Future Arena Creates Holding Pattern

This phase is what broker Aaron Marchand of Turton Commercial Real Estate calls “tweener time.” It’s the awkward period of time between the Sacramento Kings gaining new owners who plan to build a downtown arena and that venue actually opening.

City of Sacramento officials anticipate the $447 million arena would open for the start of the basketball season in just over three years, while the National Basketball Association has set a deadline of 2017 — the failure of which could once again set the team up for a move to another city.

Marchand thinks four years is more likely. So during this “tweener time,” landlords around the future site of the arena — what is currently Downtown Plaza mall — have to figure out if they sell now or if they hold for now, which requires continuing to pay for upkeep of the building.

Owners of stores, restaurants and other types of businesses also have to figure out if they risk opening something in the vicinity now while real estate prices are lower but the customer base isn’t there yet, Marchand said.

“Can you survive the four years?” he said.

Or do you wait, avoid some of the risk, but pay more later?

“It’s a give and take,” Marchand said.

Since the Maloofs agreed May 17 to sell the Kings to new investors and the league said the team was staying put — the transaction closed escrow Friday —Turton Commercial, which specializes in the urban core of Sacramento, is getting more calls. The phones aren’t ringing off the hook, but the firm is getting “definitely more interest and more questions,” Marchand said.

” ‘What should I do?’ — there’s a lot of that,” he said.

The majority of calls are from local people, he said, but a few out-of-towners have been calling this past month.

Does Marchand have any concern that some of these would-be investors will return to the build-it-and-they-will-come mentality of the real estate boom?

“I think people have learned,” he said.