Sacramento County Business, Economy & Jobs Digest

Borrowing from Europe, Sacramento has hired its first nighttime economy manager. But manager Tina Lee-Vogt must deal with a specific challenge while attempting to rebuild the city’s downtown entertainment district: .crime and gun violence.

In recent years, the venerable Arden Fair mall has been criticized for at least a perception of racially profiling Black teens. But Arden Fair is home to numerous Black-owned merchants, and the Sacramento Observer is highlighting five of them.

CoreLogic has calculated that 0.6% of California’s mortgages in the second quarter were larger than the value of the home backing the loan. Nationally, 1.8% of home loans are what industry insiders call underwater mortgages.

The Enchirito or the Double Decker Taco? Taco Bell is reviving popular items, and they’re asking the public to choose.

Board members for the Sunrise MarketPlace business improvement district could not agree on whether to support or oppose the city’s proposed ban on new auto-oriented uses in the Sunrise-Greenback commercial corridor.

For the first time, members at the California Farm Bureau Annual Meeting will be able to sell goods from their farms and ranches. Called the California Marketplace, this interactive event will be held Dec. 4—one of several new features of the meeting, taking place Dec. 2-7 in Monterey.

Two candidates are vying for Carmichael’s honorary mayoral position—a Chamber of Commerce appointment that involves ribbon-cutting, tree-planting and sitting on the Chamber board. The hopefuls are fitness trainer Kerri Mandes and real estate agent Ronnie Sylvia.

The Folsom City Council adopted an ordinance to make outdoor dining “parklets” a permanent option for businesses in the city. The ordinance will replace a temporary program established under to help support restaurants during the pandemic.

Local businesses now can apply to participate in the City of Sacramento’s “Economic Gardening 2.0” program, which offers companies up to $50,000 in matching funds.

The state of California is hiring in the Department of Justice, Conservation, State Hospitals, Consumer Affairs and more. State jobs are known for offering great benefits and enrollment in the nation’s largest state public pension plan.

A Sears Roebuck store and two adjacent buildings on a 21.3-acre parcel of commercial land at Sunrise Mall in Citrus Heights is for sale with an asking price of $8 million.

Nationally, Black business ownership is up more than 30% from pre-pandemic levels, with Black women among the fastest growing groups. Two local businesses are part of that trend.

Savvy House Coffee Bar, a Black-owned cafe in Elk Grove, is closing its doors only three years after opening in 2019. Owner Jamaar Anderson is behind on rent and soon his staff of five will be out of work.

Downtown Sacramento and other older, large cities have not fully recovered from the COVID-19 economic downturn more than two years into the pandemic, according to a study from the University of California, Berkeley.

A Starbucks in Sacramento’s Land Park area has been closed by the coffee chain because of neighborhood safety concerns. Fewer than 20 stores in the U.S., of around 9,000 company locations, have been deemed too dangerous to stay open.

Decorative cow statues are part of the Galt District Chamber of Commerce’s “Herd on the Street” campaign, which gets local businesses and organizations to create public art.

With a 1-cent general sales tax measure on the ballot in Galt for the November general election, a look at the city’s past sales tax initiatives shows a mixed voting record.

The teleprompter has been around since 1948, but just six years ago PresenterTek, a Nevada City manufacturer of electro-mechanical speaking products, created the TeleStepper. Now it’s the exclusive supplier of teleprompting equipment for U.S. presidents.

Sky River Casino was supposed to begin operating in September, but the doors opened at midnight on Aug. 16. The Elk Grove casino said it has hired 2,000 people from the area and will bring in $125 million to the local economy over the next few years.

There’s no reliable count of the inflow and outflow of local businesses. But a 2021 report from Stanford’s Hoover Institution said 300 companies moved their headquarters out of California from January 2018 through June 2021. Fifteen of those left the Sacramento region.

“When the pandemic first started, 40% of Black businesses went under,” said Brianna Sanders of the Sacramento Black Chamber of Commerce. “We completely supported our chamber members at the first part of the pandemic, getting them loans, helping them with assistance, doing what we needed to do to make sure they didn’t go under.”

Last year the city made Travel Noire’s list of 10 places where Black people are the most successful. However, the rate of Black entrepreneurship remains low.

Amanda Bridger, who was born and raised in Nevada County, is sharing her love of another culture. Her new restaurant in Sacramento, Kau Kau, pays homage to the islands with Hawaiian, Filipino and Portuguese eats and treats.

California lawmakers have approved a spending plan that includes sending cash to most taxpayers to help offset record-high gas prices. The budget continues a turnaround for the nation’s most populous state, which just two years ago raised taxes and slashed spending.

Shine is a community development program designed to improve and revitalize neighborhoods in the Sacramento region.

Folsom resident Tom Scott, director of policy for the California Community Action Partnership, says this law is being abused by trial lawyers and that’s hurting the California economy.

Chris Franklin, Wilton Rancheria’s executive director of economic development, and chief administrator Dahlton Brown, spoke at the Elk Grove Chamber of Commerce’s April 29 luncheon.

Local governments are looking to retool their economies, changing job qualifications, implementing trainings and more to bring financial stability back to the region.

Community leaders in Oak Park hope the new Rancho San Miguel Market makes fresh, healthy and affordable groceries more accessible to the neighborhood.

Some marijuana farmers are fighting back after a crash in wholesale cannabis prices has left them reeling. With help from a Sacramento delivery agent, 20 Mendocino County farmers have banded together to sell cannabis to consumers in Sacramento and Butte counties.

Very low-income renters in the Sacramento metro area face a shortage of more than 78,000 affordable and available homes, according to a new report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

After five years of planning, construction is finally beginning at Aggie Square, a $1.1 billion development near UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento—a partnership among the university, the City of Sacramento and the real estate company Wexford Science & Technology.