Three years after closing, Jim Denny’s Diner is reviving the downtown landmark that has served breakfast and burgers for 85 years for Sacramento residents.
For decades, the 10-seat diner on the corner of 12th Avenue and Terminal Way has a lush box garden at its entrance and flowers blooming year-round. The vegetation has dried up since the eatery’s 2020 closure.
Logan Ivey noticed an empty and trashed sandbox while riding his bike one afternoon and decided to do something about it.
He had only dined at Jim Denny’s once, but “loved the look of the restaurant and the neon signs.” his mission? In his email to The Bee, Ivey said he would improve Sacramento a little bit. He was unavailable for a phone interview.
“Overall, I just wanted to do fun projects to improve the city, even if it was 0.01%. was planting.
With succulents and flowers donated by Propagate, he brought the 17th Nursery and I to life.
He never had a green thumb to begin with. The nursery helped him decide what to use. It took him about 30 minutes.
“He was on a mission to beautify the place,” said Amanda Wong, Plant Design Lead at Propagate. “We really liked his idea and wanted to help him bring it to life.”
Ivey has documented his projects on TikTok, a popular social media app for short videos, with over 113,000 followers.
“I was generally inspired during covid after seeing all these little restaurants close. Seeing so many abandoned buildings and vacant stores in the heart of the city It’s sad,” said Ivey.
Jim Denny’s is one of Sacramento’s favorite restaurants to close during the coronavirus pandemic.
The video has been viewed 47,000 times and has been flooded with comments. Most were about a buried knife pulled out of a planter at the end of a TikTok, temporarily masking good deeds.
Ivey said he later called the police who came to retrieve the knife.