Today I meet with some crazy suburbanites like myself who are fervent in their
desire to Save the Dome. I offered to write an appeal of the Planning
Commission’s decision – a document that needs to be ready by late next week.
I’ve never written this kind of document before, and feel like I the lack basic
background to do so. I'll do a pathetic job. Being a lawyer might help. Or an urban planner. I’m just a journalist who has done some
reporting on city government issues and seen development projects go through
the process, so I have only rudimentary knowledge of how all this works.
I feel pretty rag tag and out of my element. I don’t have a lot of time to spend on
something like this. I have other projects due – the kinds that help me and my
family pay the bills. I don't have the deep pockets and staff of SyWest, the developer that wants to destroy the Dome and replace it with a 73,000-square-foot DICK's sporting goods store.
But I tell my husband I have to do this. I realize that the
destruction of Dome CineArts movie theater may be a “done deal,” as City Council
member Jack Weir so famously said. City planners, city staff and SyWest say they have been at this project for years and years, and SyWest, which owns
the Dome property and first built the theater in 1967, likes to say it has struggled
mightily to figure out how to develop that southern end of the long neglected
shopping center – struggled with certain legal limits on the space and with
restrictions having to do with tenants and the other owners of the properties of the
shopping center.
So, I realize the Dome’s demise is probably inevitable, but
I have to do what little I can to fight that threat. And stand up with all the other people in
Pleasant Hill and surrounding communities who agree that this is just a wrong,
cynical, sinister, short-sighted and culturally backwards thing to do.
The other Dome lovers are similiarly rag tag. You could see them by the dozens at the protest outside
Pleasant Hill city hall before Tuesday night’s Planning Commission meeting.
They include long=time Pleasant Hill residents who have been taking themselves,
their children and grandchildren to see movies at the Dome for nearly half a
century. They include men and woman who
appreciate that the Dome is not just a commercial enterprise but an arts venue
showing one of the 21st century most popular forms of art: film. They appreciate that the Dome is
the only venue in the East Bay suburbs and on this side of the Caldecott
Tunnell showing the kinds of films that are the alternative to the usual CGI,
action, blow-em-up blockbuster.
These are the independent, art-house films that the movie industry actually recognizes as having its own demographic and strong following among educated,
discerning, and financially influential consumers.
The other Dome fans may not have lots of financial influence
just yet but they are in the demographic that movie makers and retailers (like DICK's) like to go after. They are in their early 20s and just started out in their lives. They are young hip, sophisticated, and highlight educated Pleasant Hill natives
who grew up going to movies at the Dome CineArts. Some maybe had their first
jobs in high school there, and have moved away from Pleasant Hill as they
pursue their college education at UC San Francisco, San Francisco State and
other colleges. Giorgio Sassine, who started the Change.org petition, signed by more than 2200 people, is a Pleasant Hill native who is studying law at UC San Diego.
By the way, SyWest, in the kind of opposition research
usually reserved for the nasty underbelly of presidential political campaigns, submitted a report to Pleasant Hill’s
Planning Commission claiming that Sassine is “not even a resident of Northern
California.” I
showed that report to his father, who attended the Planning Commission meetings. “That’s bullshit,” he said. “Geirgio’s addres is Pleasant Hill.
A group of college students at the protest were on spring
break, but were taking their time off to go see movies at the Dome, like the critically acclaimed indie hit Spring Breakrrs. And then they took the time
to join the protest. Students from Diablo Valley College were also in attendance, including a young woman reporting on the Dome’s
proposed demise for DVC’s Inquirer student newspaper. As much as she was trying to do an objective report on the
Planning Commission meeting, she expressed surprise and shock that anyone would
want to destroy the Dome. She echoed the
sentiments of many in the crowd of protesters, “The Dome is Pleasant Hill." She added it’s a popular movie-going destination for DVC students.
Yes, it’s the most distinctive building in town and it does
carry an almost indescribable amount of meaning to thousands of people across
the region.
Some say it is an eyesore.
Well, SyWest Development hasn’t exactly done much with keeping the
Dome looking as fresh and new as it good be.
The Dome has its own amazing, unique beauty, much more than the
generic, big box looking DICK's sporting goods store that would replace it.
I’m
sorry, DICK’s may have 500 stores across the country but here, its effort to
replace a beloved cultural icon is nothing short of dickish, and all that this phallic imagery implies.
