my secretary came in and she said, “Justice Kennedy
from the U.S. Supreme Court is holding for you.” And I said, oh my gosh.
So I talked to him, picked up the phone and talked a bit – nice chat. He
was very impressed. It was very, he was really overwhelmed at how
thoughtful we were to not only do something on the statue that he knew
how much it meant to his mother, but to remember his mother, and by
sending him this picture, and sent a lot of things in there about how much
dealing with his mother, and he knew all that stuff. So I got a beautiful
letter from him, thanking me for the picture, a letter that I will cherish.
PRINCE:
Yeah, that’s a good story.
ASTONE:
It was fabulous it was absolutely fabulous. Another quick one is Newton
Cope was the …
[End of Tape 3, Side B]