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Guest Commentary written by
Darrell Steinberg
Darrell Steinberg is the mayor of Sacramento.
Re: “ Sacramento joins San Francisco as California’s slowest cities to recover from the pandemic “
A recent column about downtown Sacramento highlighted the challenges we face but failed to capture the substantial progress we’ve made in transforming our urban core into a mixed-use district filled with housing and entertainment.
Sacramento’s downtown may be quieter during the day, but it’s livelier than ever at night. People pack the blocks around the Golden 1 Center for Kings games and concerts . The Old Sacramento Waterfront hosted 445,800 visitors in December, the highest number since 2018. An AC Marriott hotel will open in the next few weeks, joining several other hotels that came online in the past two years. And while 27 downtown businesses closed in 2022 and 2023, another 41 opened, and 18 more have signed leases, according to the Downtown Sacramento Partnership.