DICK's has those big green signs with big white letters announcing
“DICK’S. It became clear in Tuesday’s
planning commission meeting that the phallic imagery of the word DICK’s so highly visible on the sign was very much on the minds of planning commissioners as they tried oh--so hard to phrase their use of the word DICK's carefully in their discussion of sign size so that it wouldn't hang in their air in some sort of embarrassing, giggle-producing double entendre.
DICK’s.
Meanwhile, you have the Dome, which has its own retro
aesthetic. The Dome is indeed the coolest place in town and one of the coolest places along the Interstate 680 corridor. It’s Man Men chic. It's go-go boots and flower power and Laugh-In and the Summer of Love. It's the Apollo moon landings. It is totally Space Age and it holds everything of US aspirations of that post-war era to create a better world.
The Dome with its beautiful white roof – which, yes, could
use a good power washing.
I am utterly disheartened that a city wouldn’t do more to
try to save this building, when it is only four years shy of being eligible for
listing as a California Historical Resources. I am also dismayed by the city’s
willingness to rush through this project when it finally became public in
December, and despite the thoughtful misgivings of one commissioner, Jim Bonnato, who voted against SyWest proposal:
“I think this particular project meets the letter of the law but it doesn’t give Pleasant Hill the quality of a shopping center it should have," he said.
"The Dome has been imploded,” he declared. “Meanwhile, the Dome’s replacement involves a Dicks’ sporting goods store brightly displaying its four “Dick’s” signs."
"I think we have deserve a lot better," Bonnato continued. “I’d love to see the developer go back the drawing board and get more creative and give Pleasant Hill an updated center. I don’t think this is updated. We should see something better."
If only Bonnato's fellow commissioners had that much discernment. Thank you Bonnato for having the courage to speak up.
I am disgusted by SyWest, despite President Bill Viera’s
expressions of sympathy and the crocodile-tear-like emotion he displayed when
talking about how SyWest’s parent company, Syufy built the Dome, and the Syuyfy
family has a lot of attachment to it.
I am embarrassed for the leaders who Pleasant Hill, who fail
to appreciate an icon in their midst, who are willing to sacrifice it for yet
another sporting goods store that may or may not succeed in that space and that
may or may not bring those sales tax revenues the city is so eager to
accumulate. They see DICK’s as some kind
of golden ticket to a more attractive, profitable shopping center. I see it as yet another strip mall coming to
Pleasant Hill--a city that has long struggled, next to its more defined
neighbors, to create a brand, an identity.
Pleasant Hill has long been looking for its There.
Well, it has its There in the Dome, and now it wants to destroy its There for a
DICK’s.
Without the Dome and the cultural delights it offers inside,
Pleasant Hill--as one of those rag tag Dome supporters said--becomes just a
town you pass through on the freeway.
The other rag taggers, who are even more new than me to the
labyrinthine, legal process of city planning, are full of passion for the Dome,
and full of wonderful ideas for making it an even more lively, exciting venue
that would put Pleasant Hill on the map. But the word is that they are much too
late. The big giant bulldozer destruction lurks just beyond city limits.
Too bad I and the other rag-taggers didn’t dutifully follow
the City of Pleasant hill website all these years—as any reasonable person would if they didn’t have a
million other things going on their lives—to find out when the next commission
hearing would be on such usually well-attended topics as set backs and parking
demand, as they relate to Sub Area II – the area of the shopping center where
the Dome is located. Hey, maybe we’d be
more up to speed with this project, even, though, according to city documents
and senior planner Troy Fujimoto himself, the plan to destroy the Dome didn’t become public
until December.
But by then, it was apparently all too late. City staff and
SyWest no doubt had been discussing the DICK’s plans for months outside of
public purview, as cities and developers tend to talk amongst themselves. By the time the Dome's destruction
proposal was finally on the table and supporters of the Dome started to gather
signatures and develop their rag-tag movement of students, film lovers and retirees dedicated
to its preservation – well, too bad about their efforts, from the perspectives of the city and its friends at SyWest—too
bad that it was all too late.
But oh, we can always try. We can don our Man of La Mancha
costumes and dream impossible dreams, and fight unbeatable foes.
The cause may be hopeless, but sometimes life presents us
with hopeless causes, and we get a choice. And we can choose, depending on
where we are in our lives. We can choose to crumble and accept the
less-than-ideal, the mediocre, the soulless, the mendacious, the agent of
destruction that obliterates a place and idea that brings beauty to our world –
because this agent of destruction met the guidelines set down in a city’s specific plan.
