It was in 1989 that the San Joaquin Business Council formed to envision and outline an economic development and prosperity plan for its county. Called Vision 2000, the strategic plan and its backers, including the newly created San Joaquin Partnership, sought to add tens of thousands of jobs to the region by removing barriers to business development and promoting the relocation of companies to San Joaquin.

In 1993 the federal Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission added McClellan Air Force base to its list of potential closures, and the Capital Region drew in its collective breath.

As a resident of fabulous West Sacramento, I was going to start this column with my standard opening line of “West Sac is the best Sac,” but flipping through the pages of our July ’92 issue, I found a quote from Val Toppenberg that said, “Cross-river bashing is not productive.” What a fun-killer.

The year was 1990, and downtown Sacramento was “poised on the brink of one of the nation’s most ambitious development opportunities,” a “landmark project” with the potential to “change and expand our vision of Sacramento and initiate a new era of urban lifestyle.”