This week’s walk took me past Lawrie Duncan Park(let), the little triangular park bounded by Brewster Avenue, Nevada Street, and Outer Circle, and split in two by Southgate Street. The short portion of Southgate that cleaves this little neighborhood green space has been closed for some time as the city studies the effects of making the closure permanent and uniting the two halves of the park. Now, on April 16, from 5-6:30 p.m., the city’s Parks & Recreation Commission, along with some city staffers, will be at the park, accepting input from, well, anyone who is has something to say.

The QR code on the above sign doesn’t seem to work — at least for me — but more information can be found here.

I’ve driven by Roosevelt Plaza multiple times over the last couple of weeks, hoping to see signs of Big Brothers Burgers reopening. Sadly, nothing at all appears to have changed since that business was forced to close due to a fire in the liquor store two doors down, and I’m losing hope that they’ll ever reopen (their website still claims that they’ll be back soon, but I’m not sure it is being kept up-to-date). While driving by I noted some construction-type activity out at the corner of Roosevelt and Fairview avenues, and thought that perhaps it was related to the repairs that will be needed as a result of the fire. However, this week I walked by and took a closer look, and I realized that my assumption had been in error. Instead, that corner of the center’s parking lot is getting a handful of electric car chargers. The chargers themselves will be arrayed along Roosevelt Avenue (again, right in the corner of the parking lot):

As for the supporting equipment needed to supply the high-voltage power, it will be located along Fairview Avenue:

While in the area I took the opportunity to take a couple of pictures of the empty RiteAid building on the other side of Roosevelt Avenue, just for some future post when something new comes to that location. In response to last week’s post, reader Kent wrote to ask whether I knew what might be next for that site. I had to admit that I do not. Both Kent and I think that the site is ideal for housing — I suspect a developer could fit a lot of townhouses on this sloping parcel behind the Shell gasoline station — but until the property owner manages to land a new tenant for the existing building, or until a developer proposes something entirely new for that site, we’ll likely have to remain in suspense.

From Roosevelt Plaza, I walked along Virginia Avenue out to Woodside Road to see if any visible progress has been made on the rebuild of our Hassett Hardware store. All of the windows and doors are covered up from the outside, so no luck there. But the folks behind Hassett Hardware posted a great photo of the store’s interior on their Instagram feed (also visible on their Facebook page, I believe) showing that the store has been almost entirely cleared out to make way for a replacement of the store’s floor and subfloor.

Although prevented from seeing through the storefront windows, I was delighted with the handful of signs that have been affixed to the plywood covering the windows where the car crashed through: a sign showing pictures of the damage and annotated with messages of support from regular customers, a sign indicating when they hope to reopen (May, if all goes well), a sign letting us loyal customers know what to do with our Hassett Hardware and ACE Rewards coupons, and a letter to customers briefly indicating what happened and thanking the community for our support of their store so far. Here is this last (if you are curious, click it to get a version you can zoom in on):

After looking at all of the signs, I turned and headed down Woodside Road. First, to check on Bravo Taqueria:

Bravo had signs on the doors indicating an anticipated opening last Wednesday (February 11), but from what I can tell, they didn’t quite make that date. I’m pretty sure that they are back open now, but if not, I expect that they’ll be open any day now. I plan to stop by to give them a try just as soon as I can, hopefully sometime this upcoming week. In any case, I’ve been informed that the formal ribbon-cutting will take place at a later date: on March 7 at 1 p.m. I’ve put it on my calendar and intend to be there.

Next up, the 7-Eleven store on Woodside Road at Hess Road. The last time I went by I noted that electric car chargers were being installed in its parking lot. This time, I saw that not only was the project complete, one of the chargers was in use (by an electric Amazon delivery van, of all things!).

These chargers are part of 7-Eleven’s 7Charge program; various 7-Eleven stores (by no means all) in several states have gotten them so far. This particular location has four charging spots on the Hess Road side of the store. Three are CCS ports — DC fast charging, up to 125kW — and one is a CHAdeMO port, up to 100kW. Some 7-Eleven store chargers have NACS ports as well, but this particular installation has none of those.

From the 7-Eleven, I continued to El Camino Real and looped through ELCO Yards. Although I didn’t see anything significant that I wanted to mention, I did learn separately that the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP — the Bay Area’s eighth-largest law firm — has committed to occupying 56,000 square feet of office space in ELCO Yards. They’ll be taking roughly half of one of the development’s four office buildings, consolidating a group of lawyers who are currently spread between a couple of separate buildings in a Menlo Park office park. Between Orrick and the Chan Zuckerberg Institute for Advance Biological Imaging, which has leased 226,000 square feet of space in ELCO Yards, half (well, 47.8%) of the recently completed office portion of that development has now been leased.

Finally, two weeks ago, in my post Little Surprises, I noted that the five-unit townhouse project underway at 239 Vera Ave. appeared to have stalled. This week I was pleased to note that I may have been wrong: although I didn’t see a lot of work going on, the temporary gates were open, and I saw one guy actively working to clear away the many weeds that had grown around the main entrances to the units. So maybe the project is just waiting for inspections, or for materials to be delivered, or something along those lines.

That about covers my most recent walk. With some heavy rain coming our way over the next several days, I may or may not be able to get out for a walk this week, but regardless, stay safe and dry…