This is the tenth in my series of blog posts about Redwood City’s seventeen neighborhoods. Some years ago Redwood City divided the city into a series of distinct neighborhoods for the purposes of community building, identifying areas with common characteristics and interests and naming them, in most cases, after a key feature of the neighborhood. For each the city then worked to establish a neighborhood association, with a chairperson (and, in some cases, other officers) who hold neighborhood meetings either on a regular or an as-needed basis. The Woodside Plaza neighborhood association calls meetings as needed, and holds them in the multi-purpose room on the Kennedy School campus.

As you might surmise, the Woodside Plaza neighborhood includes the ever-popular Woodside Plaza shopping center. With some exceptions, the neighborhood is bounded by Woodside Road, Fernside Street, Goodwin Avenue, and Valota Road. It also encompasses some eight parcels on the far side of Woodside Road, along with a chunk of properties to the west of Fernside Street that includes Adelante School. Finally, the neighborhood includes two blocks on the northwest side of Goodwin Avenue, one on either side of Virginia Avenue.

Here is the city map showing the neighborhood boundaries, along with an inset that shows the Woodside Plaza neighborhood in relation to all of Redwood City’s other seventeen neighborhood associations:

Over the years I’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring various parts of the neighborhood. The Woodside Plaza neighborhood is largely composed of single-family homes and a fair number of duplexes. There are a handful of apartment and condominium buildings, but you’ll find those primarily along busy Woodside Road. The neighborhood has its share of houses of worship, and as you can see from the map, three of the Redwood City School District’s schools. Within the neighborhood all of the retail, and the one or two office buildings, can be found in or near the Woodside Plaza shopping center.

The Woodside Plaza shopping center, then, is a key part of the neighborhood. It’s a fairly full-featured center that is separated into two halves by Massachusetts Avenue. On what most people think of as the west side (it is actually the south side), the major tenants are a Lucky supermarket, a Rite Aid drugstore, Hassett Hardware (an Ace hardware store), and Pet Food Express. It also contains a one-hour cleaners (for clothes), a fitness place and a Pilates place (coming soon), a hair salon, a nail salon, and a tiny branch of the US Post Office with seemingly terrible hours: they are open Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. but are closed on weekends and holidays, and, more importantly they are closed from 1:30 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. for lunch. Those hours may not sound terrible, but every time I’ve gone by hoping to mail a letter, they’ve been closed, with the door firmly locked.

This side of the center also has two great restaurants. One is Breakers Cafe, a breakfast and lunch place that serves typical diner food. They’ve been there for a very long time, and seem to have a very loyal following. The other is Redwood Grill. Redwood Grill is a great place for lunch or dinner (they do brunch on weekends), with a better menu than you typically find for a restaurant located in a strip shopping center. They have a nice bar and do great cocktails. Redwood Grill is in the process of expanding into a small next-door space, which will give them a room they’ll be able to use for private events. I really like Redwood Grill. If you haven’t been, check out the menu on their website, and consider giving them a try.

Finally, at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Woodside Road, this part of the Woodside Plaza shopping center sports a branch of Wells Fargo Bank, and a small recycling center where you can redeem cans and bottles (plastic or glass) for money.

Crossing Massachusetts Ave., the “east” (north, really) side of the center is anchored by a Ross Dress for Less and a Michael’s Arts & Crafts (within which is an Aaron Bros. framing shop). This side also has a UPS store and a number of restaurants: Round Table Pizza, Yat Sing Restaurant (Chinese food), Sushi Plus (Japanese cuisine), and the combined “Rack & Roll BBQ Shack” and “Lobster Shack,” where you can get both lobster dishes as well as pulled pork and other BBQ dishes. Next to this part of the center — it isn’t clear whether these are part of the Woodside Plaza center or not — is a Bank of America branch, and a now-shuttered Citibank branch.

Across Woodside Road from the center there is quite a bit of retail, but just about all of that is not within the Woodside Plaza neighborhood. In fact, most of that is not within Redwood City at all: in this area the city’s border mostly runs down Woodside Road. A close inspection of the neighborhood map, though, reveals that there are a couple of individual properties on the other side of Woodside Road, properties that are both within the city and within the neighborhood. Most of these are office or apartment buildings. There are two somewhat interesting parcels directly across from the Woodside Plaza shopping center, however: one is home to the very popular Woodside Deli, while the other houses a US Bank branch. The next-door Benjamin Moore paint store, though, sits on county land, and is not within Redwood City’s limits.

The Woodside Plaza neighborhood has three public schools, all of which are part of the Redwood City School District. One is Adelante Elementary School, located in that small chunk of the neighborhood across Fernside Street in the upper left corner of the neighborhood map. Although most of the neighborhood is relatively flat, Adelante sits among some low hills, hills that eventually climb up to Farm Hill Boulevard. Unfortunately, Adelante’s beautiful tree-lined surroundings are going to be lost on future students, as this school is one of those slated for closure. At Adelante students participate in a Spanish Immersion program, one that aligns well with a similar program at Selby Lane Elementary. To save money the district plans to close Adelante and shift Adelante’s students over to Selby Lane Elementary, where they can continue their studies in Spanish.

