The following email was sent same day (June 12th) to our city leaders in response to their four-page memo regarding Safeway Station…

Dear Lisa Hammon, City Manager, Mayor & City Council, Planning Commission, Planning Department, Redevelopment Agency, and City Staff:

Regarding the June 12 Memorandum, here are five questions. Most importantly is the last question, number five.

1) How does the building fit into the neighborhood context?

Applying brick or a metal roof to a design doesn’t make it look like a warehouse or make it match or compliment the existing styles on the waterfront.  An arched roof on historic European train sheds always run parallel to the tracks. This reference doesn’t work or make sense when the shed is turned 90 degrees, as is the roof in the current design.  The overall forms and giant glass walls are not reminiscent of historic Hercules as a manufacturing town.  The design is flatly just brick slapped on a conservative 1990s “modern” design.  The station needs to be traditional and match the old-style neighborhood or be a bold, ground-breaking design.  The present solution is halfway in-between those two, and as such, it fails achieving anything other than looking out of place.

2) Why is Szabo the town architect for the waterfront and leading the transit station team?

Richard Thompson, the station architect, may have train station design experience, but design leadership is needed over the team to make this prominent building fit into our New Urbanism waterfront.  Where is this guiding design leadership?  George Szabo has no track record with the people of Hercules regarding strong examples of mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented (New Urbanism) architecture or urban planning.

3) Where is the safety in “Crime Central Square”?

There will be no around the clock, mixed-use activities immediately surrounding the transit plaza.  The only mixed-use buildings are scattered blocks away.  The main building fronting the square, building J, as a civic center will be dark at 2am. The mentioned “active police presence” (a squad car periodically parked nearby), “public safety office in the tower” (sniper command post), and “surveillance facilities covering the center” (security cameras) make for band-aid solutions to a bad design of the concrete plaza.  A mixed-use, small San Francisco ferry building style solution would be much more effective in controlling crime.

4) Where is the incentive for commuters to become patrons and to stay, linger, and interact with our new downtown shops and restaurants?

As the station’s architect described, a “machine of moving people” effectively gets commuters from their cars to the train, but kills the vitality of a mixed-use downtown and transit center.

5) Where is the pubic involvement with the design process?

The intermodal transit station is arguably the most significant building to break the skyline of Hercules.  Why hasn’t there been a stronger emphasis on open public dialog, recent design charettes, or design competitions to democratically harness the prominence of this new GATEWAY (by ferry, train, or bus) to the City of Hercules?  The entire station design up until June 1, 2009, has been done behind closed doors to the general public.  With no feedback, consideration, and response to the general public’s wishes and concerns expressed over the last decade, there has been no public involvement in the station design.

It seems the guiding design force for our new station has been fulfilling functional code requirements rather than creating a beautiful and significant building for Hercules to be proud of.  Functional, conservative, and bland are qualities that do not make for good design, which is needed in this most important building.

Despite what the current team is saying now, the 2007 landmark station design (yellow, tile-roofed building) was very well thought out and developed to a very respectable level.  Most aspects of its design are still effective and very relevant today.  We can do better.

Thank you for your time,

Mike Bowermaster