Historic Alamedatowne

I didn’t make it out to the Alameda Point Task Force meeting last week, I simply figured that I could catch it on-line, which I did.  Turns out, it was eerily similar to the meeting on the Hornet, but without the really great turnout.    John Knox White at Stop, Drop and Roll has some reflections from the meeting here, but what did stand out to me, is something that John KW had captured:

…Historic Preservation was a theme from a couple of speakers. However it’s time for the discussion to move beyond “Save every building plus a couple of others” and on to a discussion of what Alameda Point is going to be and how historical preservation can enhance it. I am concerned, as one of the speakers Wednesday night mentioned, that the current discussion focuses too much on maintaining a military base, rather than a vibrant neighborhood that reflects its past. We need to decide, and I’d suggest that never 15 years of public process already has, whether we want to create a WWII “Historic Williamsburg” without the reenactors, something that could very well become a big drag on city finances and is probably financially infeasible due to the infrastructure and clean-up costs. Or are we aiming to create a neighborhood that reflects and complements our existing city with it’s mix of historical and new buildings and that contributes to the both the financial, the amenities and the character of our city…

During the meeting one of the first speakers jumped all over the idea of historic preservation right away and made the contentions that many (I believe she might have said 13) of the tables were concerned about some element of historic preservation.  In fact, she went as far as to say that several people made note that the greenest building is one that is already there.   When in actuality it was one person who said that, maybe it was the rest of the table that tacitly agreed to, but during the report out on the Hornet, only one person actually said that the greenest building is the one that is already there.  Which may be true to a certain extent, but I don’t know how “green” some of the buildings are at the point that may be dilapidated to the point that they are uninhabitable without serious rehabilitation.    But anyway, I digress.

Look, I’m not a preservationist, I do see the value in maintaining some of the buildings on Alameda Point to maintain the history of what used to be there, but just because something is old doesn’t necessarily mean that it needs to be saved.   I felt as though Task Force member Ann Cook did a nice job with challenging the notion that everything needed to be saved out at the Point and asking the member of the public what she felt as though was significant about some of the buildings and whether they all needed to be saved or if a few could be maintained in order to capture the flavor of what was happening.    Personally, I found the reason proferred by the person who said that not enough historic buildings were going to be maintained to be really weak.   It involved something about the hangars being significant (seaplane and land based) because it showed that was the type of activity that was going on during World War II.  

At this point, if there is the continuing insistance that it be “all the historic buildings” or nothing, it really will feel as though the preservation community  is out to create some sort of standing homage to World War II activity but without the people in fancy dress talking about how to churn butter or build a better aircraft.  I recall at the meeting on the Hornet, one of the people at my table was pretty unsure of why she was there except to say that she really wanted the Big Whites to be saved.   That was pretty much her only goal and that she had received correpondance from the Preservation Society asking folks to get out there in order to talk about the historic buildings out at the Point. 

While I’m sure that some of the buildings are historically significant, they can’t all be.   Some of the housing looks like typical military housing that you can see on military bases everywhere, like Treasure Island, I’m sure Mare Island has some as well.  And whiel I know some folks see charm in the hangars, one or two would be welcome but keeping all of them wouldn’t work to make Alameda Point feel like a community, just like a poorly planned military base.

I think that the expectation to save everything is completely unreasonable, I know that SunCal has offered to work (and has worked) with the Preservation community to talk about what is considered significant out at the Point along with their Preservation consultant (and big Oakland power broker) Phil Tagami.  

While I know that folks have reservations about even doing anything at Alameda Point, I think the question remains that since something is going to be done, whether it is done by SunCal or done in piecemeal whether we want to build a community at Alameda Point or just make it look like a military base with converted uses inside. I honestly think, however, that if SunCal doesn’t work out and the project is done in piecemeal, the Preservation Community is going to have a much bigger battle on their hands trying to convince several developers to save all the buildings they want as opposed to holding leverage over one developer to save a large majority of historically significant buildings.