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As Marti Brown walked along North Mississippi Avenue in Portland, she thought about Franklin Boulevard in Sacramento, Calif.

Brown, executive director of the North Franklin District Business Association in Sacramento, immediately noticed that little was needed to spruce up the storefronts on Mississippi Avenue. Fresh paint or new signage could be enough to help revitalize older commercial buildings on Franklin Boulevard, she observed.

“A lot of the work (on Mississippi Avenue) was really simple, like peeling back to the original architecture and painting bright colors,” she said. “All of those are things that I think could be very relevant to my district … There’s little things like that – they’re not rocket science – that could make a big difference.”

Brown, government officials, private developers and others representing Sacramento County or Sacramento suburbs Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova in May spent a couple of days in Portland learning about its success with neighborhood revitalization, infill and transit-oriented development. The visit was organized through participation in Portland State University’s Urban Sustainability Accelerator program.

Through the PSU program, a year of support is provided for participating cities to implement sustainability programs. Participants next week will reconvene in Portland to review lessons learned from their visit.

Officials from Sacramento-area cities were especially interested in the program because they’re aiming to compact development and reduce the time residents spend driving their cars, Urban Sustainability Accelerator Executive Director Robert Liberty said.

The recent tour for Sacramento-area officials spotlighted successful infill and redevelopment sites, and included stops in the Central Eastside, on Williams and Vancouver avenues, in the Pearl District and at housing developments Villebois in Wilsonville and Orenco Station in Hillsboro.

“We never say, ‘You should do it like this,’ ” Liberty said. “What we say is, ‘(Here are) some things that are parallel – maybe that can help you.’ I think they do see us as innovators of a different kind of urban development. What we like to do is help them skip over our learning and help them advance more quickly.”

Officials in the Sacramento area can learn a lot from Portland, said Mike McKeever, CEO of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments. The organization spearheaded involvement in the PSU program, and McKeever joined the group’s visit to Portland. Many of the tour attendees hope to emulate the rapid revitalization of commercial corridors like Mississippi Avenue, he said.

“Portland has so many great examples of amazingly fast turnarounds of areas like that,” he said. “It’s really those areas like Mississippi and Williams and Division that really have my folks hopeful that they can steal some ideas and bring that back.”

Several Sacramento-area developers attended the tour. Meea Kang, president of Domus Development, was impressed by how closely public agencies and private developers worked together toward a common goal of infill development.

“It’s about the single-minded prioritization of what those consumers want to see,” she said. “It was a great take-away for our group.”

Portland is ahead of the game in responding to a generational shift where many more people prefer walkable neighborhoods closer to the city core, Kang said.

“It’s starting to change here in Sacramento,” she said. “It’s starting to change in other parts of California. There is absolutely a demand, but there are challenges. It’s frankly a lot easier to build low density than it is to build high density.”

Sacramento County Planning Director Leighann Moffitt said she attended the tour because the county is encouraging development similar to what is happening in Portland.

“We want to create that pedestrian feeling, knowing that the market is changing,” she said.

Brown said one of most insightful parts of the trip was seeing concrete examples of how neighborhoods have been revitalized in Portland.

“I appreciated that Mississippi (Avenue) has had its own challenges being isolated from the rest of the city,” she said. “It was helpful to know that this is not a district that had perfect bone structure. It was just helpful to be reminded that you can work through the challenges.”