One of Sacramento’s main business groups will spend the coming months campaigning for a 10-year renewal from the downtown property owners who fund the agency through their taxes.
The organization, formed in 1996, seeks such approval every decade. This round comes at a key moment for the city’s urban core where, with a budget around $7 million, the Downtown Sacramento Partnership arranges security and cleaning services, pursues economic development efforts and funds homeless outreach, among other things.
Civic leaders have begun to reimagine the district after the pandemic, which pushed some employers to relinquish large chunks of office space and cut downtown’s monthly visitors to less than 1 million in early 2020, down from roughly 3 million to 4 million in 2019.
Some now believe the district ought to more closely resemble midtown, with a larger supply of housing and retail, less susceptible to large swings in the commercial real estate market.
“We’ve got to change, and we’ve got to adapt and be more entrepreneurial,” said Michael Ault, who has led the organization since 1997. “I think owners are embracing the fact that downtown will be different.”