Taxable Talk

If you want to rent a building in Sacramento (California’s state capital), I have one that’s perfect…for your enemies, that is. It does have some advantages: It’s a 24-story building right in the heart of downtown Sacramento. It’s owned by the State of California. It’s not for sale, but I’m certain that California’s Department of General Services would be happy to sell it to you. It’s fully leased to the Board of Equalization.

It does have issues. Be careful if you walk on the sidewalk next to the building; you may be hit by falling glass. It seems that the window seals on the building don’t work correctly and the windows have a tendency to pop out.

There’s also the pipes in the building. There are corroded pipes on several floors. A General Services spokesperson helpfully noted that, back in 2012, “At this point it’s isolated to waste lines.”

You may want to take the stairs if you have to go to this building. The elevator doors have a tendency to not open.

I also need to talk about the mold. That’s not the good kind of mold, but the toxic kind that you don’t want in any building. Well, given that water seeped in through the exterior glass, and there are reports of roof leaks, add in Sacramento’s summer warmth and you have a perfect environment for all sorts of gunk to grow.

On the bright side, California paid only $81 million for the building and the repair costs haven’t hit that much…yet. Add to the mix that the BOE is outgrowing the building and now the legislature has to figure out what to do with a building that no one in their right mind wants to work in. Of course, since the BOE pays General Services for leasing the building, and it’s unlikely anyone else would pay anything until all the problems are fully resolved, it’s not likely there will be any volunteers to move into a building that’s a construction zone. While nearby communities such as Elk Grove would pay the state to have the BOE relocate there, the problem is that you’d have to also pay to have someone relocate into a fixer-upper.

Tags: BOE

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 25th, 2013 at 10:23 pm and is filed under California. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.