If you are reading this on Friday, October 6, or early on Saturday, know that PortFest — the Port of Redwood City’s annual waterfront festival — takes place on Saturday, October 7, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. This free event “welcomes the community to learn about Redwood City’s maritime heritage and the history of our industrial working waterfront. The family-friendly event also includes live music, children’s recreational activities, food trucks, vendor booths, and a day of fun overlooking the San Francisco Bay.” You can find out more about PortFest here.

For a number of years, Redwood City’s Development Projects web page was one of the city’s most active; new projects seemingly were added every other week or so. But although there is a significant — and very visible — amount of construction activity taking place around Redwood City at the moment, the Development Projects page has essentially gone dormant. Sort it by “Submittal Date” and you’ll see that we haven’t had a new major development project submitted to the city since 2022 (the 1205 Veterans project was, I believe, submitted last October, one full year ago). More interesting, though, is what you see if you sort by “Status” and then look at the number of projects that have been approved by the city.

Projects in the Approved category are those that have been, well, approved, but have not yet gotten underway (once underway, projects are moved to the “Under Construction” category). Currently, the city’s web page lists 14 such projects:

• 1304 Middlefield Road. Currently this is the empty lot across from Rise City Church where the annual recreation of Bethlehem — “Bethlehem A.D.” — was, for years, staged during the holiday season. However, the 1304 Middlefield Road project aims to put a seven-story, 94-unit affordable apartment building on the site. The project was approved in April of this year, but the developer — Sand Hill Property Company — has yet to apply for a building permit.
• 1 Twin Dolphin Drive. This is the most recently approved project of the lot: it was approved by the Redwood City Planning Commission just three days ago. The plan is to replace two existing buildings (at 1 Twin Dolphin and 3 Twin Dolphin) with a single five-story life-sciences building.
• 1201 Main Street. Today there is a single-story building on the site, which sits very close to where Main Street meets the Caltrain tracks. The developer, Windy Hill Property Ventures, got the thumbs-up from the city back in April to construct a five-story, mixed-use building that would be about 60% office and 40% residential (with 28 for-rent apartments).
  
• 2966 Bay Road. This parcel, plus one other and a portion of a third, are to be combined to make a single, larger lot upon which a three-story Research and Development/Office building would be constructed. Currently, Hacienda Taqueria occupies the parcel at the corner of Bay Road and Second Avenue. This project was approved back in November.
• 239 Vera Ave. Formerly the site of a somewhat run-down single-family home, in September of 2021 the city approved a project to build a three-story building containing five condominiums on what today is a large, empty residential lot. The developer has filed for permits, but appears to be still waiting for them to be granted.
  
• Redwood Square. This project’s developer originally had grand plans for this site, but ended up scaling the project back to what was approved last April: six townhouse-style condominiums facing Linden Street, roughly one block south of the intersection of El Camino Real and Woodside Road. It does not appear that the developer has applied for permits, yet.
• Redwood City Discovery. In January the City Council approved this large housing project: a six-story, 130-unit apartment building that is to take the place of three existing buildings: Happy Donuts, the old Cycle Gear store (now empty), and The Record Man between Jackson and Madison avenues.
• Hotel Sequoia. The project to rehabilitate and greatly expand (through the addition of three more floors) the historic Hotel Sequoia at the corner of Main Street and Broadway in downtown Redwood City was approved just last month.
• 505 E. Bayshore. The 56-unit townhouse project slated to be built in place of the metal Alan Steel buildings just east of Highway 101 at Whipple Avenue was approved in late June.
  
• 690 Veterans Hotel. The project to replace the Shell gasoline station at the corner of Veterans Boulevard and Brewster Avenue with a four-story, 91-unit hotel was approved three years ago, in September 2020. The website that lists city building permits doesn’t show a building permit having yet been issued for this project (the necessary permit was applied for in February of 2022) and is still shown as “under review”) but construction fences are up, the gas pumps have been removed, and hazardous waste crews have been working to remove parts of the building. So either this work is being done in anticipation of receiving the final permit, or the website hasn’t been updated. Either way, this is one project that might rightly belong in the “Under Construction” category now.
• 150 Charter Street. The Commission approved the proposed 72-unit condominium project that is to replace the Mi Rancho Supermarket located beside Redwood City’s Target store back in May of 2021. The building permit was applied for in April of 2022, but it, too, is still listed as “under review.” Unlike with the 690 Veterans hotel project, though, I have yet to see any visible signs that the project is about to get underway.
  
• Syufy Site. SyRes Properties LLC, the owner/developer that appears to be pretty much all that is left of the company that used to build and run the domed theaters throughout the Bay Area, worked for many, many years to come up with a project for their Century Park 12 Theatres site on E. Bayshore Road. In December of 2022 the Redwood City Planning Commission finally approved a proposal for a mixed-use project that would consist of two large residential buildings containing 480 apartments and a third, nearly 100,000-square-foot building containing a fitness center.
  
