Robert Chase, 67, is California’s deputy state architect and the current president of the Central Valley chapter of the American Institute of Architects. In addition to his private-sector work in Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Sacramento, Chase has also served as the chief building officer for both the city and county of Sacramento.

Since filing for bankruptcy last year, Stockton hasn’t seen any immediate improvement. The city ended the year with 71 murders, a steady climb from only 26 in 2009. The rise has been attributed to a shrinking police force after the city slashed the department’s budget.

Bruce Monighan knows a few things about building something out of nothing. Facing the option of unemployment or bootstrapping, the local architect started his Sacramento-based firm Monighandesign from scratch in 1982. By the early 2000s, Monighandesign was completing between 50 and 60 public and private projects annually in markets across the country and looked to expand in 2007.

For all the tales of woe during the real estate downturn, many new homeowners see their purchase as a good move. Debbie Grose, a financial advisor at Lighthouse Financial Planning in Folsom, helped 32-year-old talent acquisition manager Pranav Damle and his wife walk through their decision to buy a 3-bedroom, 2-bath house in Folsom last year.

There is nobody more bullish on the City of West Sacramento than Mayor Chris Cabaldon. He says no city in the region can boast of a better location and, perhaps most importantly, a better water supply. With these two key attributes, the mayor believes the west-bank city is well positioned to attract business, jobs and residents for the foreseeable future.

Among the many risks involved in commercial real estate lending today, energy risk is so poorly understood that lenders simply do not have the tools they need to measure it. This ignorance of energy risk — the likelihood that higher energy costs compromise a building owner’s ability to make their mortgage payments — leads to inflated loans. This is because both efficient and inefficient buildings are judged the same in the eyes of the lender. But UC Berkeley researchers have developed a tool they claim would measure the net benefit of energy savings investments.

After more than a decade of work and a price tag that has grown by 50 percent, representatives for Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento report that the $750 million midtown hospital upgrade is in the final phases and is expected to be finished by mid-2014.

“Something isn’t quite right with Tim Collom. On the outside, Collom is doing far better than most of us. In the past year, he has been featured on KCRA-TV and HGTV speaking about real estate and in the pages of The Sacramento Bee and Sacramento Magazine showcasing his paintings. 

Say what you will about the severity of state and federal budget woes, but it’s arguably the small towns that are bearing the real brunt of today’s economy.