By Dan Aiello
When Greg Lukenbill and other investors bought the Kansas City Kings NBA franchise in the early 1980′s it wasn’t for the love of the game.
Lukenbill, a Sacramento developer who had purchased cheap flood plain acreage in the Natomas basin, wanted to develop his property in the same suburban sprawl fashion as East of the downtown. But Sacramento’s last citizen mayor, Anne Rudin, who believed in a strong downtown city core and despised the disjointed tract developments of Los Angeles and San Jose, had attained a majority of council members who agreed with her, that Natomas’ flood plain status precluded the area from development.
“Maybe all NBA owners should be charged with unsportsman-like conduct.”