Precursory Thoughts on Sycamore Crossing
— by Jeffrey Wisniewski — 9 February 2010 — 4 comments below »
I have five preliminary comments on the proposed initial plan for Sycamore Crossing prior to Wednesday’s workshop…
- The buildings adjacent to and facing San Pablo Avenue must be activated. They should have front doors and sidewalks and an interaction with pedestrians along the street. The buildings should not be oriented towards the center (in the suburban style), but outward toward the arterial. Parallel parking along this stretch of San Pablo should be encouraged. It will rejuvenate the San Pablo Avenue streetscape.
- A consistent view corridor should exist through Sycamore Crossing into the central plaza of Sycamore Downtown/North (purple arrow shown above). It is currently shown disjointed, with a break at the first interior cross street. A consistent view will allow drivers and pedestrians along San Pablo Avenue to see the activity throughout the Sycamore district and invite them to go further.
- The proposed driveway entrance at the midpoint of the Sycamore Downtown block is silly (red circle shown above). First, it will cause more traffic issues than solve them (left turns, right turns, drivers in reverse from diagonal parking on Sycamore Avenue). Second, it will be an annoyance for those sitting in the central plaza of Sycamore North with headlights blinding them during their coffee or dinner (especially with the short daylight hours of winter). And third, the utility of traffic will be easily provided by the intersection at South Front Street and the two entrances on Tsushima. This intersection and interior street aren’t necessary from a traffic perspective, and are deleterious overall to the pedestrian experience.
- If the driving entrance is removed (item 3 above), and especially if the view corridor is developed (item 2 above), a delightful pedestrian avenue would become the central focus of the project site (blue line shown above). This would further enhance the pedestrian scale of the Waterfront.
- The Eucalyptus trees currently located along San Pablo Avenue will be removed for the project. This is unnecessary. Although some of the trees may need to be removed during construction, or most of them, certainly not all of them need to. The Eucalyptus trees were planted for a reason — to shield potential explosions at the dynamite plant — and their removal erases another part of the city’s history. At least a few of these trees could remain, if only for cultural significance.
Jeffrey, all are excellent points and I hope they are seriously considered. I too hope they leave (at least some of) the Eucalyptus trees on San Pablo Avenue and I find it unfortunate that so many trees were removed at Duck Pond Park. I continue to appreciate your critical eye, creative ideas, and good sense in challenging the planners of our city.
I could not agree more with your comments, particularly #4. It seems to me that in our model pedestrian friendly development, at least a couple streets could be sacrificed to create a pedestrian avenue. An avenue off limits to vehicles, parking, where café seating could take over and people and children could roam freely. This avenue could also create a great space for city/ neighborhood events such as the National Night Out or a farmers market.
I would like to thank the City’s team for presenting a project I feel needs little alteration. While it’s still very conceptual, I hope something like this ends up being built. I like how much the project engages San Pablo Avenue and I look forward to the parallel parking and median improvements along this street. The only problem (which was discussed at length last night) as I see it, is the desperate need to create a pedestrian link across the intersection of San Pablo & Sycamore Avenues. This would link the two “pedestrian islands” of Sycamore Crossings and Market Town.
I went to the presentation the other night and was very encouraged by what I saw and heard! I agree with comments about making the central street into a pedestrian only street and opening up the view corridor so that the interior of the development is more visible from the surrounding streets.
I have no affinity for the eucalyptus trees on the site though and would be happy to see them all go. It was mentioned in the meeting that eucalyptus is an invasive and non-native species. The Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, National Audubon Society, and the California Native Plant Society are all against the eucalyptus in California. According to the California Native Plant Society “the eucalyptus is a weed. It grows extremely fast and has fewer limiting biological factors in its new environment than native species . . . the large amounts of litter shed by the trees are full of resin and break down very slowly, making it difficult for native plants to gain a foothold . . . no animal species feed on eucalyptus.”
The creek which will flow through the heart of the development is slated to be landscaped with native species throughout. Having invasive, non-native eucalyptus trees in the development would require constant maintenance to keep them from invading the creek area.
In Australia the eucalyptus is called the “widow maker” after it’s dangerous habit of dropping large branches from high altitudes. Last year I saw a very large branch fall from large eucalyptus in duck pond park and this year an entire very large tree fell right across the walking path in this exact same area – so it not just statistics on a website that says these trees are dangerous. This is another good reason why I would like to se all the eucalyptus trees removed from this development. We don’t need widow makers in our public spaces.
We have many hundreds of eucalyptus trees all around our city. I don’t think we need to preserve a few on this particular property for historical reasons.