For credit unions, the ability to provide services in the face of disaster is the measure of a job well done.

Commercial developers hit hard by the drop in property prices are looking at development impact fees to soften the blow to their bottom lines.

The economy has rocked a number of local nonprofits, putting a dent in donations just as they were taking on the burden of increased social needs. Many of these charities have turned to foundations for increased support.

Tucked in an alley between 17th and 18th streets in midtown Sacramento is the first of what could be an emerging pattern of townhomes. Three bright yellow garage doors mark the entrance to two 1,200-square-foot units poised over a 615-square-foot one-bedroom space.

As economic indicators go, Thanksgiving turkey sales are often a good one.

Charles Rieger is building a case for going green. As the executive director of the Solano Center for Business Innovation, the umbrella organization for the newly formed Solano Green Business Council, it’s Rieger’s job to plant the seeds for a greener economy.

Sometimes small things can make big differences. Whether it’s a dry towel, a warm hat or advice on how to create a budget, a little bit of time can have a positive impact on one of Sacramento County’s 4,000 foster youth, many of whom don’t have anyone to provide these basics.

After 19 years of struggling to belong, Juanita Nicolas found the students at Wilson Riles Middle School. As a youth aid, the teenager tutored 40 students, many in the foster care system just as she had been before emancipation a year earlier.

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.

A growing senior population is changing the way society approaches life and death. “People are dying differently now,” says Judy Citko, executive director of the Coalition for Compassionate Care. In the past, patients had to choose between giving up on treatment or forging ahead with sometimes drastic measures. In contrast to the traditional focus on treatment of individual episodes at any physical and financial cost, medical experts, patients and their families are demanding a new way of approaching their final months and years.

During World War II, the U.S. Army put Depot Park on the map as a central location to collect and distribute war supplies to troops on the West Coast and across the Pacific. The military moved out in 1995, but government, nonprofits and businesses of all sizes have continued to leverage the site as a hub for green activities and technological innovations.

Sometimes success is about seeing the potential of a hole in the ground. Well, it also takes a lot of meetings too; just ask the guys who turned the gravel pit on Power Inn Road into what is now Granite Regional Park.

Promenade Parkway is a lonely stretch of road south of Elk Grove. Behind a chain-link fence, a steel skeleton of what was supposed to be the city’s first mall with a Macy’s department store and a 16-screen theater sits in the shadow of developer General Growth Properties Inc.’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy negotiations.

South of Mather Airport is a grassy field popular with nature lovers and school field trips, particularly in the spring when the vernal pools are in bloom.

When Meg Whitman arrives in Sacramento to campaign for the gubernatorial race, she stays at the Citizen Hotel. “It’s her home away from home,” says Mark Mathews, the hotel’s general manager.

Jim Noonan collects frequent flier miles from Washington state to Louisiana and everywhere in between. The senior director for corporate alliances at ev3 Inc., a medical device company headquartered in Minnesota, almost lives in his black GMC truck when he is home in Granite Bay.

For decades, the contours of the Capital Region economy seemed etched in stone. Government, manufacturing and construction employed the bulk of the population. After the boom and bust of the past decade, however, the job profile of the future could be almost unrecognizable.

Rick Bishop is a resolution rebel, and a successful one at that.