In addition to the value engineering study, other items on the agenda for Tuesday evening’s City Council meeting are also noteworthy. The City Council will commence the design of the sewer system as it switches from the Pinole wastewater treatment facility to WCWD in Richmond. The preliminary design cost is $1.16m. The Council will receive [...]

I have never been a huge fan of the Disneyfication of street names. I prefer classic, traditional street names, and in the Hercules waterfront in particular, I am in favor of names with historical context or meaning. So what follows were my submissions in the Hercules Bayfront naming contest (the first phase of which runs [...]

Up until now, the building across the street from the future Intermodal Station has been a placeholder. Through meeting after public meeting exhaustively discussing the train station, the building across the street was just a blank box. That is no longer the case. The developer AndersonPacific revealed their initial plans for the building during the [...]

In a somewhat remarkable turnabout, the City has released drawings of a redesigned café building that will be the focal point for the transit plaza in front of the Intermodal Station. The newly proposed design incorporates historical features (borrowing from the factory buildings that once stood on the site) and separates itself stylistically from the [...]

Monday evening’s workshop was successful on many levels, while disappointing on others. The landscape design of Dynamite Square is now taking on a form that begins to make the transit plaza something special. Historic elements are starting to be incorporated into the square. The old powder factory had carts on tracks or wooden roadways that [...]

There is no reason to post images of the latest design of the cafe building proposed at Monday evening’s workshop. It is the exact same as the one unveiled on December 17. (Just another day at Waterfront Watch.) At the beginning of the Q&A portion of the workshop, I mentioned to the design team that [...]

The cafe building was presented without alternative conceptual designs and without historical, railroad, local, or cafe precedents. The following paragraphs show three sources of inspiration to hopefully help guide the design. Historic train stations in small towns were buildings of a petite size appropriate for the cafe building. The large overhanging eaves, exposed rafter tails, [...]

A workshop is scheduled for Monday evening — 6:30pm at the Senior Center (next door to City Hall) — to discuss what is now referred to as the transit annex/cafe* and the transit plaza. The previous workshop introduced a modern, mimicked cafe building (I may have mentioned it), but the City’s recent presentation to BCDC [...]

The City listed the design components of the future transit plaza during their presentation to the BCDC design review board on Monday (which apparently went very well, as it should have; there is very little to quibble over with the project as a whole), but it included a more historic-themed hipped-roof cafe building as inspiration [...]

The staff report for BCDC’s initial design review of the Intermodal Station included an outline of construction phases, as well as a corresponding and somewhat complex figure that shows the construction phasing of station elements in plan (click image to enlarge)… Two items of note… the transit plaza and cafe building will be part of [...]

BCDC’s design review report also includes a summary of future phases of the Intermodal Station, including the proposed cafe building…. Phase 2 — The construction of a café/retail building at Bayfront Boulevard with a covered transit waiting area adjacent to the Transit Loop and public restrooms, and an approximately 12,273-square-foot Transit/Civic Plaza in front of [...]

The city of Crockett has a handsome community board that is prominently located on Pomona Street (across from the high school). It is one of my favorite parts of a very charming city… I think it would be neat to have something similar in our planned transit plaza: an old-fashioned message board, possibly covered beneath [...]

When the Planning Commission made their recommendation on the design of the train station on October 5, 2009, the commissioners asked the design team how the modern design of Alternative 1 would work with the planned development that would surround it. The design team deferred to the developer (Jim Anderson of AndersonPacific) to answer the [...]

I should be clear. The proposed cafe building isn’t ugly, or bad architecture, or anything like that. It mimics the train station. It is what it is. When the design team, however, stresses the importance of the historic element in public workshops (i.e., rhetoric), and at the same time, the design team presents a modern [...]

When I labeled the cafe building, or mercado, as uninspired in a recent post, that wasn’t entirely true. The architect did, in fact, have inspiration for his modern design: himself. The cafe building is meant to carry the architect’s modern interpretation of a train shed forward through the transit plaza, engulfing the civic space that [...]

Outside of commissioner reports, the only item on Monday evening’s agenda for the Planning Commission — 7pm at City Hall — is a presentation on the status of the Intermodal Station and related infrastructure improvements, including Creekside Park, bridges and the temporary parking lot. One item that apparently will not be included in the informative [...]

The City doesn’t seem to get it; neither does the architect. It is frustrating. At last night’s transit plaza workshop, the City unveiled its latest — and apparently final — design of the cafe building (or mercado) which will define the transit plaza, and it is not good. The building does not resemble, reinforce, or [...]

In the site plan below I’ve proposed a few names for our future waterfront… I feel the transit plaza is the heart of our waterfront because of the importance of the train and ferry station and the adjacent community building which could also be thought of as a town hall. Town halls, train stations, or [...]

A workshop for residents to discuss the transit plaza is scheduled for Thursday evening, 7pm, at the Senior Center (next door to City Hall). I’d think an antique (or replica) station clock, e.g., as shown below, placed somewhere in the public space would be neat… There is a replica clock in the historic part of [...]

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, [...]

The video of the waterfront workshop is now available online.   In the question and answer portion of the presentation, concerns regarding the station’s architectural style as well as the transit plaza design are brought into question.

In anticipation of the upcoming Waterfront Workshop, I thought it would be good to reflect back on the design history of the project site as the Anderson Pacific/Oso Trabuco land continues to move forward. Arguably the most important aspect of our waterfront is the Intermodal Transit Center. Without it, our downtown would lose its main [...]