Potluck!!

COOL CREAM: Cold Stone Creamery invites you to the World's Largest Ice Cream Social, a benefit for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America. Customers will receive a 3-ounce serving of ice cream, brownie, fudge and sprinkles in exchange for a donation to the charity.

When: 5-8 p.m. Thursday

Where: Any participating Cold Stone Creamery

Cost: Donation

Information: www.coldstonecreamery.com

GO FOR PIZZA: Jason Jonas, a pizza expert at Whole Foods Market, will teach you how to craft your favorite pizza, calzones and more.

When: 11:30 a.m. Saturday

Where: Whole Foods Market, 4315 Arden Way, Sacramento

Cost: $25

Information: This hands-on class is open to ages 14 and older. A complete list of the store's cooking classes can be found on the Sacramento store Web page at www.wholefoodsmarket.com. (916) 488-2800

THESE KIDS COOK: Children from Auburn, Sacramento and other locales around the region will compete in the Save Mart Kids Cook-Off Finals. Sandra Lee, star of "Semi-Homemade Cooking" on the Food Network, will present awards to contestants ages 9 to 13.

When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday

Where: Lucky Food Service Pavilion in Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, 1001 Fairgrounds Drive, Vallejo

Cost: Buy tickets online, where everyone pays the kids price of $29.99. One-day parking is $15.

Information: www.sixflags/ discoverykingdom

TASTE LAND PARK: Enjoy wine, food and music, and connect with the community at the ninth annual Taste of Land Park.

When: Sunday

Where: 17th Street between 11th and 13th avenues in Sacramento

Cost: $30 in advance, $35 at the door

Information: www.landpark.org or (916) 496-7322

JUICE, SYRUP OR SAUCE? Master food preservers will demonstrate the art and science of safe canning, freezing and drying techniques.

When: 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday

Where: Cooperative Extension Office, 311 Fair Lane, Placerville

Cost: Free

Information: (530) 621-5506

VEGGIE DELIGHT: Shankari Easwaran shares her family's secrets for authentic vegetarian Indian cuisine. Learn about basic traditional ingredients and the importance of using whole spices.

When: 6 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op Community Learning Center, 1914 Alhambra Blvd.

Cost: $35 for co-op members; $45 for nonmembers

Information: (916) 455-2667 or www.sacfoodcoop.com. Parking is limited. Please do not park in the co-op lot. Go to the Web site for a more extensive list of classes.

DEFEAT YEAST: Rebecca Wise shows you how to conquer candida with dietary changes and supplements that will help you gain a healthy balance.

When: 6 p.m. next Wednesday

Where: Whole Foods Market, 1001 Galleria Blvd., Roseville

Cost: Free

Information: A complete list of the store's food classes can be found on the Roseville store page at www.wholefoodsmarket.com. (916) 781-5300

Source Sac Bee

$18 million Sacramento community center opens Saturday

The gleaming new George Sim Community and Event Center, which opens Saturday, is being heralded by the city of Sacramento as the next generation of community centers.

The $18 million project added 15,500 square feet to the small existing 1960s-era center. In addition, behind the new community center, a 15,700-square-foot event center was built for basketball, volleyball and other sports.

"It's a community center for the 21st century," said Councilman Kevin McCarty.

The community center includes meeting space, a fitness center, an industrial kitchen and an automated library machine. The center is a high-tech, eco-friendly shot-in-the arm for the community, McCarty said.

A grand opening of the center is planned for Saturday with a parade at 10 a.m., ribbon cutting at 11 a.m., and lunch and children's activities at noon. Sacramento residents can tour the facility at 6207 Logan St. until 4 p.m.


Source Sac Bee

Home Front: Sacramento-area home sales seeing falling to 1967 levels

The annual real estate forecast season opened this week with an estimate that the end of 2009 won't be much better than the beginning, and capital home builders will sell just 3,400 new houses, condos and town houses this year.

It's hardly a wonder that home builders say their powerful industry, so long accustomed to getting its way politically and economically, is in a depression, not a recession.

Such a sales number – shockingly low, projected by consultant Hanley Wood Market Intelligence – hasn't been heard in this region since the 1960s.

Home Front took out the history books to compare: In 1967, with President Lyndon Johnson in the White House, builders in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties started 3,544 single-family detached homes, according to the Construction Industry Research Board. It's likely they sold roughly the same.

This year, considering that 85 percent of sales regionally are single-family homes, they'll sell about 2,900. Add in the townhouses and condos and you get the 3,400.

