Neighborhood emerges on a former dynamite plant

Few California cities in financial difficulty carry out first-rate planning. When governments feel pressed for income, they usually grab for auto malls, big-box stores, or whatever else will bring tax revenue. So it’s remarkable that Hercules, a city of eight square miles and 20,000 people in “the unfavored quarter of the Bay Area,” is nurturing one of the best new urban projects in northern California. On land where for decades the Hercules Powder Company made dynamite, the municipality is establishing close-knit neighborhoods with live-work units, small shops, and well-crafted houses — within a short distance of a possible commuter ferry terminal and a potential rail station. Buyers are responding enthusiastically — many of them paying approximately $600,000 for houses on small lots in Hercules’ 125-acre Waterfront District. The District’s master developer, the Bixby Company, had never undertaken a new urbanist project until starting work about three years ago in the hilly, formerly industrial town about 16 miles northeast of Oakland. John Baucke, previously vice president and now a consultant for Bixby, says the company — a development subsidiary of Bixby Ranch Company, an old California land-holding firm — decided to plunge into New Urbanism after determining that the municipality’s plan would probably generate more profit than a conventional development. Bixby saw the mix of uses and the pedestrian scale, along with tight architectural controls, as boosting the development’s value. “We did engineering estimates on the alleys, and they showed we would get a little more revenue” than would a conventional pattern with garages facing the streets, says Baucke. “We had noticed,” he says, that the city’s plan for the area contained something rare in California development: “all the elements of a true place.” When single-family houses in the District’s first neighborhood, Promenade, went on the market a little over two years ago, their prices ranged from $426,000 for a 1,549-square-foot model to $717,500 for a 3,240-square-foot dwelling. Now largely complete, the 47-acre neighborhood has 217 detached houses on lots that vary from 3,000 to 5,500 square feet. Some properties feature rentable one-bedroom “granny flats” above the garages, overlooking the alleys. Prices have escalated. By January of this year, detached houses in the District’s second neighborhood, Baywood, commanded prices that ranged from $584,000 for 1,469 square feet to $642,000 for 1,852 square feet, even though they occupy lots averaging just 2,250 square feet. One expense that raised the development costs in the Waterfront District was environmental cleanup. Though some environmental remediation occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, Bixby had to do further cleanup costing about $7 million. “We covered ourselves and made a reasonable return,” Baucke says of the results so far. HOW IT STARTED After the dynamite plant closed in the early 1970s, Hercules evolved into a bedroom suburb that continued to reap sales tax revenue from an oil refinery near San Pablo Bay. The refinery closed in the 1990s and officials eventually realized that the city had to find new sources of revenue. As it happened, a community activist living in the small National Register district near the old dynamite plant was named to the city’s planning commission and then, about four years ago, was appointed the city’s director of community development. The activist, Stephen Lawton, had spent much time learning about New Urbanism from Peter Katz, author of The New Urbanism. At Lawton’s urging, the Planning Commission educated itself — listening to speakers on “good urban design,” reading books, and attending workshops on that subject. In time, the city decided to apply the principles of New Urbanism to the waterfront and to some other parts of the 426-acre Central Hercules District. In June 2000, Dover, Kohl & Partners led a city-sponsored charrette, which the following year resulted in adoption of a regulating plan and two design codes — the underpinnings for a tightly controlled TND. “It was the first form-based code in the Bay Area,” Lawton boasts. Visual simulations by Urban Advantage, market studies by Zimmerman/Volk Associates, and further planning by David Sargent of Sargent Town Planning set the stage for transforming the waterfront. “This is the unfavored quarter of the Bay Area, this was the industrial belt,” Lawton says of the area stretching from Richmond, on the northeast shores of San Francisco Bay, eastward along San Pablo Bay. Parts of the “belt of deindustrialization” are now succumbing to sprawl. Lawton sees the Waterfront District as sprawl’s antithesis — a place where it will be possible to live, shop, dine, and work, and perhaps catch a train to San Jose or a ferry to San Francisco. Baucke estimates that within five years, the waterfront may have approximately 170,000 square feet of retail, live-work, and mixed-use space. That will help the city financially. Most commercial spaces will range from 600 to 1,600 square feet, for