From episode: EPISODE 02 - Councilwoman Chris Kelley, City of Hercules
Hercules Transportation Hub - It's an area of our city down by the waterfront. Historically, Hercules was a dynamite factory and a corporate town. About 20 years ago, some housing, single-family housing was built. As the city has developed and with the push for more housing in the Bay Area, the city has a plan to bring in multifamily housing, which we're doing now with a Canadian developer Ledcor to develop our Hercules hub, which is walkable to most of our city, particularly the multifamily and town homes. It will incorporate multiple bus routes local and commuter plus The Capital Corridor Amtrak train stopping and hopefully the ferry to take San Francisco, Oakland, and even Redwood City. With three modes of transportation located next to multifamily housing, up to 1400 units, and then some other single-family home neighborhoods in the area that's pretty exciting.
Right now Hercules is in the process of trying to get enough funding, about 12 million dollars total, to finish our complete design. We've been through all the environmental review and so forth, but we've got the backing of the Capital Corridor and we've just gotten $2.4 million from a transit intercity rail grant from the State of California. And we've got an application in for a federal grant. So if we can get that $12 million, then we can completely finish the design and we will be what's called shovel ready, which means when that happens, we can go out and construct, and building the train station will probably take about $100 million total, depending on when we do that. And once we build the train stop, then we will have access to the other side of the railroad tracks, which run right along the bayfront. And then we would hopefully get the ferry because we could have access out to Hercules Point where the ferry could come in. We've already got bus service here now, so I'm just going around and making people aware of and getting folks interested in the Hercules Hub. Over the past two years, we've had a number of officials from MTC, from WETA, the ferry, from a whole bunch of housing people walk through the site and when they come here, they say, oh, my gosh, I never knew that this existed. This is gorgeous. This is beautiful. You folks are actually building housing with transportation. A lot of people talk about it, but we're actually going to do it.
This video gives you some good images of what they're doing there. For more information Hercules Hub https://theherculeshub.com/
One hundred million dollars short after you get the twelve million. Let's look at how the city gets there. First, the city needs to get the money for design. Once that is completed, we start to go through the design and become shovel-ready, and then our consultants will help us go after actual grants for construction. There are a number of grants that they have identified, including Federal grants, and some state grants. The city will also supply some money for that. So it's just kind of piecing everything together. I've spoken with our congressperson, John Garamendi, also with Congressman Mark DeSaulnier, Congressman Mike Thompson, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, and State Senator Nancy Skinner. They're all on board and they're very helpful to us, as is the Contra Costa Transportation Authority. They've already given us some money for this. Additionally, several officials from MTC have come out and they're very excited and supported. But once we're shovel-ready, then that will be a huge move forward. #JaredAsch #HerculesHub #CapstoneGovernmentAffairs
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