Wareham Development: Sterile, Banal, Corporate

The New EmeryStation Greenway: feels very corporate.

Corporate landscaping, banal architecture:

The Uninspired Wareham Emeryville Development Portfolio

Opinion/News Analysis

"Lick 'n stick" brick on a massive, non-
pedestrian friendly building.
It feels phony because it is phony.  This
building replaced genuine load bearing masonry
buildings waiting to be rehabilitated as the
General Plan dictates.

Wareham Development Corporation, a major developer in the heart of Emeryville, is finishing out their newest property here, 'EmeryStation Greenway' on Hollis Street, giving residents a chance to see how this building will impact the neighborhood: the pedestrian experience, the psychological sense of public space and the overall created general sense of livability for local inhabitants.  Unfortunately what is already evident is that EmeryStation Greenway will just be another Wareham development offering Emeryville residents a sterile and banal corporate street-scape.

The problem is that there is a decided lack of real planning here.

Leftover 'Second International Style' glass boxes
juxtaposed with curtain wall lick 'n stick brick.
Kentucky blue grass and corporate
"Turd-in-a- Plaza" sculpture
completes the picture.

One only needs to observe non-tenant pedestrians as they transect a Wareham building to see the problem:  people don't wish to linger, they're voting with their feet, the (corporate) fountains and flowers notwithstanding.  The experience is one of getting past, usually quickly.  Compare this to a newly redeveloped commercial zone in Berkeley on San Pablo Avenue near Dwight Way.  There, pedestrians stop and interact with each other and with the built environment, a sense of intimacy, even discovery for pedestrians.  There's a sense of funkinesss that's critical to human scale development.
Alas, it's anathema to Emeryville's corporate land use ethos.

Other than the tenants, people walk on by the
parking garage fronted by Kentucky blue grass.

Perhaps being cognizant of the stultifying nature of the architecture here, Wareham has thrown in some details one normally associates with the idea of lingering: along the margins of several of their buildings there are planted flowers, offering a chance to stop and smell.  But it's not working.  Even the planted flowers have a regimented corporate feeling, demoting them to a cookie-cutter developer placed tenant amenity; placed to bump up rents.

EmeryStation Greenway is but the latest of Wareham's 13 developments in Emeryville.  Indeed, the whole center of town, the swath of land bounded by Hollis Street, the railroad tracks and the Greenway heading north is now thrown over utterly to Wareham... and more buildings are on the way.

Wareham's politically connected CEO Rich Robbins has built Warehamland with City Hall's help by seizing private property and tearing down the existing buildings, often of architectural and historic merit, all with taxpayer subsidies. And Mr Robbins' political clout at City Hall has enabled him to build Warehamland with extensive use of planning variances from the Building Department due to the fact that his buildings are too tall according to Emeryville's General Plan.  A less connected developer would not be allowed to so flagrantly and frequently violate our General Plan.

 It's all been very profitable for Mr Robbins but it has helped contribute to the $250 million debt, left over from the former Redevelopment Agency, that must be paid back.

This second floor "park" in the center
of a Wareham building was sold as a public
amenity for the residents of Emeryville with
guaranteed public access 24/7.  The Planning Commission
was impressed.  Ever been to this "park"?

Other large development in Emeryville has generally involved single parcels of land bordered by public streets and sidewalks.  In Warehamland, the public thoroughfares, the major arterial of Hollis Street and the side streets, bisect through the Wareham realm, creating a feeling of the public commons yielding to a private developer's whims.

 The Planning Commission too has abdicated its planning authority to Mr Robbins.  The result is the undemocratic Warehamland; one single man's vision for the very heart of Emeryville.  Rich Robbins has become the defacto designer of the vast center of our town, and the primary function is to serve as a profit center for Wareham.  It has the feeling of a town driven by external ideology, a town without pride or a sense of responsibility to the public commons.