Expert: Ernest Tufft - 9/7/2006

Question

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Followup To

Question -
Hello Ernest,

I currently live in Pennsylvania. I am interested in moving to Sacramento and was wondering if you have any first hand knowledge on what the area is like in terms of entertainment, nightlife, and recreation. Any you can tell me will be helpful.

---Thanks!

Answer -
Hi,

You will find that Sacramento is a vibrant city with plenty of new construction, excellent shopping, and a revitalized downtown around the state capitol dome.  It is a smaller city than Philadephia or Pittsburg, but it growing fast.  Sacramento is within two hours of San Francisco, a dominant urban attraction in Northern California, if not the entire west coast.  As a result, Sacramento's nightlife downtown is very small compared to SF, its media market tends to lose out to the powerhouse down by the bay, and its sports franchises overlap with San Francisco and Oakland both having traditional winners for both baseball and football.  While there is no Major League baseball or Pro football in Sacramento, the winning King's basketball team is a successful substitute.  The setting at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers, and just 1-1/2 from some of the world's best ski resorts and North America's largest alpine lake--Lake Tahoe, makes Sacramento an excellent recreationally oriented urban center.  The American River bicycle trail winds along the river for some 35 miles.  There is a major concern about restoring the hundreds of miles of levee after the disaster in New Orleans, but the state appears to have things well in hand, and the likelyhood of such a disaster actually happening is quite low.  The summer high temps are above 100F in August, but this is a dry climate, and so that's comparable to about 85 or 90F on the east coast.  In general, the weather is very mild, and winter temps drop only to about 30F at night.  It never snows in Sacramento, although a hard frost is typical in Dec-Feb.  Since I've never visited Pennsylvania, I can't make any value comparisons, but I'm quite certain that more people move from Phili to Sacto than visa versa.  Do you have any specifics?  What neighborhood are you moving to?


Hi Ernest,

I'm looking at the city of Davis, 11 miles west of Sacramento. Can you share anything on this city - economy, traffic conditions, business make-up? Also, what are the five main banking institutions in the Sacramento area?  

Answer
Hi Jerry,

Davis is a different city than Sacramento, as you know, although it can be considered part of the metro area I suppose.  The Sacramento River and a large inland waterway separate the two with a long causeway being the principal access by freeway.  Davis is a University of California town with a heritage of bicycle friendly streets, environmentally oriented-slow growth development plan, and a charming small downtown.  UC Davis is perhaps the world leader in agricultural sciences R&D, and is particularly notable for its excellent viticultural and eneological degree programs.  As a result, the fondness of wine and food are big in Davis as a whole.  Housing in Davis is somewhat higher priced than in Sacramento due to the slow growth planning and the city's closer geographical link to the San Francisco Bay Area--arguably one of the highest priced housing regions in the United States.  Davis is about an hour and a half from San Francisco, and there's the Capitol Express Amtrack that goes by, linking Sacramento with Oakland and San Francisco.  The five main banking institutions?  That's outside my area of concern, but Wells Fargo is certainly number one, with Bank of America, Washington Mutual, Citibank, coming to mind right away as having a multiple of branches.  Obviously, if you are into the banking industry, San Francisco would be a place to consider as this city is the clear leader in Northern California, if not the Pacific Coast in general.