Did your company do all that work for the last few months for free?
Yes, actually, we did. Sounds absurd, but its both a sign of the times and a pretty common occurrence when you are working for/designing for local governments. The project I worked on was for an international airport, and it was a competition, so we may have done all of that work for nothing. We'll find out soon enough. Sometimes I wonder if Sacramento and KJ would have been better off hosting an international design competition. You could get a lot of great ideas out there for a pretty cheap price. If the only goal is to get an arena built, then getting Icon/Taylor on board seems like a pretty good strategy. If you are thinking bigger than that, than this Icon/Taylor/Populous strategy might miss the mark. But I'll concede that its a much bigger risk, so sometimes you gotta play the cards your dealt.
As for what Glenn was saying, I tend to agree. Sacramento was given a chance to knock one out of the park, but instead settled for a double. That's not necessarily bad, by the way. As a Kings fan and a Sacramento expatriate, I'll take it, because it is far-and-away better than the alternative.
As someone who is closely interested in these types of things, I'm less thrilled. I can't comment too much on it the way Glenn would like, because I simply don't have all the information I would need to give a valid critique. I was hoping the Icon feasibility study would have been more thorough. It seems that Icon worked on the assumption that a downtown arena would be the best option without thoroughly analyzing why, and that's a bit disappointing.
I would like to see how a connection to regional transit could add value to the site, how it could connect to local transportation, possibly expanding to local neighborhoods, reduce dependence on vehicular transportation, increase foot-traffic (which is good for local businesses, reduces the probability of crime, makes more defensible spaces, etc). An arena near local transportation is great, but if nobody uses it, then its a wasted opportunity.
There seems to be a lack of a master plan, which is unfortunate. Will there be hotels/restaurants/condos/stores/etc nearby? How would the inclusion of these improve downtown Sacramento? Would a high concentration of hotels/arena/shopping improve the likelihood of hosting events like political events, all-star games, etc? How can you maximize the use of the arena? How many nights a year does it need to be operating to maximize the value? If it is connected to regional transit, would we see an increase of people who visit downtown on a daily basis? When you neglect to plan for these things, you allow for someone else to come in with other plans in mind, which may or may not be a good thing for the city.
These questions are supposed to be answered before you can confidently say that a downtown arena will "revitalize" the area. Now, if the majority of the study was about lining up the money, then I wouldn't be concerned, but it appears (and I could be wrong about this) that a general scheme/design/concept has been agreed upon by the Populous group, and that could be costly, because I'm confident that they put their interns on that project just by looking at the drawings.
I guess I could ask Jim Les what his arena would cost? But I don't really want to get into that.
Now, now, the whole reason why we are in this mess is because we decided to build Arco on the cheap, remember? Besides, the design of a building of this magnitude should not be taken lightly. Mistakes at this level can have pretty huge consequences, both culturally and financially.