"Sacramento can support about 8,500 sales a year," Hanley Wood's Sacramento analyst Kathryn Boyce told a gathering of about 75 to 80 area home-building industry reps. "We stole from the future quite a bit from the heyday when we had our special financing. If they had a pulse, we gave them a loan."

Stimulus aid for high-rise

Here's some better economic news. Federal stimulus funding is bringing $10 million to restore an empty residential high-rise at Seventh and I streets in downtown Sacramento.

"We were high-fiving each other. It's not every day you get $10 million in a competitive grant project," said Nick Chhotu, director of public housing at the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. The money is headed to a thorough face-lift for the 12-story Riverview Apartments owned by SHRA. It's a senior complex built in the late 1970s at 626 I St. The building has been empty for two years.

Plans are to start construction late next year after getting up to $6 million more in federal funds. The building, with 108 rooms for people 62 and older, needs new windows, a new electrical system and new plumbing, a job that will run well into 2011, said Chhotu.

The Public Housing Capital funds are provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Mixed-use to cut driving

How much do residents of Sacramento's eastern suburbs and foothills love their cars? Plenty. They lead the region in driving, averaging 75 miles a day. But another forecast on the PowerPoint circuit last week suggests they'll be driving a lot less by 2035.

The next generation of drivers, in Placer County especially, will live in neighborhoods with a greater mix of uses, said Mike McKeever, chief of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments. He told a gathering of Urban Land Institute-Sacramento members that shopping, home and work will be closer together as cities like Roseville and Rocklin urbanize more.

El Dorado Hills and its environs will have "more jobs in the foothills to balance houses," McKeever said.

And look, too for still less driving in the Sacramento-West Sacramento core, he said.

Consultant on Net radio

Look who's talking now on Internet radio. It's long-time Sacramento-area building industry consultant John Schleimer. He has a new VoiceAmerica Talk Radio Network show, "Housing in America." The show debuts Monday at 2 p.m. PDT.

Schleimer, owner of Roseville-based Market Perspectives, will launch with a show on the federal government's Making Home Affordable loan modification program. Guests include a U.S. Treasury Department official and New York Times economics reporter Peter Goodman.

Guests on coming shows, running weekly at the same time, include economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com and National Association of Home Builders Chairman Joe Robson. The show streams live on the Internet. Details: Google VoiceAmerica and click on "hosts."

Source Sac Bee

Sacramento County median home price down 53.5 percent from 2005 high

Last month, Sacramento County marked the fourth anniversary of its housing boom high with a median sales price of $180,000 – a whopping 53.5 percent less than in August 2005, property researcher MDA DataQuick said Thursday.

The county's August sales tally of 2,061 new and existing homes likewise fell well short of 3,800 in August 2005.

Now, four years later, these DataQuick numbers reveal the long, hard fall taken by the capital region, a descent defined by billions of dollars in lost home equity, more than 42,000 foreclosures and a marked slowdown in home sales.

A reversal of fortune that began in Sacramento County during the late summer of 2005, then quickly spread to seven other area counties, made Sacramento one of the first big U.S. housing markets to spin out of control. The aftermath still plays out in 2009.

"Everybody says buy a house. It's the best investment of your life," said Scott Seacrist, 30, who bought a small home in Sacramento's Elmhurst neighborhood in March 2006. "If I lived here 20 years, it would be the best investment."

Seacrist, like thousands of area buyers four years after the boom crested in Sacramento County, owns a home that's worth less than he paid.

"We love our house," said the married schoolteacher, noting that "it has a lot of charm." But a sustained housing downturn that came after moving in has provided its occasional bouts of anxiety.

No wonder, economists say.

"The bubble we saw was a once-in-a-century kind of event," said Dr. Sanjay Varshney, dean of the College of Business Administration at California State University, Sacramento. "You seldom see all the conditions in place simultaneously that allowed it."

DataQuick reported another month of uncertainty on the housing front. The researcher counted 3,375 closed escrows in August on new and existing homes in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties. That was down sharply from 3,815 in July and marked a third straight month of lower sales than the same time last year.

There were 3,998 closed escrows in August 2008, DataQuick reported.

The firm noted that sales similarly fell from July in the Bay Area and Southern California. Its analysts attributed the drop to "a thinning inventory of foreclosure properties and financial uncertainty among potential homebuyers."

For months, first-time buyers in the capital region have expressed increasing frustration at being outbid on a dwindling supply of bank repos.

"In Sacramento County, foreclosure resales were 50.4 percent of sales in August," said DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage. "That's the lowest since 43.8 percent in December 2007."

Would-be buyers are nervous, too, about jobs as capital-area unemployment has reached 11.8 percent. LePage said, "It's not as if the job market is creating huge demand."

