THe Sacramento Bee
Fronm the article:
North Natomas today looks like a giant jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing.
The boomtown built on a floodplain was one of the region’s main centers of urban growth in last decade’s housing boom. It added more than 50,000 residents to the city of Sacramento – about a tenth of the city’s current population – along with millions of square feet of retail and office space.
But since 2008, when federal flood-protection authorities imposed a de facto building ban on the Natomas basin, no homes, stores or offices have risen from the fields along Interstate 5. Even houses that burned down haven’t been replaced. The only structure built in the past six years was a fire station with living quarters perched atop a 30-foot-tall garage, above the projected level of a catastrophic flood.
Natomas has essentially been frozen in place for the past six years, but the thaw could be coming soon.