I have to confess that a huge portion of this week’s walk didn’t involve a lot of walking: it involved standing and sitting while watching the modular portion of the 112 Vera Ave. affordable housing project continue to come together. I’ll get to why I spent so much time “on site” (technically I remain just off the site, of course, on nearby public sidewalks) later in this post, but I began this week heading off in a direction I haven’t taken in a while, thanks to a question from one of my readers.

In response to last week’s post, reader Ken wrote the following:

Do you know what is happening at the golf course at Woodside and Alameda? I thought they were just smoothing out a storage area, but now there is a crane, so I don’t know what is going on.

At the time I didn’t have a good answer for him, not having been out to that particular corner of the city in quite some time. Fortunately, after I professed my ignorance, reader Christian responded to Ken with the following:

I rode my bicycle by the other day and it looked like there might be something going on related to water infrastructure. I think it’s probably this: https://ceqanet.lci.ca.gov/2025041047 a system to use recycled water ( not drinking water) for irrigation.

Just by reading the brief description of the project in the linked-to web page, I could tell that reader Christian was exactly correct. But the point of this blog is to, as much as possible, walk out and see things like this for myself. So this week I started from my home near Sequoia Hospital and followed Alameda de las Pulgas south to Woodside Road.

The intersection of Alameda and Woodside Road truly marks a corner of Redwood City’s somewhat convoluted border. West of Alameda and north of Woodside Road, where Menlo Country Club is located, is within Woodside. East of Alameda and north of Woodside Road — where the Redwood City Woodside Road United Methodist Church is located — is part of Redwood City. And south of Woodside Road, for a short distance to the west and for a much longer distance to the east, is unincorporated San Mateo County. Except, that is, for a couple of small exceptions. For instance, the office building on the south-east corner of the intersection is actually in Redwood City, but the houses just behind it (to the south, along Alameda) are not.

In any case, I headed over there and then walked west along Woodside Road to the two openings in the fence that enable construction vehicles to access the project site, which is located just behind the normally opaque fence. From the first opening, there isn’t a lot to see at the moment:

But that large orange sign (which is a bit hard to read; the black letters don’t contrast well) confirms that this is to be the “Menlo Country Club Water Reclamation Facility.” And thanks to a smaller sign on the fence facing Woodside Road, I learned that it is being done by PERC Water Corporation, which is a subsidiary of Consolidated Water Co. Ltd.

Over the last several years, Redwood City has been extending the reach of its recycled water delivery pipelines (which originate near the far end of Redwood Shores, at the Silicon Valley Clean Water plant on Radio Road) to parts of downtown Redwood City. Those pipelines supply treated wastewater that, although not quite clean enough to drink, is clean enough to be used for irrigation and for a handful of other special uses, such as toilet flushing. For years now, larger projects around the city have been dual-plumbed so that when the recycled water has reached their sites, they can use this manufactured product instead of the extremely valuable potable water we all receive (largely) from the Hetch-Hetchy valley via the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC). To date the city has focused on connecting larger projects and larger water customers — such as Broadway Village, ELCO Yards, Stanford’s Redwood City campus, Oracle and Electronic Arts, the Port of Redwood City and SIMS Metal, and the Kaiser campus. But smaller projects, including 112 Vera Ave., 211-217 Vera Ave. (ten townhomes), and 239 Vera Ave. (five townhomes) were also built to be ready to receive recycled water at some point, and the close proximity of these three projects in particular to ELCO Yards leads me to think that they may be the first to use recycled water west of El Camino Real.

Given all of that, when I think of recycled water, I think of a system such as what Redwood City is building. But I’m guessing that what is happening at Menlo Country Club is something different: I believe that they plan to capture water on-site, and hold it in a large underground storage tank to be used for irrigation. And indeed, by looking into the second opening in the fence, I could see what I believe is part of that tank:

The crane that you can just make out in the earlier picture was presumably used to drop pre-cast sections of what I assume will be the storage tank and/or the sand filtration system into a large hole in the ground.

Neat stuff! As I recall, some years ago Menlo Country Club changed out their grass for a variety that uses far less water, and with this new recycled water system I expect their water bill will be significantly smaller than it once was. Good thinking, for a golf course in an area that increasingly experiences drought conditions.

After learning what I can by visiting the project site, I headed east (technically, northeast) along Woodside Road, in the direction of downtown. Along the way, I was pleased to see that Bay Burgers finally appears to be making great progress: their sign is up on the building (at 976 Woodside Road, next to Bravo Taqueria) and from my brief glimpse into the open door, the interior looks nearly complete. Although they had originally hoped to open in “early 2026,” they didn’t quite make that — but I’m hoping to be able to drop in and try one of their smashburgers very soon now.