Four years ago, such a bleak scenario seemed improbable to experts at all levels. But it became real as median sales prices peaked at $387,000 in Sacramento County – after doubling in four years – and then rolled backward. The median, a point where half sell for more and half less, has fallen by more than 50 percent in Sacramento, Sutter, Yuba and Amador counties and more than 40 percent in El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties.

The steepest peak-to-trough mark in Sacramento County came in February, when the median price fell to $160,000, down 58.6 percent.

The smallest decline is 35 percent in Nevada County, where there are fewer new homes and the "lowest percentage of bank-owned homes in the region," said Linda Kaneko, executive with Paul Law Realty in Grass Valley.

DataQuick records show 2005 highs of $501,000 in Nevada County and $474,000 in Yolo County. Yuba County reached $351,500, while Placer County touched a boom high of $525,000. Sutter County peaked at $339,000. El Dorado County's high was $531,250. Amador County crested at $425,000.

Source Sac Bee

Sutter Health affiliate transferring 200 jobs to Sacramento

A Sutter Health affiliate in the Bay Area will transfer 200 positions to Sacramento over the next 17 months, with the first jobs expected to come to the city in January.

Palo Alto Medical Foundation is combining services with Sacramento-based Sutter Connect, which provides administrative services to Sutter Health medical foundations across Northern California.

The move is expected to save the Palo Alto-based foundation $100 million over the next 10 years, officials said.

Palo Alto officials called the move a "difficult decision" but said the state of the economy and the debate over national health care reform forced their hand. "It is imperative that we look for ways to reduce our costs so we are able to deliver high-quality health care at an affordable price," David Druker, chief executive officer, said in a statement.

The not-for-profit Palo Alto Medical Foundation operates medical centers and clinics in four Bay Area counties, employing 4,500 people and serving more than 635,000 patients.

Nearly 150 jobs in patient accounting and managed care claims services are out of the foundation's Sunnyvale offices, with the remainder moving from Santa Cruz and Mountain View. Officials say they will be offered comparable positions at Sutter Connect.

Employees will relocate in phases and will receive relocation assistance. Those who do not make the move will be offered transition services, money to retrain and a severance, officials said.


Source Sac Bee

Wine Buzz: Fill 'er up with house at OneSpeed

The cat's out of the bag when it comes to the wine at OneSpeed, the popular new east Sacramento restaurant. And that's to say: The house wine at OneSpeed is literally poured from a plastic bag.

Save the corkscrew for another time. There's no bottle, box or even a screwcap with OneSpeed's house wine. And customers already can't get enough, going through 15 bags – that's nearly 20 gallons – of house wine each week.

Don't be surprised when wine in a bag comes to a restaurant near you. Because of the wines' low cost and environmental friendliness, the concept's spreading to other local restaurants.

"I'm absolutely pleased that people are accepting it," says Rick Mahan, owner of OneSpeed. "The fun part is when they find out it comes from a bag. It blows their mind."

OneSpeed's house red and white wines were conceived by Jeff Hansen of AH Wines, a company that develops wines for clients such as Mahan. Peltier Station in Lodi produces the wines, which are pumped into plastic bags and sent to OneSpeed.

OneSpeed receives its house wines in 5 liter bags, which are placed in a wood cabinet behind the bar. When an order's up, the wine flows from the bag's spout and into a carafe or tumbler.

"It's the same exact bag you'd find in a box of Franzia or Gallo," says Hansen. "They're made of a material that's impermeable and doesn't impart any off flavors.

"We are so far behind the rest of the world in delivery vessels for wine," adds Hansen. "In Europe, they deliver wine in cans and plastic bottles and Tetra Pak. Something new comes up here, and people act like it's the most cutting-edge thing."

The financial bottom line is especially tasty for both Mahan and OneSpeed's thirsty clientele. The absence of bottling means the wines can be produced for less than $1 per glass. The wines then sell at OneSpeed for $3.75 per glass, or $18 for a 1-liter carafe.

Another bonus: No wine gets wasted by spoilage. Bags keep oxygen out of wine better than bottles, and wine in a bag can stay fresh for months.

The lack of bottles may also appeal to those with eco-friendly tendencies. And keeping with the "slow food" ethos of championing local producers, Mahan was adamant about partnering with a nearby winery.

"(Local sourcing) is an important consideration in most of the things I bring into my restaurants," says Mahan, who also owns The Waterboy in midtown.

"I'd had some good examples of French and Portuguese (bagged wine) and knew it was possible. I just had to find the right winery."

