Grand Tour.14- Bankruptcy and Battleships- A Trip To Vallejo
The Grand Tour of The Bay Area marched on last month with a visit to Vallejo and adjacent Mare Island. Urban Ambles sailed out there and back on the very pleasant hour-long ferry ride, and once there embarked on an 8 mile stroll through downtown Vallejo, then across the Napa River to Mare Island and back. Here’s the route:
Vallejo
When I got off the Ferry in Vallejo, there was a newspaper stand nearby, and the local paper’s headline was “City to study disbanding police force”- WTF, really?? I mean this city is troubled, but could they really do that? They were actually looking to see if the Contra Costa Sheriff Department would take over. Over course, the CCSD wanted nothing to do with that assignment, but were obligated to give them a “price”. Welcome to Vallejo.
Vallejo is a city of 116,000 that sits along the Napa River. Vallejo was founded in 1850, and was briefly the state capitol. In the 20th century, it became home to much of the civilian workforce that staffed Mare Island Naval Shipyard, just across the River to the west. It’s a diverse city ethnically, economically, and culturally, and has a pretty rich sports and musical past . Vallejo has struggled in recent years, and it culminated in 2008 , when it became the largest city in California to ever declare bankruptcy.
We would later tour the old military museum on Mare Island, and it is filled with photos of the throngs who worked at Mare Island in the middle of the last century, and in these halcyon days, one imagines a bustling downtown Vallejo. And its layout suggests it, the downtown core not a single street but multiple retail blocks, which no doubt at one time were thriving. Today, most storefronts are occupied, but there is a depressed quiet to the place, there was very little commercial activity on the day we were there.
Some of the most compelling parts of Vallejo however are the residential neighborhoods that sit on a couple of hills surround most of downtown. These neighborhoods house a fine collection of century old Victorian and Californian bungalows. The planning in these neighborhoods is noteworthy as the neighborhoods include mid-block alleys. These alleys put cars, garages , and garbage out of eyesight, and also include the occasional carriage house, thus leaving the street for porches and landscape. This is a pattern I always admired while living in Denver, and have always thought this a superior way to plan moderately dense urban neighborhoods, in fact it has been embraced by today’s New Urbanist planning crowd. My problem though with the new work that employs this pattern is (a), the relentlessness of the pattern, and (b) the oft overly nostalgic Truman Show-esque qualities of the architecture.
Before we cross the bridge to Mare Island, some photos :
A curious bank downtown
Downtown Vallejo on a weekday morning
Depression era Federalism
Palm with House
The Saint Vincent’s Hill Neighborhood
A residential alley- with a stray balloon.
A romantic fantasy- for rent!!
Mare Island
Urban Ambles has toured a number of old military bases on this tour, and all are in some state of transition. Some, like Treasure Island and Alameda, have yet to morph, others, such as Mare Island, are in process. Touring these bases has become one of the more fascinating aspects of this tour, each capturing in their own way a snapshot of past, present, and future.
So, a bit of a background. The shipyard was founded in 1854, it was the first such facility on the west coast of the United States, initially under the command of one David Farragut ( later a Civil war hero) , who uttered the famous phrase “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!!”. I can’t tell you how often I have uttered that same phrase, and in a surprisingly varied number of settings. But I digress. The shipyard was noteworthy for having built the first navy submarine on the west coast, building many destroyers, and even winning two Rose Bowls in Pasadena during WWI(wow!). At its peak in WWII, some 40,000 people were employed here, and it was the economic driver for Vallejo:
WW II bond rally
The shipyard in its heyday
Production began to slow gradually after WW II, though it continued operations into the 90′s. Finally, after being identified for closure, it was decommissioned in 1996. In 1998, Vallejo contracted with Lennar Development Co. to redevelop the island. This is the same group that is responsible for redeveloping so much Bay property; they are also currently working on Treasure Island and Bayview/Hunter’s Point. The base itself is a mixture of intense shipyard industrial uses along the river, with offices and officer housing set amongst the century old sumptuously landscaped streets and lawns of the base. Here’s a walk through some of the old base, some parts empty, some gradually being re-purposed.
Shipyard crane
Brick shipyard buildings
Worker entry to old waterfront facilities
Refurbished officer’s housing a future B&B I am told.
The delightful base chapel
The Future
The proposed Mare Island plan , partially implemented , calls for the re-use of the shipyard facilities for light industrial uses, higher education, a mixed use zone, the rehabilitation of existing housing along with the addition of some 1,400 new units. The industrial repurposing is ongoing, and Lennar has built about 20% of the new homes:
About to move an old house
New houses of “Farragut Village” (that’s right)
The new alleys of Vallejo- or invasion of the garbage snatchers
With its components of wetlands restoration, the preservation of buildings, the mix of uses, and future enhanced ferry service , it’s a good plan, despite the dense but predictable cookie-cutter homes. This kind of development is Topic A (well, maybe B with the economy) throughout the Bay Area. Alameda voters just rejected the latest attempt to redevelop the base there, and many Redwood City pols are apoplectic over a proposed redevelopment of the Cargill Salt Flats on the Bay there. For the most part, redevelopment such as this and Treasure Island shows how a balance can be achieved between development and preservation, both natural and man-made, while creating housing in urban settings rather than east of Livermore or south of Gilroy.
Our final stop of the day was the base museum. It closed at 2, and I arrived at 1:58, but they were thrilled that I came- I got the feeling I was the only visitor that day. Two chatty older women staffed the desk, and each time I made my way back to the desk, they would ask me if I went in this room or that. I would say no, and they would lead me back there, turn on the light… this continued for a while. As with all keepers of the flame, there was a mixture of pride and a sense of loss as they spoke, speaking of a time of robust civic pride that will not return here, at least not anytime soon from what I can gather. And I suppose that is the challenge for all of Vallejo, and so many cities like it, discovering new ways for old places, weaving new people into old communities, and creating a climate of opportunity as opposed to the alternative found on the street. Vallejo has struggled with this; for example, an influx of gay and lesbians that brought new life to old neighborhoods in the core area recently was a bumpy transition at times. And parts of the black community here, like others in East Bay, are awash with violence and drugs.
As I walked along the water heading for the ferry home, I tried to imagine what it was like to have lived one’s whole life in Vallejo and at the shipyard, as the woman at the museum had. Much like the city where I grew up, its zenith was the 40′s and 50′s, and then much change. What is it like to see so much change in your hometown over the course of your life? And as she expressed, generally not the good kind. Mare Island does have a plan, but for Vallejo as a whole? Well, I returned to the ferry, and on the way home, I read of how the city wanted to disband the police department.
The Museum