The second of the neighborhood’s schools is John F. Kennedy Middle School, a large campus that occupies a large block within the neighborhood. Kennedy’s campus not only hosts a number of conventional 6th-8th-grade Redwood City School District students, it also is home to a charter school operated by Rocketship Public Schools. This charter school, dubbed Redwood City Prep, has some 269 students in grades TK-5. It is located in buildings along the Connecticut Drive side of the Kennedy campus.

Given the great number of kids walking to and from the Kennedy campus, it is no surprise that Redwood City targeted three intersections surrounding the campus as part of its Safe Routes to School project. Most of this project has been completed, with bulb-outs, median islands, and much-improved crosswalk striping making the intersections at Connecticut Drive and Oregon Avenue; Connecticut Drive and Washington Avenue; and Alameda De Las Pulgas and Goodwin Avenue (and Maddux Drive) significantly easier to navigate on foot. The Alameda De Las Pulgas intersection has yet to receive the pedestrian beacons that should greatly improve safety for those crossing Alameda, but the conduits are in place so I expect I’ll soon see the beacons. Otherwise, the project at the three intersections appears to be complete.

The Woodside Plaza neighborhood’s third public school is Henry Ford Elementary School. Henry Ford is located on Massachusetts Avenue, not far from the shopping center, and serves students in grades K-5. Like Kennedy this school managed to escape closure, although it won’t be entirely unaffected: Hawes Elementary School, over on Roosevelt Avenue, is closing, and its students will be divided up between a couple of the district’s other schools, one of which will be Henry Ford. Thus, come this fall Henry Ford should see a significant increase in its student population.

Henry Ford Elementary is bounded on one side by one of the neighborhood’s more interesting natural features: Redwood Creek flows through the neighborhood almost entirely open to the sky, although you’d be hard pressed to know that unless you live there since the creek’s concrete channel is mostly located behind and between private homes. It does cross beneath several neighborhood streets, but those crossings are rather nondescript and can be hard to spot, especially when driving. Within this neighborhood the best place to observe the creek is from the neighborhood’s only (I believe) park: Maddux Park, which is located on Maddux Drive at Kensington Road.

If you wander to the back part of the park, behind the play equipment you can see in the above image, you’ll find the creek, separating the park from Henry Ford Elementary’s sports fields. A tall chain-link fence here (and along the entirety of the exposed sections of the creek in this neighborhood, in fact) helps to ensure that people and trash stay out of the creek. Mother Nature still finds her way in, though, as evidenced by this work crew I encountered while walking through the neighborhood:

The red claw on the end of this small crane went down empty, but came back packed with leaves and branches, which apparently were jamming up the creek where it crosses underneath Massachusetts Avenue.

I mentioned earlier that this neighborhood is home to a couple of houses of worship. One, Temple Beth Jacob, is located midway between Kennedy and Adelante and is a familiar sight to anyone who habitually drives along that section of Alameda De Las Pulgas. The temple is squeezed between that street and the Hetch-Hetchy right-of-way, and they’ve cleverly used a portion of that right-of-way, which cannot have permanent structures built upon it, as part of their parking lot:

(I took the above picture from Goodwin Avenue, midway between Alameda De Las Pulgas and Fernwood Street.)

Another large house of worship in the neighborhood is the Woodside Road United Methodist Church, on the corner of Alameda De Las Pulgas and Woodside Road. This one is really hard to miss, being that it is located at the intersection of two well-traveled Redwood City streets:

This church almost, but doesn’t quite, mark the southernmost corner of the neighborhood: the office building across Woodside Road is also within the Woodside Plaza neighborhood.

Schools, churches, shops, and some offices: these make up just a small part of the Woodside Plaza neighborhood. The vast majority of what you find in the neighborhood, though, is housing. And just about all of that housing stock consists of single-family homes. This neighborhood has some very small homes, such as this beautiful but tiny (860 square feet!) house on Poplar Avenue:

Just down Poplar, in the next block, is this much larger (2,300 square feet) home:

Both of these are indicative of the kinds of homes you’ll find in the neighborhood. Homes vary in age, style, and condition, of course, but within a surprisingly narrow range. There are very few homes that appear to be truly old (the little home was built in 1952, whereas the larger one was built in 1991). That 2,300-square-foot home seems to be one of the larger ones; there aren’t many, if any, “McMansions” in the Woodside Plaza neighborhood. Style-wise, there are a handful of homes that have been remodeled using modern elements, such as this house over on Maddux Drive:

Many of the homes in the neighborhood sport some great front yards, and a couple of them have some nice elements of whimsy. One house sported a large wooden bear out front, while another, over on Goodwin Avenue, had this more subtle element:

The Woodside Plaza neighborhood appears to be a great place to live, especially with its schools (which can sort-of double as parks during the off hours) and the plethora of great shopping and dining available at the Woodside Plaza shopping center itself. It is also a great place in which to walk, although if you do so, consider taking a map or a smartphone: many of the neighborhood’s streets curve, and many of them dead-end into others, making it easy to get a bit lost. With so few parks or natural elements, the main attraction to those walking the neighborhood are the houses and yards. Personally, I enjoy looking at both, so that works for me. If you are more into nature, though, although it isn’t actually in the neighborhood the wonderful Stulsaft park is immediately adjacent, and in fact the road leading up to the park’s lower entrance gates is itself in the Woodside Plaza neighborhood (Mitchell Way, which you’ll find in the upper left corner of the neighborhood map).