But can wine from a bag really taste any good? Sure, but just don't expect much more than a simple, food-friendly wine.

OneSpeed's house red is a blend of barbera, cabernet sauvignon, zinfandel and petite sirah. Plenty of berry flavors figure in this straightforward, medium-bodied wine that's meant to go with one of OneSpeed's pizzas.

"I loved the idea of having a carafe of wine in our pizza joint," says Mahan. "But I didn't want a fat zinfandel. I wanted the wine to be food-friendly."

OneSpeed's house white wine balances Lodi's fruitiness with a firm acidic backbone. Unoaked chardonnay, pinot grigio and vermentino are mixed into this fairly refreshing blend, and would pair well with OneSpeed's salads.

"The vermentino was the kicker," says Hansen. "It has a nice flinty character that brings some structure to the wine, but it's also clean and crisp."

Hansen aims to take this bagged-wine concept nationwide. OneSpeed for now serves as the prototype, and its proprietary wine in a bag is now served at such local brew pubs as River City Brewing Co. and Rubicon Brewing Co.

More Sacramento-area restaurants are expected to serve OneSpeed's bagged wine soon.

But back at OneSpeed, the business for wine in a bag keeps booming.

"Most of the skeptics have been converted," says Mahan. "I'm doubly pleased that people are accepting it."

Source Sac Bee

New meltdown looms as Sacramento-area commercial vacancy rate rises

From an unfinished shopping mall in Elk Grove to the ghostly quiet office parks of South Placer, the slump that has overtaken commercial real estate could rival the meltdown in the housing market.

Across the Sacramento region, vacancy rates have soared while rents and property values have plummeted, leaving many landlords struggling to pay their mortgages. A few are in bankruptcy protection.

Sacramento's troubles are worse than most, according to national analysts, but the threat looms across the entire country. With the national economy seemingly poised for a recovery, some experts fear the recession could be prolonged if commercial loans go bust like residential mortgages.

"It's very analogous to what happened with the residential market," said Mark Friedman, a prominent Sacramento commercial developer. "Money was cheap, growth was rapid, and we built a lot more product than we needed."

Others, though, say the problems in commercial don't run as deep. Most developers didn't borrow as recklessly as homeowners and are able to cushion themselves against falling revenue streams.

"People were so highly leveraged in their homes – they were borrowing against them to buy their big-screen TVs or whatever," said Mitch Derenzo, chief financial officer at American River Bank of Sacramento. "It doesn't appear that the commercial side is so highly leveraged."

But no one doubts that the problems in commercial real estate are serious. American River just reported a second-quarter loss of $704,000, its first loss in 25 years. Derenzo said the main culprit was a big leap in nonperforming commercial real estate loans – that is, mortgages that have been delinquent for at least 90 days.

So far, defaults and foreclosures on commercial loans have lagged behind the pace in the residential sector. But the most severe problems in commercial real estate lie ahead.

About $2 trillion worth of commercial mortgages worldwide are coming due in the next four years, Deutsche Bank says in a recent report. Because property values have slumped so much, hard-bitten bankers are telling borrowers to put up more cash if they want to roll over those maturing loans – a requirement that could push many property owners to the brink.

"The scale of the potential problem is formidable," says Deutsche Bank. Commercial delinquencies are already at 4.1 percent and will rise to as much as 7 percent by December, the bank says. By contrast, 9.2 percent of residential mortgages are delinquent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The California Mortgage Bankers Association said only 0.26 percent of the state's commercial property loans were delinquent in the second quarter. But market watchers say the statistics don't reflect the true problem because banks are generally being more flexible than they've been with homeowners.

In many cases, banks are extending loan maturities to avoid branding a mortgage as delinquent, analysts say – a practice known in some circles as "pretend and extend."

Bankers say they're merely taking a proactive approach to keep a bad situation from turning worse.

"You've bought yourself some time to try and improve the cash flow of that property," said Steve Fleming, chief executive at River City Bank. "I think it's fairly common practice in the industry today."

Some prominent developers haven't been able to cut deals with lenders. Kobra Properties, the Roseville firm led by Jack in the Box restaurant owner Abe Alizadeh, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last November with debts of more than $300 million.

A key factor in Kobra's trouble: the loss of big tenants like defunct electronics chain Circuit City, according to court filings by Alizadeh.

Another victim of the downturn is Opus West Corp. of Phoenix, developer of major office parks in South Placer, the Broadstone shopping complex in Folsom and the huge Natomas Gateway office-retail center. It filed for Chapter 11 in July under a $1 billion mountain of debt.

Source Sac Bee