The Waterfront Now initiative received some coverage this weekend…

Hercules project may be put to voters
By Tom Lochner

The would-be developer of a prime chunk of Hercules’ waterfront has hired a political consultant with a track record of large suburban subdivisions to jump-start a mixed-use project around an intermodal transit center that boosters have hailed as a splendid expression of “New Urbanism.”

Tom Koch, who secured the approval of a bitterly contested 11,000-unit development in the San Ramon area earlier in the decade, is seeking to take the Hercules plan, by AndersonPacific LLC, directly to voters.

“It’s completely different from the stuff he’s traditionally done,” City Manager Nelson Oliva said, speaking of Koch. “But this is not going to impact us in a negative way.

“This may expedite the entitlement process.”

Proponents began Thursday to gather signatures on petitions to put a Waterfront Master Plan Initiative on the November ballot; they need about 1,000 valid signatures, representing 10 percent of the city’s roughly 10,000 registered voters, but will seek well more than the minimum, Koch said.

Oliva said that if a lot of people sign the petitions, “the community would be demonstrating that there’s a strong desire to move this project faster along.”

If approved by a simple majority of voters, the ballot measure would amend the city’s General Plan and Zoning Ordinance and approve a development agreement between the city and Hercules Bayfront LLC, a partnership that includes AndersonPacific.

As an alternative to an election, the City Council could respond to the petitions by approving the amendments and the development agreement, Oliva said.

AndersonPacific’s initial plan is for a multimodal transit center with ferry service to San Francisco and an Amtrak Capitol Corridor station just south of Refugio Creek anchoring a Bayfront Boulevard with shops and restaurants, as part of a new community with more than 1,200 homes. Dubbed “Bayfront,” the plan has received accolades from many residents of the nearby Promenade and Bayside neighborhoods.

Many are frustrated at what they see as the slow progress of the vision of a pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly neighborhood with upscale shops, restaurants and galleries that came out of a 2000 city-sponsored planning charette.

One resident, Jeff Wisniewski, said approval of the ballot measure would “cement the plan.” He said he hopes the City Council will approve before it gets to the ballot and make the plan “their own.”

In the early years since the seminal 2000 charette, an earlier developer, city and other government officials and the Union Pacific Railroad, which owns the tracks that Amtrak uses, squabbled over the location of the station platform, which the 2000 concept placed in a curve. Transportation experts considered that unsafe.

More recently, residents accused the city of a “secret plan” to retailor the waterfront to the automobile after a consultant proposed placing the train station north of the creek and a multistory parking garage close to the waterfront; city officials said then that they had not embraced any plan.

“What has occurred here is a lack of decision,” Koch said. “Things have not moved forward.”