Alameda’s waterfront is being transformed. The rest of the Bay Area should take notes

These juxtapositions of rough and refined, urban and nature, hint at why developers for 20 years have sought to remake the western two-thirds of the former Alameda Naval Air Station. After numerous false starts, the first pocket of new construction is wrapping up — and it shows how our bay shoreline can accommodate change while serving people who don’t necessarily live or work there.

This doesn’t mean the emerging landscape is flawless, far from it. Portions of the housing are exasperating. But the big moves are spot-on, fueled by a properly expansive notion of what the public realm should be.

The new elements include a ferry terminal that, for now, is offering $4.50 Clipper rides taking you direct to San Francisco, and a three-acre waterfront plaza that opened quietly this week. The first four residential blocks include 128 subsidized apartments for, among others, low-income families and formerly homeless veterans.

Alongside the housing, a linear park with a friendly playground is already popular with families on this island community of 80,000 people. Within those blocks, landscaped passages are designed to offer shortcuts for strollers — and absorb the runoff from heavy storms while appearing lush the rest of the year.

All this is a marked contrast to the scene that existed for generations, a fenced-off military zone of low buildings amid large parking lots or supply yards. Some of those structures now hold a variety of tenants that include a large brewery, but many of the 1,560 acres look no different than when the Navy decommissioned the base in 1997.

That’s what makes the new Waterfront Park such a compelling presence at the west end of Atlantic Avenue, a boulevard that extends across the north half of Alameda island. It offers a little bit of everything, from a waterside promenade to picnic benches, a grassy plateau and a comfortable new stretch of the Bay Trail. One concrete walkway is embedded with a chronology that commemorates the site’s past.

Beyond this or that design detail, what shines through is the clear signal that this is a space for everyone, whether you intend to stroll or sunbathe or gather with friends.

“We wanted to create a variety of ways for people to experience the waterfront,” said April Philips, the landscape architect for Waterfront Park.

To do this means confronting the realities of climate change: much of the former base is on filled land that’s not much higher than today’s sea level. Even a modest increase in average tides could imperil the existing shoreline.

To accommodate this, the promenade sits atop the bulkhead built by the navy — but then there’s a set of landscaped tiers that climb five feet to the picnic tables and recreational areas. The tiers told native plants that can absorb the occasional high waves.

“A lot of people like to walk along the water, and the bulkhead is historic,” Phillips said “This allows for (periodic) inundation” while the larger park shields the interior long-term.

Another gesture to the outside world is the treatment of West Atlantic Avenue by GLS Landscape Architecture. There are bus lanes and separated bicycle paths beneath chic silvery lampposts, with a broad sidewalk on the north. The median is an eco-friendly bioswale, intriguing enough to make you want to jaywalk for a closer look.

Not only that, the final block of West Atlantic Avenue is level with the plaza — the idea being that it can double as a setting for food trucks or large gatherings, though neither is in huge demand right now. Shared streets of this nature have been talked about in San Francisco for years, but none have been built at such an inviting scale.

“What we tried to do is focus on the experience of how the public connects to all this,” said Andrew Thomas, Alameda’s planning director. “Atlantic Avenue is the front door. It has to be the best of the best.”

The housing, sadly, is more formulaic.

The blocks that have been developed begin with three-story condominiums where Alameda Point faces older, more suburban homes. Next comes the affordable housing and then Aero, which opened last year with 200 apartments in a pair of four-story buildings. Construction should start this spring on the final piece of the first phase, a 7-story apartment building across from Waterfront Park.

Graded on the curve of infill housing projects elsewhere in the Bay Area, the first batch of buildings isn’t bad. The architecture is a notch above other projects of similar size. Even so, there’s a boiler-plate feel. You can tell the different market-rate blocks were erected by individual builders who purchased the sites from the master developer, Alameda Point Partners, and then tweaked the standard product to fit local rules.

One example: Aero. The winged roof line and the prow-like entry’s corrugated metal skin are friendly nods to an area that held a U.S. Army airfield before the navy arrived. So are the streamlined white curves where Aero’s two structures part to make way for a mid-block passage. The design tells you to come on in — except that you’re blocked by a glass security gate making it clear that the path is for tenants only.

Plenty here is still in flux.

The original deal with the Navy only allows 1,800 new units in all of Alameda Point. But with the state pushing cities to make room for large amounts of additional housing, it’s an obvious place to increase density.

Not just because of state pressure, either. More residents and more workers, many of whom would use the ferry to San Francisco as part of their daily lives, could help Alameda Point blossom as something urban yet humane, distinct from the rest of Alameda but complementing the deep-rooted communities that already exist.

That’s why the civic landscape is so important. This includes the ferry terminal, just south of the waterfront park.

While the city had the final sign-off, much of the infrastructure was built by Alameda Point Partners, which in 2016 was awarded the first 68 acres where new development is allowed. The team includes Cypress Equity Investments, Trammell Crow Residential and srmERNST Development Partners.

“I don’t think I would have done this deal without knowing the ferry would be there,” said Michael Sorochinsky, Cypress Equity’s CEO. “Connectivity is so important.”

So is setting the right tone in terms of the spaces we share. It’s not cheap, but it’s a smart investment.

“You have to do things you are proud of doing,” Sorochinsky said. “You also have to create a sense of place.”

John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron