I’ve long had high hopes for Redwood City’s Main Street, and things are finally starting to happen that could just return it to the level of glory that it once had, long, long ago. The other day I watched the entirety of the Planning Commission’s most recent meeting, in which the commissioners essentially focused on a single topic: the project to revitalize and expand the Hotel Sequoia, which can be found at the corner of Main Street and Broadway. If you haven’t heard, I’m delighted to report that the project was approved. Thus, fingers crossed, sometime in 2025, perhaps, work will get underway on this historic building in earnest.

The Hotel Sequoia was built back in 1912 for a cost somewhat above $100,000. Of course, those are 1912 dollars; that amount of money would apparently be worth about $3.2 million today. Which to me still sounds quite cheap, given that you can pay more than that for a high-end home around here these days. But consider a few things. For one, the hotel was (and currently is) only three stories tall. There were only sixty rooms, all on the second and third floors. And those rooms were quite basic by today’s standards: they didn’t have en-suite bathrooms, for instance. For those, it seems you had to go down the hall. As for the ground floor, that contained the hotel’s lobby, its kitchen, a dining room, a barber shop, and a public restaurant.

In its day, the Hotel Sequoia appears to have been the finest in Redwood City. Redwood City may have had hotels that were nicer at one time, but by 1912 those had either burned down, or had come down as a result of the 1906 earthquake.

The Hotel Sequoia operated as a hotel until the late 1950’s, after which it became an SRO: a single-room-occupancy boarding house. It operated in that fashion until relatively recently: the last resident apparently moved out last September or so. And before anyone gets too worked up about the fate of the 18 people who were living at the hotel at that time, one of the building’s owners — Dani Gasparini — spoke before the commissioners and reported that they had had a consultant work with those residents, assisting them in finding better, more permanent forms of housing.

The project to rehabilitate the hotel is an interesting one. The building’s exterior facade needs to be preserved, but not much else. Because of that, and because the interior needs to be completely reworked in order for the rooms to be brought up to modern standards, (and because the building’s structure needs to be beefed up in order to support an additional three floors), the plan is to essentially hollow out the structure, leaving only the exterior walls in place, and then build an entirely new, six-story hotel inside. That’ll allow for a modern, roomy hotel that presents, on the first three floors, the historic face from the hotel’s early days. That isn’t to say that it’ll look identical to what you see today, though: for one thing, at some point the facade’s bricks, which were originally left raw, were painted white. After much research the buildings owners discovered a means to remove that paint without doing too much damage to the original bricks. Thus, the first three floors of the hotel will look, not as it does today, but more like this 1921 photo:

As for the new fourth, fifth and sixth floors, those will echo the look of the lower three, but will be more modern in appearance. They will also be set back eight feet from the lower floors, allowing the historic part of the building to stand proud, and to make clear what is an addition, and what is original. This rendering provides some idea of what the hotel should look like when complete:

Note that this rendering appears to show the three historic floors, and only the top two of the new residential floors (plus a small rooftop structure, which I’ll address in a moment); the fourth floor seems to be hidden from view by the setback and the deep moldings around the top of the third floor. That “missing” fourth floor should look very much like the fifth (unlike the sixth floor, both the fourth and fifth floors will be mostly faced with brick), with the only real visible difference between the two being that some of the windows you see on the fifth floor will instead be glass doors on the fourth, providing access to balconies that, on that fourth floor, will occupy that eight-foot setback.

As for that small structure you see on top of the sixth floor, that is a rooftop bar. In addition to the bar itself, that structure will also have some amount of indoor seating. But the real place to be will be on one of the two outdoor terraces up on that roof. From the preliminary plans, it appears that one terrace will look out over Broadway and be open to the public. The other will look out over Main Street, but likely will be for private functions only: there will be a single large residential suite up on that seventh floor, and the Main Street-side terrace appears only accessible from that suite.

Today the Hotel Sequoia has a number of ground-floor retail spaces looking out onto both Main Street and Broadway. In its future incarnation, the Broadway side will be given over to the hotel’s restaurant, which will be open to the public and will, as you can probably tell from the above rendering, open wide to the sidewalk. Thus, outdoor dining in our “climate best” environment will be very much supported.

On the Main Street side, today there are two retail tenants: “Main St. Market” and Gambrel & Co, along with a pair of boarded-up retail spaces. The new design only has room for a single retail tenant, and a relatively small one at that. Although Ms. Gasparini indicated that they’d love to have Gambrel & Co. occupy that new retail space, she did acknowledge that the craft butchery would have to move out once construction began, and may not be excited about moving again two years (or so) later, once construction is complete. She also expressed love for Ralph’s Vacuum & Sewing Center (who currently occupies space on the buildings Broadway side), but the new retail space, at only 510 square feet, would be much too small for an operation like Ralph’s.

Finally, the hotel’s drop-off area, main entrance and lobby will actually be on the building’s Main Street side. The ornate entrance on the corner will remain, but will open into a foyer and small ground-floor bar. From there, one can either proceed to the right, into the restaurant, or to the left, into the hotel lobby and beyond into reception. Today’s building is actually U-shaped, which you can see if you look at it from the rear — from the Main Street parking lot. The new building will close off that U, and place a ground-floor meeting/event space in the center. That meeting space will have a large, lovely stained-glass ceiling; above it, extending all the way to the rooftop, there will be an open-air light well that not only will help illuminate the ceiling, but will allow for a couple of rooms on floors three through six that’ll look out into it (four more rooms on each of floors two through six will look out over the alley between the hotel and the apartment building next door on Main Street).

The Hotel Sequoia represents and important part of Redwood City’s history, and I’m delighted that not only is the building being preserved, but that it will be restored to its original use — as a hotel — and not turned into offices or condos or something. I look forward to dining in the hotel’s restaurant, lounging up on the roof while enjoying a drink from that rooftop bar, and, just maybe, even staying in one of the hotel’s rooms for some very special occasion.

As some of you know, on Fridays my wife and I deliver Meals on Wheels to a number of clients throughout Redwood City. As we were delivering to a client who lives along Main Street, my wife caught sight of a green tent on the sidewalk in front of the new office building at 855 Main St.:

First my wife, then I checked it out, and I’m so glad we did! As you may know the four-story office building that was recently constructed there stands behind a single-story historic building that, as part of the office construction, was restored and turned into yet-to-be-leased retail spaces. Finally, it seems, one of those retail spaces is being leased, to the folks who were operating a small pop-up operation from that tent.

The new business is called “The Baker Next Door,” and, as you might guess, will be retailing baked goods. They’ll apparently also be selling sandwiches made using their bread, and other such delectables, but today from their tent, they were just selling bread, croissants, morning buns, and cookies. Which was fine by us: we bought two different loaves of bread along with two of their morning buns. I’ve only tasted one of the loaves of bread, but it was wonderful, so I expect good things.

The two folks behind this new venture are locals: they live right here in Redwood City. Starting early next year, they hope, Brian Clarke and his business partner, Jenna Johnson, will be occupying the right-most of the retail spaces — 851 Main Street — and selling more regularly and at higher volume. For now, they plan to be operating from their tent most Fridays from now until at least November (taking the occasional Friday off for vacations and such). They’ll only be there on a given Friday until they’ve run out of things to sell, so if you want to catch them, be sure to do earlier rather than later. We were there at around 10:30 a.m., and they still seemed to have plenty of stock on hand, but by 1:45 p.m., when I went back to ask some follow-up questions, they were packing up. So until they open their storefront you may have to make a bit of an effort to check out what they are selling, but from what I’ve tasted so far, that effort will be rewarded (they are so new that they don’t really have their internet presence fully set up yet, but apparently they’ll be thebakernextdoor_rwc on Instagram). Oh, and they indicated that the owners of the building are hoping to lease the other retail space to a restaurant, so keep your fingers crossed that the rest of the space currently for lease won’t be that way for long.

Just down Main Street a bit, some of you may have noticed that The Patty Shack has permanently closed its doors:

They’ve been around since mid-2011, so they had a pretty good run. But all good things must come to an end, it seems, and a note taped to their door makes it clear that they are indeed not coming back. As for what might take over the spot, a little birdie told me that the next-door Ghostwood Kitchen — which has only been open for a little over two months — already may be wanting to expand into the space.

Thanks to the relatively recent additions of Whearley & Co. (a great shop for those looking for high-end home decor and design advice), Ghostwood, and Brochette Dumpling & Grill (an Asian Fusion restaurant), plus, soon, The Baker Next Door and of course (eventually) the Hotel Sequoia and whatever ends up occupying their Main Street retail space, Redwood City’s Main Street is starting to really come alive. After long living in the shadow of the ever-popular Broadway, Main Street may finally be able to live up to its name. About time, too…

The folks behind the project to build 480 apartments (in two large buildings) and a nearly 100,000-square-foot athletic club on the site along E. Bayshore Rd. where the old Century Theatre 12 domes still stand will be going before Redwood City’s Zoning Administrator next week with a request to allow for “seasonal sales of Pumpkins and Christmas trees between the months of September and December annually for a duration of up to 5 years at the property located at 557 E. Bayshore Rd.” The large development project received final city approval at the end of last year, and so for probably another year or so SyRes Properties, LLC (mostly what is left of the old Syufy Theater chain, apparently) should be working to firm up their plans, ensure that their funding is in place, and line up contractors and materials for the actual construction phase. Until then, at least, the property will likely sit mostly unused, except for the many new cars and trucks being stored there today by local dealerships. Because at least two of the sites where pumpkins were sold at Halloween and trees were sold at Christmas are now active construction sites — Broadway Plaza, along Woodside Road, and 955 Woodside Rd. — the folks who operate those seasonal retail stands are undoubtedly looking for new places to set up operations, and the old theater site seems to be a good one. There’s plenty of room for both merchandise and for parking, which is good for the merchants. And the folks behind the new development could build some buzz for their project among people looking to make their holiday purchases, if they erect signs showing what is soon to be built. In any case, I just hope that “for a duration of up to 5 years” isn’t a sign that the project, which took a great many years to gain approval, now isn’t actually going to get underway for a long time to come.