Sacramento has lost one of its few river deck dining sites. It is City Hall’s fault | Opinion

One of Sacramento’s only river deck restaurants has lost its deck because the landlord refuses to maintain it.

The landlord is the City of Sacramento.

The Rio City Cafe in Old Sacramento, with its stunning view of the Tower Bridge, the site of countless wedding proposals, finds itself confined to dry land. The city ordered the deck closed in April for safety reasons and there are no plans to fix it.

Despite a lease commitment to properly maintain the deck, city staff is not following through with a 2022 City Council directive to seek construction bids to complete deck repair this summer. Instead, the City Council just approved a five-year capital improvement program that sets aside no money for any fix.

Opinion

“The city of Sacramento has said for years how they wanted to revitalize Old Sacramento, how they want to turn this into a diamond of Sacramento,” said Rio City General Manager Jimmy Gayaldo, a part owner. Instead, the city is harming the district by walking away from its contractual maintenance responsibilities as a landlord, depriving the public of a rare dining vista.

It’s an example of how Sacramento’s finances are completely upside down and getting worse every budget.

The deck of the Rio City is part of an estimated $1.4 billion in undeferred maintenance projects needed city-wide. In comparison, the entire city budget is approximately $1.6 billion.

That’s just half of the structural problem. The city also has $1.6 billion in unfunded pension liabilities for its employees. To get out of this fiscal hole, the city essentially would have to shut down for two years to get out of debt.

The city estimates the cost to fix the deck at $5 million, according to spokesman Tim Swanson. “The city at this time has not been able to identify that amount of funding to complete the repairs,” he said. “If construction is not completed, there could be potential rent reductions.”

Gayaldo estimates that the deck historically generated 70 percent of the restaurant’s revenue. The city of Sacramento “cut our legs off. This is the first year we’re going to be without our decks. We don’t know if we can make it work.”

It is unclear what the city has been doing with Rio City’s lease payments of about $300,000 a year. “We have no idea where our lease money has gone,” Gayaldo said. The capital improvement program budget shows only $26,796 in available, unobligated funds.

Mark and Stephanie Miller have been the main owners of Rio City since its inception in 1994. The restaurant is a replica of a Southern Pacific Railroad warehouse. “Up until this point, we had a great working relationship with the city,” Gayaldo said. “We’ve never asked anything from the city.”

Even during COVID while the restaurant was shuttered, Rio City paid its lease. “There are other businesses that didn’t pay anything and were forgiven,” Gayaldo said.

Rio City’s contract reads that “the city shall provide access to, and maintain in good condition and repair at its cost….maintenance of the existing decking within the leased premises.” Rio City has held up its end of the bargain for three decades. City Hall has not.

Swanson said this is no easy fix for the city. “The repairs required for the deck are extensive and expensive and can only be completed during the six-month regulatory construction season along the Sacramento River (May-October),” he said. Work in the river isn’t allowed during fish migration season, particularly for salmon.

Gayaldo said the contractor identified to fix the deck has a temporary solution that costs $750,000. Swanson said city engineers think the cost is double that. Even if true, that doesn’t explain the city’s refusal to keep the deck in good condition.

In the end, the city has simply broken itself.

A lone city council member, downtown’s Katie Valenzuela, suggested at this week’s meeting that the city confront its deferred maintenance problem. “I really do want to think about a strategy,” she said. “This comes up every budget I’ve been on council. It’s affecting people’s daily lives.”

But California’s highest-paid city manager, Sacramento’s Howard Chan, seems to have no plan.

The Rio City Cafe has been a steady anchor of this state historic park, one of the city’s crown jewels. Efforts to improve the city’s riverfront experience are now going backward, not forward.

To the derelict landlords of the Sacramento City Council: You have two acceptable choices. One is to keep with your word, honor your lease commitment and maintain Rio City’s river infrastructure in good condition. Or you should notify the state of California that you can no longer be proper stewards in Old Sacramento and launch a transition of building oversight.

The city’s mismanagement of the Rio City Cafe is nothing short of a civic travesty and an embarrassment.