• Hyatt Place Project. This project ended up being approved multiple times, the most recent being on July 18, 2023. When built, this will be a 112-room hotel on the corner of Broadway and Beech Street, replacing the existing 18-room Garden Motel.
• Harbor View. Somewhat like with the Syufy Site project, Jay Paul Company, the owner/developer of this project’s massive site — nearly all of the parcels east of Highway 101 between Seaport Boulevard and the Maple Street Correctional Center (which sits on Maple Street) — worked for years to both convince the city that an office project was appropriate for the sites that once held Lyngso Garden Materials, Malibu Grand Prix, Malibu Golf & Games, Hayward Lumber, and other such businesses, and to come up with a project design that the city would find palatable. All of that hard work finally paid off in November 2022, when the City Council approved the project, which consists of three office buildings (two six-story, one seven-story), an “employee amenities” building, and a six-level parking structure. Permits were applied for in December of 2022; they do not appear to have been issued yet, and there has been no visible activity on-site.

Any of these projects could get underway at almost any time, assuming that they’ve filed for and received their permits. That takes time, though; most projects need at least a year after approval before they request building permits. In any case, given our current economic environment, don’t be surprised if most of these sites stay idle for quite a while (or forever: just because a project has been approved doesn’t guarantee that it will get built). Many things can happen to delay a project. For instance, consider the 131-unit townhouse project planned for 1548 Maple Street (east of Highway 101, along Redwood Creek where Docktown once thrived). That project, which was approved in mid-2018, and which has been listed as “under construction” on the city’s web page for quite some time, at least got through the demolition and site prep phase (which involved raising the site rather significantly). Since then, though, it has gone completely quiet, and the developer, Strada Investment Group, requested and received an extension to their original five-year development agreement that adds an additional three years. Thus, the project may not now be completed until as late as September 2026. Its delay has been due to a number of factors, including the pandemic, the complex land swap needed to enable the county’s adjacent Navigation Center, the construction of that Navigation Center, the tricky process of demolishing the old Maple Street shelter, and the construction of the Blomquist Extension. With nearly all of that now behind us (the shelter has yet to be demolished, though) construction on these townhomes should get underway in the next year or so.

Redwood City currently lists six active projects in addition to 1548 Maple Street, all of which are indeed currently being worked. Three are townhouse projects, one is the massive ELCO Yards project on El Camino Real and Main Street, one is the also-large Broadway Plaza project along Broadway between Chestnut Street and Woodside Road, and the final one is a modern office building being erected at 240 Twin Dolphin Drive. Between those projects, plus whichever of the 14 “approved” projects get underway over the next couple of years, Redwood City will continue to experience significant changes for some time to come. Then, when you consider that there are an additional 16 projects that have been proposed but have yet to be approved, Redwood City’s “era of change” will likely extend for even more years after that. But if our nearly year-long run of no projects being added to the list of significant proposed projects continues, sometime in the next decade or so Redwood City might finally see an actual pause in construction of the type that some residents have long been asking for.

The county’s rain barrel program is once again in operation. If you haven’t yet gotten rain barrels, this is a terrific opportunity to obtain one or two 50-gallon barrels, possibly for free. You do have to buy them (for $80 apiece, plus tax), but if you haven’t received a county rebate in the past, you can file for one that covers the purchase price of up to two barrels. And if you have already gotten the rebate, well, this is your chance to get one or two more for just $80 apiece. I did this last time around (I now have four in my yard), and they’re great. These new ones have a lid that slopes towards the center, where a screened opening allows collected rainwater to percolate into the barrel. Thus, although connecting them to a downspout (they do have the side connectors by which you can do that) will fill them faster, you needn’t do so with these: just put them out under the clear sky and they’ll eventually fill. They also work great if you, like my wife and I do, collect the water from our shower in a bucket while the shower is warming up: you can empty the bucket into your rain barrel without removing the barrel’s lid. Finally, the barrels have a hose bib and spigot at the bottom, from which you can drain the water from the barrel (or you can just dip a pail or watering can into the barrels from the top).

You (or a friend) only need be able to pick them up from Redwood City’s Public Works department offices at 1400 Broadway; they can’t be shipped. For a lot more information, check out the web page for the county’s rain barrel program, here.

The circus is (almost) here! The Zoppé Italian Family Circus will be returning to Redwood City next Friday, October 13. They’ll be around for seven weeks, with their final show on Sunday, November 26, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to see them. Here is a full list of the show dates and times. Ticket prices and a link to where you can buy tickets in advance are on that page as well (you can buy tickets at the door, but shows do sell out). My wife and I attended the circus last year, and I can honestly say it was worth every penny: their small family show is just terrific.