Resident Asks Voters to 'Write-In Phil Simmons for Hercules City Council'

Hercules has a soul. You may not notice it, but it is here nonetheless. For decades, Hercules has attempted to smother that soul with car-centric street plans; strip malls and shopping centers with huge parking craters (i.e. parking lots) separating them from the rest of the community; single-use zoning; and a host of other failed approaches to city planning. The idea is that anything that keeps its residents in their cars and in their homes is good. Anything that encourages walking, lingering, and community interaction is bad. Cities are engines they say, and the key to success is keeping segregate everything and have plenty of long, wide roads to facilitate travel between them.

The community west of San Pablo Avenue was supposed to be different. Its form-based and mixed use zoning; its narrow streets and densely packed neighborhoods; and its vision for a Waterfront was supposed to finally bring out Hercules’s soul. Detractors argue that developers aren’t interested in building this kind of community; that Hercules has been, and always will be a soulless suburban community. They like it that way. Maybe they like it because they’ve never seen a better alternative. Maybe they’ve never been to a city that is vibrant, safe, and dense yet not choked with cars. I can tell you that such places do exist. I’ve been to them and can tell you they work – stupendously so.

Unfortunately, the detractors have succeeded in stalling this vision. City Hall failed to market the developable lands west of San Pablo Avenue to developers committed to this kind of development; they stonewalled in issuing permits and completing regulatory studies; they squandered money elsewhere, etc. The dream to create an inspiring mixed use pedestrian-centric neighborhood was stunted by short-sightedness and corruption. We now have mortally compromised future developments like a strip mall in Sycamore South, a residence-only development at Parcel C, and what is morphing to be a residence-only development along the Waterfront. The philosophy behind these developments is focused on keeping people in their homes or in their cars. There is no interest in creating wonderful, rich places to interact with outside. The residences are in their own corner of the neighborhood and the businesses are huddled in their corner with a parking lot moat between the two. This is not how to make a pleasant, sustainable neighborhood. We have an opportunity to create a neighborhood where people want to linger outside, that is attractive and human scale. We can and must do better.

All the candidates you will see on your November ballot support this bleak future. They embrace a future where we sell out to the lowest bar developers who want to build ugly, cookie cutter, quick profit developments using junk planning metrics that didn’t work in 1970 and work even worse now. The only candidate that supports a vision of Hercules with a soul is Phil Simmons and I will be writing his name on my ballot this November.

Neighborhood features like character and soul are not immutable. Developers like Safeway aren’t going to do it. They are actually up to us. This is why I am writing in Phil Simmons for Council this November. He is the only one with the courage and commitment to see this vision through.

Douglas Bright
Hercules