Johnson Delivers Final State Of The City Address To Sacramento

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson delivered his final State of the City address Thursday night at the Crest Theater. The Mayor's final address included several exclamation points to his time in office.

Early in his speech, a video began playing behind the Mayor. It was a roller coaster. The video was paused as the roller coaster had crested the top.

"You guys know this. You've been on these roller coasters. Once you get to this point, there's no looking back. There's no stopping us."

From there, Johnson announced Sutter Health System is donating $5 million to match an existing $5 million dedicated to finding permanent housing for the homeless.

He then announced an investment group called 500Startups will begin investing in Sacramento entrepreneurs, that the cloud storage firm Flippboxx will move its headquarters from Florida to Sacramento, and that the Chinese company Anpac will open its world headquarters in Sacramento.  Anpac says it has developed a blood test to detect all cancers and their locations in people.

"Bringing companies like 500 Startups, Flippboxx and Anpac show that not only can we swing for the fences: it shows we can also run up the score here in  Sacramento. We don't want to be content. We gotta keep pushing."

Johnson says expects to see $5 billion in investments around the Golden 1 Center and expects the Sacramento Republic to be awarded a soccer franchise this year.

Johnson closed with a story about his grandfather, who he says helped people to make their days a little better.

"It is my hope that at the end of my final year, after two terms in office, that the people of this city may look back at my tenure and believe that I left the city just a little bit better...Thank you and God bless you.

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PREVIEW: Thursday night at the Crest Theatre, Mayor Kevin Johnson is expected to layout Sacramento's progress and look at goals for 2016 at the annual State of The City Address.

The city released a statement saying Johnson's address will focus on new developments and opportunities and what it will take to make Sacramento a "city that works for everyone."

One development the mayor is expected to talk about is the 40,000-square-foot co-working and business incubation space in downtown called I/O Labs. The project was announced a couple months ago, but the location was not. 

Brandon Weber, the project director and founder of The Urban Hive (a midtown co-working space) posted pictures of the building, saying Johnson will be announcing the location of the project during his address. 

"Innovation comes from the bottom up. It's very, very cool that the powers that be, the CEOs and the politicians, are doing a lot of stuff to make the city great, but ultimately what's made it great in the last two years are the people rolling up their shirt sleeves and taking risks and working hard to creat and build things," says Weber. "The space is dedicated to those people who create and build things. It's going to give a much higher level programmatic support and financial support to these companies and teams."

Weber told Capital Public Radio, ahead of the announcement, I/O Labs will be located at 7th and J street in a 101-year-old bank building. He says he hopes to move into the space in May and have an offical launch in June.