Real estate sales and values have plummeted 40 percent the past few years, but the commercial retail market is buzzing with hungry buyers hunting both bargains and gems.

Thousands of Sacramentans soon can walk out their front doors and take a few steps to the American River Parkway, to light-rail, to shops and restaurants and maybe even to their workplaces.

When city of Sacramento leaders sat down in January 2008 to construct the River District Specific Plan, they had an ambitious goal: Take an industrial area with a high concentration of social services and turn it into a picturesque pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly community with housing, retail and office space — all while maintaining a welcoming atmosphere to everyone already there.

The scenes of twisted metal, splintered wood, crumbling brick and flooded streets are still vivid to Kit Miyamoto, a Sacramento-based engineer who follows earthquake destruction around the world. But he’s not just seeing these images in Haiti, Chile or Japan.

Since 1985, when the Sacramento Kings played their first game in a temporary facility in north Natomas, we in the region have argued over whether, where and how to build an arena that works for fans, the team, its owners and taxpayers.

When Kevin Marshall co-founded a real estate valuation firm in 2001, his first order of business was to bust down the walls.

Spring weather has graced area ski resorts with abundance, dumping generous volumes of snow on the slopes for giddy guests.

When California’s building industry began to crumble in 2008 — with 2009 producing the lowest number of homes built since 1954 — veteran contractors like Jim Bayless scrambled to reinvent themselves.

Since the founding of our state, courthouses have been the focal point of many communities. They are at once tangible symbols of the rule of law, monuments to our democratic ideals and the primary point of contact between the citizens and the judicial system. And, they are all but falling apart.

If you think starting a business during a recession is a risky enterprise, imagine putting your entrepreneurial faith in the commercial future of a river flowing to a desolate wilderness.