Inability to get out of your own way (Part 1)
The fateful project
In the East Bay, there lies a city that is perhaps the most crime riddled and has one of the most corrupt governments in the Bay Area. There are a few nice areas to be clear, but our project wasn't in one of those areas. In fact, while a senior housing building was going up next door to our project, one of the construction crews was held up at gun point. We did a site visit once, but opted not to stay long and our future site investigations were done on Google Maps. The civil engineer was reluctant to send a survey crew out to the area past a certain time due to crime concerns.
But boy, did the site have potential. It was next to a freeway with a small creek running through it. There was a BART station nearby though it would be a bit of a hike. On top of all that, there was extensive history to the site. Around 1906, two Japanese families owned much of the parcel and grew flowers in some fields and greenhouses for a living.
During this time, there was much anti-Asian sentiment in California. The Chinese Exclusion Act had already passed several years ago and the California Alien Land Law was passed in 1913 which barred residents ineligible for citizenship from owning real estate, including the Japanese. These families may have been exempted from the law due to ex post facto laws or perhaps they transferred the deeds to their US born descendants.
Then Pearl Harbor happened. With Executive Order 9066, signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Japanese families were forced to concentration camps. In a brilliant illustration of great American People operating in the face of the oppressive American Government, their neighbors did what they could to take care of the properties and assist with the leasing of property so the families could afford to pay their property taxes. After their release from the camps, they returned to their property which had been turned into sleeping quarters for shipyard workers. Other Japanese families in the area had returned to vandalized property and years down the road, more lost their property to eminent domain to build a freeway, which happens to be adjacent to our site.
Through all that, the two families' properties remained though it had in recent years been vacant. Two houses remain along with several greenhouses and a water tower. Some of these structures will be preserved, a park and interpretive center added to memorialize the horrific policies that would hopefully remind us all of the history that should never be repeated.
With all of this history to the site, it was an opportunity to create something extremely special, even with the high density housing going in to help finance the park.
Incompetence right out the gate
Unfortunately, by the time we were brought into the project, a direction was already established by the city. We even received some conceptual site plan from the city, on which probably over a hundred thousand dollars and who knows how many man hours were spent. The concept was utterly useless. It violated its own codes, utilized a building type that would achieve nowhere near the density needed, and in its own depictions of houses, obviously was scaled incorrectly, only allowing a fifteen foot depth for garages (twenty feet is minimum). We discarded it almost immediately, after having a good chuckle at their detachment from reality. Worse yet, some appointed city official that had power over the process, had apparently walked through, and fell in love with, Santa Barbara. I don't disagree with him. The downtown of Santa Barbara is absolutely beautiful with the Mission architecture so interwoven into the urban fabric that the style of architecture had garnered a name unto its own: Santa Barbara style.
But what did this have to do with our parcel in Northern California? Certain areas do have a certain Mission history to it like the Mission San Jose area of Fremont. But our area was not it. Its immediate context was working class to low income single family detached housing including mid century modern and unsophisticated generic 70s-80s architecture. Across the freeway and railroad tracks were generic big box stores and strip malls, none of the Santa Barbara persuasion. A drive around the area netted us a grand total of zero Santa Barbara styled housing. Even a Google aerial flight around the larger area gave us no evidence of Santa Barbara architecture. How about the history? We took a look at the historic houses again. Nope. Not even close. We wracked our minds. Japanese history? agrarian land use? No and no. Does it even attract the target buyers which would be first time home-buyers which tend to be more inclined toward modern styling? Not particularly, no.
It turns out it was as simple as one government official imposing his own nonsensical tastes on the rest of us. It would have been wonderful to do modern agrarian architecture as a nod to the history of the site as well as a modern with some material like corrugated metal siding as both to appeal to the market and another way to incorporate the history into the architecture.
But alas, the government holds all the power. They call all the shots. Without their blessing, there is no project. And without Santa Barbara architecture, this city official will oppose the project. He even said that this project holds an opportunity to do something special. Well, he blew it. So now the poor, crime riddled, corrupt city will get a cool historic park with absolutely absurd Santa Barbara four story architecture to go along with it. At least the one government official will enjoy it.
Continued on Part 2.
In the East Bay, there lies a city that is perhaps the most crime riddled and has one of the most corrupt governments in the Bay Area. There are a few nice areas to be clear, but our project wasn't in one of those areas. In fact, while a senior housing building was going up next door to our project, one of the construction crews was held up at gun point. We did a site visit once, but opted not to stay long and our future site investigations were done on Google Maps. The civil engineer was reluctant to send a survey crew out to the area past a certain time due to crime concerns.
But boy, did the site have potential. It was next to a freeway with a small creek running through it. There was a BART station nearby though it would be a bit of a hike. On top of all that, there was extensive history to the site. Around 1906, two Japanese families owned much of the parcel and grew flowers in some fields and greenhouses for a living.
During this time, there was much anti-Asian sentiment in California. The Chinese Exclusion Act had already passed several years ago and the California Alien Land Law was passed in 1913 which barred residents ineligible for citizenship from owning real estate, including the Japanese. These families may have been exempted from the law due to ex post facto laws or perhaps they transferred the deeds to their US born descendants.
Then Pearl Harbor happened. With Executive Order 9066, signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Japanese families were forced to concentration camps. In a brilliant illustration of great American People operating in the face of the oppressive American Government, their neighbors did what they could to take care of the properties and assist with the leasing of property so the families could afford to pay their property taxes. After their release from the camps, they returned to their property which had been turned into sleeping quarters for shipyard workers. Other Japanese families in the area had returned to vandalized property and years down the road, more lost their property to eminent domain to build a freeway, which happens to be adjacent to our site.
 |
| Historic house on site, photograph part of public record |
With all of this history to the site, it was an opportunity to create something extremely special, even with the high density housing going in to help finance the park.
Incompetence right out the gate
Unfortunately, by the time we were brought into the project, a direction was already established by the city. We even received some conceptual site plan from the city, on which probably over a hundred thousand dollars and who knows how many man hours were spent. The concept was utterly useless. It violated its own codes, utilized a building type that would achieve nowhere near the density needed, and in its own depictions of houses, obviously was scaled incorrectly, only allowing a fifteen foot depth for garages (twenty feet is minimum). We discarded it almost immediately, after having a good chuckle at their detachment from reality. Worse yet, some appointed city official that had power over the process, had apparently walked through, and fell in love with, Santa Barbara. I don't disagree with him. The downtown of Santa Barbara is absolutely beautiful with the Mission architecture so interwoven into the urban fabric that the style of architecture had garnered a name unto its own: Santa Barbara style.
 |
| Santa Barbara courthouse - a modern interpretation of classic Santa Barbara architecture. Photograph courtesy of Photopippo, licensed under CC-BY SA 3.0. |
It turns out it was as simple as one government official imposing his own nonsensical tastes on the rest of us. It would have been wonderful to do modern agrarian architecture as a nod to the history of the site as well as a modern with some material like corrugated metal siding as both to appeal to the market and another way to incorporate the history into the architecture.
But alas, the government holds all the power. They call all the shots. Without their blessing, there is no project. And without Santa Barbara architecture, this city official will oppose the project. He even said that this project holds an opportunity to do something special. Well, he blew it. So now the poor, crime riddled, corrupt city will get a cool historic park with absolutely absurd Santa Barbara four story architecture to go along with it. At least the one government official will enjoy it.
Continued on Part 2.
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