On the subject of restaurants, at the end of last week’s post I mentioned that Das Bierhauz along Theatre Way had closed, but at the time I didn’t know who would be taking over their space, or when. It wasn’t long before I read that the space will soon be home to Gangsan Korean Restaurant, and that the “when” will likely be quite soon: apparently, their signs are already up on the building.  I have yet to go by the building — I plan to this coming week — but I’ve heard they have a menu posted in the window, and that they are already hiring.

Continuing down Woodside Road, I reached El Camino Real. From there I headed up El Camino to Vera Ave., to catch up on the latest progress. When I got there, I was delighted to see that not only had a great many modules been added to the building, it appeared as if the white crane, which was still on top of the building’s two-level concrete podium, was being prepped to come down. Hoping to actually get photos of the removal of that crane, I watched as pieces of the crane were removed and lowered to the ground by the larger ground-based crane:

In the above image, the piece being lowered to the ground is one of the white crane’s stack of counterweights that help keep the crane from tipping over when it is carrying a heavy load at the end of its boom. A boom that, I should point out, is not only collapsed to its shortest length in the above image, but is also missing the two arms that extend out to the sides and presumably give the crane added stability. Not wanting to miss the action, I ended up spending a couple of hours watching as first a couple of the counterweights were lowered to the ground, but also piles of lumber and two or three large metal “job boxes.” From what I could tell given my limited vantage points, pretty much the entire surface up there was cleared. After which, the white crane was driven to the very tip of the nearest corner:

Various workers then spent a lot of time clearing the street and cleaning things up, after which…they packed up and went home, leaving the white crane sitting up on the corner of the building. At that point I was ready to call it a day myself, which I promptly did.

I figured that perhaps they’d bring the crane down early the next morning, while traffic was still light. But I had forgotten what I had been told last week: that the plan was to stack as many modules using the white crane in its previous position as possible, after which the crane would be moved to the front of the building so it could continue stacking up modules. What I hadn’t realized is that to move the crane they needed to lighten it as much as possible, and that meant taking off some of the counterweights and other easily removable parts of the crane. So when I went by again today, the white crane was in a different position up against the front of the building, and it had been reassembled. As well, it had clearly added a number of modules to the building since my Wednesday visit. Here is its position as of Friday July 10 (and surely its last; the modules that will eventually be located where the white crane is now will have to be added after that crane has been removed by the larger yellow one):

And here is a picture showing the current status of the project as of Friday:

The building’s third level is surely as complete as it will be until the white crane is removed. But the yellow crane is now parked, and the white crane is doing all the lifting: it is taking modules directly off the truck and putting them into position, without having to do the handoff between cranes that was occurring last week. That means that things are moving much faster now, since that handoff process was very time-consuming. Note that once the white crane comes down, the yellow crane will be able to pick up and place the final modules all by itself, from its location along the street.

If you look closely at the module closest to the white crane, you can probably tell that it is narrower than most of the others, and that it has something that looks like an “eave” extending out a short way towards the crane. Here is a somewhat closer look at that module’s eastern end:

This module, number 316 (third floor, sixteenth from the back) is one of the building’s specialty modules: on the near end it houses a section of the building’s front stairwell, and on the far end (not visible) it contains a closet, a portion of the front elevator shaft, and the third floor trash room. Note the two flights of stairs just below this module. Once the white crane is removed, a set of five short modules will be placed side-by-side and end-on to the street, each containing a single apartment and, I presume, a similar “eave” that will help form a hallway running the width of the building.

Here is a picture from the other side of the building showing how this new development is going to loom over the one-story duplexes that stand right next door along Vera Avenue:

If you are curious about the four modules on the top two floors that don’t have windows on the end, as I was, the two on the sixth floor combine together to make a single large mechanical space. On the seventh floor, the one with the all-white end is also a mechanical room, whereas the one with the yellow end is marked on the plan as being a “work room.”

Lastly, there is one last aspect of this project that I overlooked in my previous reporting. Thanks to a question from Taylor and Andrew over at Fireside Books & More, I took a closer look at the plans and realized that the rear of the building, instead of being an entirely flat wall from the second floor to the seventh, actually insets at the fifth floor, providing the building’s residents with a 660-square-foot deck. You can clearly see that in the following photo, which I took from the alley running behind the building and connecting El Camino Real with Adams Street:

On floors six and seven there is a single window at the end of the hallway running down the center of the building from the front to the rear. Below those windows, on the fifth floor, instead of a central window there will be a door leading out to the “roof deck,” which, as you can see, will run the entire width of the building and will be the depth of the regular apartment modules below. For some reason, the two lower modules — comprising four apartments — appear to have extra windows looking northward. That is a detail that does not appear in the preliminary plans, and something the upper three modules don’t have.

This project is zooming along; I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they complete the stacking process next week. If they do, I’ll let you know…