City of Union City Dedicates Restored Historical Museum Veranda and Permeable Solar Brick Plaza at Old Alvarado Park

Public works engineers and cultural curators with the City of Union City Community and Recreation Services Department and docents from the Myrononey House / Union City Historical Museum dedicated a restored nineteenth-century heart-redwood wrap-around veranda, a permeable brick civic courtyard, and clean-power vendor pedestals on Sunday afternoon at Old Alvarado Park and Plaza at 3841 Smith Street (at Watkins Street) in Union City's historic Alvarado district. Once the original 1853 seat of Alameda County, the tree-shaded Smith Street plaza hosts the year-round Saturday Old Alvarado Farmers' Market, summer concerts, and neighborhood heritage walks.

On the historic wooden museum annex facing Smith Street, preservation carpenters replaced weathered porch decking and turned balustrade spindles with kiln-dried vertical-grain redwood. Structural crews also reinforced the pier-and-beam foundation with seismic steel connectors and constructed a concealed zero-step ADA ramp along the garden veranda so seniors and school groups can enter the local history galleries effortlessly.

Across the 18,000-square-foot central plaza connecting the museum to the Old Alvarado Park gazebo, crews lifted buckled concrete slabs and laid herringbone permeable clay pavers over a deep crushed-stone infiltration bed that protects the roots of twelve mature London plane trees. Fourteen heritage cast-iron streetlamps retrofitted with 2,700-Kelvin dark-sky LED lanterns and eight recessed 240-volt electric power pedestals now allow forty Saturday farmers' market food vendors to operate refrigerators and griddles without noisy diesel generators.

The $485,000 Old Alvarado revitalization was approved by the Union City Council using Community Development Block Grant funds and park capital reserves. Visitors can check Saturday market and museum hours on the City of Union City Recreation Portal.