Midtown
Midtown is the heart and soul of Sacramento culture, where the city’s rich history meets its most exciting future. It’s composed of multi-generational restaurants and retailers woven into a vibrant tapestry under canopies of oak and elm trees. Midtown is truly where farm meets fork, offering visitors, residents, and employees an incredible variety of the region’s best food and beverages. It is also home to the #1 rated Farmer’s Market in California.
But it wasn’t always this way.
In 2000, Midtown Sacramento was primarily known for Harlow’s nightclub and a few mom-and-pop restaurants and delis.
Ken Turton and his team at Turton Commercial Real Estate are proud to have played a meaningful role in the redevelopment of dozens of vacant, non-compliant, and dilapidated properties, transforming them into a vibrant canvas of fully occupied, redeveloped, and repurposed spaces. This transformation has made Midtown the most desirable submarket in the region, with the highest rents, lowest vacancy, and most walkable streets in Northern California.
Oh, and Turton Commercial’s office is located right in the heart of it!
Reimagined Warehouse Becomes the Epicenter of Midtown
In 2004, Turton was hired by David Metcalf to sell a 50,000 SF cinder block warehouse with no parking and virtually no primary street frontage, located in the middle of Midtown, Sacramento.
Turton had a vision that the building could be converted into a contemporary, open mixed-use office and retail space, but conventional wisdom said otherwise. How could a building with no parking, almost no windows, and minimal traffic counts be successful?
Turton pitched the concept to multiple developers, with Mike Heller responding to the challenge. Mike brought his renowned creativity and found a way to add 16 huge second-story office windows to the building and an iconic sawtooth storefront and curved ADA patio, which resulted in one of the most transformational building projects in Sacramento’s urban history. By 2006, MARRS had become the epicenter of the Midtown universe with 25,000 SF of retail on the ground floor. Today, in addition to rock-solid rents and occupancy, MARRS is the foundation of the #1 ranked Farmers Market in the State of California, hosting over 125 vendors and 10,000 visitors every Saturday.

