restaurants and “specialty retail.” The plan includes three categories of businesses. “Restricted use” includes professional offices and shops that sell goods made on the premises. These activities generate little traffic and will be allowed near single-family houses. A second category, “limited use,” allows “everything but restaurants,” says Sargent. A third category, “open use,” permits restaurants and other boisterous commercial activities. One of the busiest parts of the District will be a “transit village” featuring a mixed-use center and 420 to 460 apartments. As part of the waterfront project, old buildings associated with the dynamite company will also be rehabilitated and reused. Lawton says the Capitol Corridor passenger train line, which runs through Hercules on its route between Sacramento and San Jose, is expected to add a stop in the Waterfront District. The regional Water Transit Authority may also establish a ferry terminal on the waterfront. HOMEBUILDER RESISTANCE Though the municipality made it clear that homebuilders would have to produce well-executed, regionally appropriate house styles such as Italianate, Victorian, and Craftsman, builders who agreed to construct houses in the District later sued the developer in an attempt to overturn the restrictions. They were used to building stucco boxes, and they didn’t want to change. In the end, they had to. Dan Parolek of Opticos Design, current “town architect” for the project, credits Baucke and the Bixby Company with “holding fast to their vision of a high-quality TND.” Parolek also praises the Hercules Planning Commission and City Council for understanding the need for quality and refusing to give in. In Promenade, built by Western Pacific Housing, the results are impressive. With Hardiplank or Hardishingle cladding, deep porches with wooden railings, traditional proportions, and generous window surrounds, the houses look solid. “This is about as good as you can get out of a production builder,” Parolek says. To ensure that the houses are built as they’re supposed to be, Parolek conducts site inspections nearly every week. It’s a constant struggle, he says. “Every time a new builder comes on, we have to educate them from point zero.” Baucke says the new urban plan and the insistence on quality have served the builders well. “Usually a builder schedules two to four houses a month,” he says. “Here they’re selling four to five per week.” Prior to construction, Bixby estimated that house prices in Promenade would average $400,000. In fact they came to market at $475,000 to $525,000, and the last units sold in the mid-600s. Part of this can be attributed to overall price escalation in the Bay Area, but Parolek also credits a high standard of design by John Reagan Architects. “There definitely was a premium as people saw it being built,” he says. Not all is perfect. Taylor Woodrow Homes’ Baywood development, where free-standing $600,000 houses on tiny lots have no back yards, strikes some visitors as cramped. The houses’ second-floor living quarters, as well as their garages, abut the alleys. For most Baywood residents, the only private outdoor spaces are narrow side yards. Dr. Dottie Needham an advanced-practice pediatric nurse and chair of the Nursing Department at Dominican University, toured Baywood and questioned whether houses with such minimal outdoor areas would serve the needs of children or would aggravate the current epidemic of childhood obesity. “Will children be encouraged to stay indoors with television and video games, since spontaneous outdoor play sites are not readily available?” she asked. Parolek replies that “a lot of park space exists along preserved creek corridors” in Baywood, and he adds that the side yards, with small inset patios, offer some outdoor space. A small park will be built nearby. As for the elimination of back yards, Parolek says, “That’s what the real estate pressures in California are [doing] right now.” A house without a back yard is “the latest typology,” he says. “If you design them correctly, there are side yards that are usable.” Some Waterfront District residents are upset that a Wal-Mart shopping center has been proposed for a nearby 17-acre section of the Central Hercules District. Lawton says an automobile-oriented shopping center had been envisioned there for years — a concession to the municipality’s need for sales tax revenue. The city had expected it to be anchored by a supermarket and a drugstore, but a commercial developer encountered problems, which injected Wal-Mart into the picture. “A big box on that parcel is not a Transect violation,” Lawton says in defense. “It’s where a big box would belong.” The shopping center plan, he emphasizes, improved road access to the emerging Waterfront District and made the new urban undertaking more financially feasible. The former dynamite town, which now calls itself “the dynamic city,” is proud of what it’s accomplished. “It’s basically nailed New Urbanism in California,” says Lawton. “If we continue to produce at that level, we’re going to have a model for people in the development industry.”