Being the mouthpiece for the downtown Sacramento Power Elite, the Bee loves to bubble and gush over swell things that go on in the City of Sacramento. Their latest "I Heart Sacto" love letter was published today as a story about Kaiser topping off its new high rise hospital in the flood plain of the Railyards. Entitled, "Kaiser places final beam atop Railyards hospital. ‘The momentum’s building’", the article told of a key milestone towards the hospital's planned opening in 2029. 

The new hospital is certaily needed, because the current one on Morse Avenue does not meet current earthquake standards. Still, with all of Kaiser's real estate holdings in Arden Arcade, it is a reasonable question to ask why not build the new hospital here - after all, the parking lot is enormous. Kaiser could have built a parking structure at the Morse site and then built a new hospital at Morse, as the company has done at some of its other locations. Ah, but there is no sex appeal in Arden Arcade, is there? If you want to do something shiny and new, why do it here when you can build in the Railyards instead? Did the County do anything to retain the 3,000 some-odd jobs at Morse that serve the several hundred thousand residents hereabouts? No. But you can bet the City of Sacramento told Kaiser it would be worthwhile to move. And, given that Kaiser's Corporate HQ is in Oakland, it is no surprise that sweet talk about the spiffy new railyards won them over to the new location.

So what will happen to the Kaiser Morse campus? It turns out that Kaiser doesn't know. They have not decided what to do with it and won't figure it out until later. Or, as stated in the article, "will likely have a strategy for it in the next 18 to 24 months." Hmm...what else does that remind you of? The future for Country Club Center, perhaps? Or Country Club Plaza?  Amazon is still dilly-dallying about its ghost store at Watt and El Camino. Country Club Plaza is looking to convert nearly half its property into self-storage and apartments.  What, you might ask, is the plan for those 6 acres of "prime commercial land" on Howe next to Red Lobster? How did the Savings Center became a self-storage monstrosity on Watt? What will happen at Mike's Market? Etc. Etc. Etc.

You can't blame Supervisor Desmond for Kaiser running away, because Kaiser made their decision during the Susan Peters era, 5 years before Mr. Desmond was elected to replace Ms. Peters. But you can certainly question whether our current Board of Supervisors is paying attention. One of these days, *poof*, 3,000 local jobs will probably no longer exist at the Morse campus, just like when *poof* no more babies were birthed there (when the maternity functions went to Roseville), and *poof* the derm clinic on Arden Way scooted off to Rancho Cordova (and then later expanded to Fair Oaks Blvd. next to the Pavilions center). Will Sutter or Dignity step in to fill the void? Or will we get even more self-storage places, rental apartments, car sales and drive-through fast food restaurants? Since the Vision Thing isn't happening here and given that our community is not a city, has no local control and is treated the way it is, what is your best guess? And are you happy about that?

Remember, Dear Readers, this isn't us being disrespectful of the community we love, this is us hoping to learn if you are going to be OK with yet another inmportant part of our community disappearing with no strategy for the aftermath. If you are a Kaiser member, will you be better off driving to the Railyards instead of Morse? If you have a business that's related to 3,000 workers and thousands of customers being at Morse, will you be able to adapt? If you are a property owner, do you expect a positive impact on your property when Kaiser closes the Morse hospital? Do you think the community will be improved if it no longer has a hospital? Please feel free to let us know.