The construction trailers and fencing taking over the diagonal parking on Sycamore Avenue at Tsushima are a sign of big things to come. A very large, very urban, very dense four and a half story (plus basement) building will be the first sign of the transformation of suburban Hercules into a much more mixed-use town. The live-work buildings that house the Powder Keg over in Promenade and the “duets” adjacent to Sycamore North in Bayside already point to the urbanization of Hercules, but this building will dwarf them in size, especially length.

Through design charettes and community meetings the citizens of Hercules created the Central Hercules Plan to guide the city’s growth over the last decade. Any property owners to buy in the city during this time were buying into this vision. Sycamore North may startle people by its size once it’s built, but in reality, no one should be surprised. The dense development of Sycamore North and Sycamore Crossing have been part of our master-plan all along.

Architecturally the building will be rather handsome, with three towers anchoring the design. Two of the towers will be at each end of the project with a landmark stair tower defining the central plaza. The building will be very liner, consisting primarily of two long bars, or wings, that pinch together to form the plaza. To break up the length of these linear wings, the front of the building will be made to look like four different structures. The end portions will have a vertical focus of bay windows and roof caps. The components in the middle will be horizontally minded especially with the fourth floor continuous balcony.  These inner portions of the building are very similar to the project the building’s architect Solomon E.T.C. did at 101 San Fernando in San Jose.

Sycamore North final design, Solomon E.T.C. - WRT

Sycamore North early concept drawings, HDR Town Planning

I’ve created the two preceding collages of Sycamore North: the first is the final design and the second is an early concept. The best aspect of the earlier design was that it consisted of a village of four buildings instead of just one monolithic block-long structure. The earlier concept was also shorter in height at one end, better integrating into the adjacent neighborhood rooflines. My assumption is that the client, i.e., the city, wanted to maximize the rentable square footage on the site, so they went big. The final architect did a good job breaking up the front of the building to make it appear like many smaller buildings, but no amount of subtle setbacks will stop the rather large shadow this single building will cast on the neighborhood to the north.

Sycamore North will be attractive, but perhaps the overall massing could have been less monolithic.

Sycamore Avenue Ground Breaking Today
Date: 5/12/2009 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Cost: Free
Location: Sycamore Avenue near Bayside Homes
Corner of Sycamore and Tsushima

Sycamore Avenue, also called Sycamore North, is a mixed use project consisting of approximately 40,000 sq. ft. of retail and 96 residential units located on the north side of Sycamore Avenue between North Front and Tsushima.