Taylor made

On the need for an arena for the Kings

“I worked at least twice on efforts to get an arena. One of them at where I still think is the best location, which is Seventh and K [streets]. In lieu of some portion of the [Downtown] Plaza. I think that would be a game changer. I don’t think anybody in the world knows how to finance it now. But I don’t think anybody in the world knows how to finance it at Cal Expo, either. And I think if it’s put at Expo, that will be a very big missed opportunity for the community.

“There’s no guarantee that a solution will be found in a time frame that keeps the Kings in town. But I’m beginning to feel more and more that we need to make the effort again to find a way to do it downtown.”

On shopping malls

“In this world, there really are no retail anchors out there that are anchors for redevelopment. Those are dinosaurs. Those are gone almost from the lexicon. Malls may be gone from the lexicon soon.”

On why suburban development sucks

“I know when I drive the suburbs in Sacramento, it kind of depresses me, because the level of the quality of development is so low in most places. It didn’t have to be that way. … It concerns the shit out of me that we’ve got hundreds of thousands of people in this community that live in places where there’s really no way to get downtown easily without driving. We’ve got to find a way to solve that. In the long run, if we continue to invest private and public money to put in the infrastructure and keep the infrastructure tightly packed in the urban core, it will have a long-term benefit for everyone.”