Earlier this week the Sacramento City Council voted 5-4 to allow the former Home Savings and Loan Building at the junction of Ethan, Arden and Exposition to be torn down and replaced by fast food restaurants with drive-through functionality. The City of Sacramento's Preservation Commission had recommended preserving the building, which its staff had said it was a good candidate for adaptive reuse. But, of course, the building's owner wasn't interested in that, so the City Council - on a motion by the un-elected councilmember who was appointed to briefly replace disgraced Councilmember Shaun Loloee - decided to let the building be torn down.

OK, so what? The building is in the City of Sacramento. It's none of our business, right? Wrong! For starters, the site is across the street from our unincorporated community. We are the ones who will have to live with whatever happens at that site. Some thoughts:

• We don't have a whole lot of cool architecture in our vicinity, with the community having been developed willy-nilly in the post-WW2 suburban boom times. The Home Savings building was an exception. It was deliberately built as a prominent symbol of the good life in mid-century modern suburbia, clad in Italian travertine with two large-scale exterior mosaic murals and an interior mural, all designed by the distinguished artist and architectural designer, Millard Sheets. Imagine it repurposed as a museum of mid-century design - something that would attract tourists into the area, BTW. We don't have a museum of any kind here, do we? Or imagine it repurposed in other ways, as suggested by the City of Sacramento's historic preservation people and reported by Sacramento Modern. Oh, wait, stop. We can't have nice things here, can we? And, anyway, it's up to the brilliant Mayor and City Council of Sacramento to decide what's best for our unincorporated, voiceless community.
• The City of Sacramento has a history of making the entrances to our community ugly and dysfunctional. For example, the new stoplight and gas station at Albatross and El Camino, just a short distance from the Business 80 freeway off-ramp, has seriously monkey-wrenched the traffic headed east from the freeway (you know, the traffic following the sign that points to Carmichael but doesn't mention Arden Arcade). It also is another frustrating stoplight on El Camino for westbound morning commuters. Similarly, the weird triangle of city territory north of Marconi and west of Howe (that was annexed as a favor for the cardroom operator) has seen little houses redeveloped as itty-bitty car sales lots that sandwich a palm reading business. The traffic there is ALWAYS backed up, making turns into or out of those businesses problematic. So replacing a prominently-located architectural gem with drive-through fast food? Yeah, totally consistent.
• Remember when the County let the mid-century modern Century Theaters be torn down for a developer's pipe dream? Hey, if the County can rip out a mid-century architectural landmark for a developer's quicky profit, why shouldn't the City of Sacramento do so as well? Ah, yes, that was the County' leadership and lack of vision in action. Historic preservation doesn't, you know, "pencil out" (except in myriad other places where it does).
• Are any of our readers old enough to remember the Alhambra Theater? Built in 1927 in the Moorish-style of the Alhambra in Grenada, Spain, the renowned theater was torn down in 1973 and replaced by a Safeway. Destruction of the Alhambra Theater was an urban planning failure of major-league proportions. Oh, but, look: there is an original fountain, intact and functioning on the south side of the grocery store parking lot! And it's that kind of fake preservation that the Sacramento City Council baked into its Home Savings resolution this week - the outside mosaic murals are supposed to be preserved as part of the drive-through fast food experience. Swell...
• Ripping out the historic building would be out of compliance with the City of Sacramento’s 2040 General Plan that the City Council adopted just last February. That Plan has goals and policies that specifically address drive-throughs, pedestrian safety, transit orientation, enhanced gateways, sustainability, and underserved communities’ access to healthy food and better air quality. But, really, why should the City of Sacramento bother to care about the designated Environmental Justice Area across the street or pay any attention to the existing traffic problems, air pollution and abundance of fast food options in the immediate vicinity?

Fear not, said The Bee in reporting the story (Chris Biderman, "Old Sacramento Bank Building is not historic, council decides. Is Shake Shack on the way?", Sacramento Bee, August 29, 2004), not designating the building for the LOCAL historic preservation list isn't the same as leaving it off the FEDERAL list. Maybe the wrecking ball won't be coming after all? That may sound far-fetched, but you just never know. Uh-huh.