New Kings arena update

After months of quiet prep work, the Sacramento Kings downtown arena construction project goes public this week.

Crews will be restriping J, L and Fifth streets, pushing traffic away from the site to give the project elbow room. Workers will erect 9-foot noise-dampening walls at key spots in the streets around the project in the next few days, allowing space for the first of up to 16,500 dump truck trips hauling demolition debris and dirt over the next few months. Tractors were being delivered to the site. Some demolition begins Friday.

-- Sacramento Bee

Construction crews are pouring a lot of water on the site of the new Sacramento Kings arena. But not as much as you might think.

Some Sacramentans who witnessed the early days of work at Downtown Plaza have contacted The Bee, wondering why the crews are hosing down the demolition site in a time of severe drought.

According to the Kings, the water use is considerably less than if Downtown Plaza remained open as a shopping center. The construction project uses only 14 percent as much water as the mall did, according to the team.

-- Sacramento Bee

With remarkable speed, the eastern half of Downtown Plaza is being reduced to a pile of rubble and recycling materials.

A media tour of the Sacramento Kings arena site Thursday showed the amount of progress that