In 1999, with the opening of the Galleria at Roseville looming, property owners in what is now the Sunrise Marketplace were having an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu.

At one time Fulton Avenue was given the ignominious title of ugliest street in Sacramento. It wasn’t completely undeserved.

When West Sacramento-based Clark Pacific went shopping for a third location to expand its precast concrete business, it found a home with a familiar name: the former Spreckels Sugar Mill, just outside Woodland.

California is used to being the trendsetter. The state has led the way on everything from auto emissions standards to stem cell research, but when Assembly Bill 3754 was signed into law in 1994, California was the 40th state to allow the creation of Property and Business Improvement Districts.

As the first Property and Business Improvement District in California, the Downtown Sacramento Partnership has done much more than create the model. In 14 years of operation, it has also set the standard.

By the mid-1990s, it was fair to question whether downtown Stockton was on the path to decay. Crime and blight were major concerns that kept visitors and businesses away, and there was little to suggest a turnaround was in sight.

Rancho Cordova recently celebrated the annexation of a finger of land — Folsom Boulevard east of Sunrise Boulevard and south of Highway 50 — with the rest of the incorporated city.

In the late 1800s the township of Brighton, along what is now Folsom Boulevard and Power Inn Road, was bustling with a racetrack, pony express stop and the distinguished (if unrecognized) title of Sacramento’s first suburb.

Customers of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and other power providers could soon realize the benefits of living on a smarter grid.

Like zombies in a low-budget horror movie, commercial properties in the Capital Region are staggering along in the twilight between life and death.