When someone refers to “the big four,” I, being a born-and-bred Californian who is interested in history, immediately think of the four railroad magnates who founded the Central Pacific Railroad. That railroad was the western part of our country’s first transcontinental rail line (the one with the golden spike); it was founded by Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford (yes, that Stanford), Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker. Somewhat sadly, if you Google “the big four” these days, the first entry refers to the four top accounting firms, while the second entry is for the novel of that name by Agatha Christie. You have to scroll down quite a ways in order to find links to information on the four men who became wealthy building one of the true wonders of the world (just ride Amtrak from the Bay Area to Denver; the route over the Sierras, and then over the Rockies, is something to behold). But since the phrase has been adopted for other uses, I have only limited compunctions about borrowing it and using it for some of the development projects in Redwood City. This week I took a relatively short walk (for me; only 6.6 miles) to visit Redwood City’s largest and most important projects now under development: the Veterans Memorial Building/Senior Center, ELCO Yards, Broadway Plaza, and the county’s “COB 3” office building.

Although from the outside the Veterans Memorial Building/Senior Center is progressing slowly from week-to-week, a great deal of work is going on inside. But some work does continue outside: windows are being installed, and most of the building is now surrounded by scaffolding, in preparation for what I presume will soon be the installation of the rest of its exterior finishes.

Here is the end of the building facing Madison Avenue:

As you can see, many of the windows have already been installed. This new building, which is located in Red Morton Park, is L-shaped; shown above is the shorter leg. The longer leg follows what used to be a bit of Nevada Street (Nevada now stops at Madison Avenue, since the bit that formerly extended into the park was abandoned; soon it will be a “pedestrian paseo”). From the west side, that longer leg looks like this at the moment:

Here you can see that the right-hand end of the building already has had its exterior applied: composite wall panels made from recycled wood. Most of the building’s exterior will utilize this material, with some parts being faced with a concrete masonry veneer, and window surrounds and trim being metal. Note the large open area on the second floor in the middle of this part of the building: it will be completely open on both sides (and on top; there will be a large cutout in the roof), to provide fresh air and nice views to the portion of the building where an “outdoor” running track will be located.

Finally, here is a view of the building from inside the ‘L’:

In addition to the running track the building will sport a small indoor gym, plus, in the section of the building along Madison Avenue, a 299-seat theater, a large kitchen, wellness and adaptive PE studios, conference rooms and offices. And, as befits the building’s name, there will be exhibit space honoring veterans and celebrating NFL alumni (the old NFL Alumni Building was one of those torn down to make way for this new building).

Given the progress so far, it appears as if this building will be completed sometime this year (I’m thinking in the fall). Personally, I can’t wait to see the inside and perhaps even participate in some of the activities that will be held there.

From Red Morton Park, I walked straight down Vera Avenue to El Camino Real, and the site of the massive ELCO Yards project. That project is going like gangbusters at the moment. Along El Camino Real, the large building spanning the block between Beech and Cedar streets is just about to raise above ground level: its three-story subterranean garage is essentially done, with work currently focused on the large concrete slabs that will do dual duty as the ceiling of the uppermost garage level and the base of the building’s ground floor:

As you can see, crews are just about ready to pour the concrete that will form the base for the four-story building that will soon rise on this spot. Note that although all of the four buildings currently under construction at ELCO Yards will largely be offices (two later buildings will be residential), the majority of this building’s ground floor will be a large “family-friendly” retail space (perhaps a roller rink) plus, towards the Cedar Street end and away from El Camino Real, a childcare center. A portion of the ground floor and three upper floors will combine to provide just shy of 110,000 square feet of office space.

Behind the above building, at the corner of Cedar and Main streets, is where the second building in this large project is currently underway. Because this one was the last of the four to get underway, its two-level underground garage is still under construction. Here, the lowest garage level is complete, with work currently being done to complete the upper garage level:

Atop this garage will be yet another four-story office building, this one with a total of just over 166,000 square feet of office space.

Across Main Street, a pair of four-story office buildings (one of which will have a rooftop terrace) are rising atop a large two-level parking garage. These buildings are the farthest along: the second floor structures are largely in place, with work now underway on the third floors. Here is the “north” building, which is closest to the Main Street Dog Agility Park:

This building is the one that will ultimately sport a rooftop terrace. Over its four floors it will contain a total of 119,000 square feet of office space, plus about 1,350 square feet of retail space. That latter will take the form of a small cafe that apparently will be open to the public. It will be located along Main Street at the left end of the building as seen in the above picture, putting it next to the public dog park.

The second office building on this large parcel (which once was two, but the two parcels were joined when the section of Cedar Street that separated them was abandoned) sits at the corner of Main and Chestnut streets. This one will be all office space, with the four floors totaling 135,000 square feet. Next to this building, however, will be a nice-sized (12,000+ square feet) chunk of public open space plus a 3,300-square-foot stand-alone restaurant space right on the street corner. This restaurant space will be constructed to mimic the old metal “Perry Feeds” shed that used to stand near this corner. But that building will be constructed later in the process, once the giant mobile crane that is being used to construct the office building is no longer needed (currently it is parked right where the restaurant will go). For now, here is what you see when you visit this portion of the site:

Moving on from ELCO Yards, I walked down Chestnut Street to the third of my “big four”: the Broadway Plaza project, which is located at Broadway and Chestnut Street. On foot, you can’t easily get to that particular corner of the project at the moment, but you can get to the corner of Chestnut Street and Bay Road, which is another of the project’s corners. From there I walked down Bay Road almost to Woodside Road, and turned in at the old CVS Pharmacy. The parking lot of the old CVS has a great view into the giant pit that will be the parking garage beneath the project’s three residential buildings (one of which will also have some amount of retail along its Broadway frontage):

The flooring of this garage is rapidly nearing completion, along with some of the pillars that will support the level above. This particular garage will have two levels, but only one of them will be below ground level.

Finally, I walked towards downtown Redwood City along Broadway until I reached Spring Street; I then angled up Spring Street until I reached Marshall Street, which I then followed to the set of parcels owned by San Mateo County and the site of their latest project, the COB 3 office building.  I haven’t written about this building in a while because the exterior has largely been completed for some time, and thus there is little visible change from one visit to the next. Although work is going on to finish the grounds around the building, construction fencing blocks my view of much of that work:

On this visit, though, I noticed that lights were on inside the building, and closer inspection revealed that many of the offices have now been furnished. I’m sure that work is still going on in parts of the building’s interior, but this building almost looks to be occupied (although I don’t believe it is, yet):

You can really see in at night; I happened to be passing by the other evening and could easily see some of the furniture inside (unfortunately, I didn’t have time to stop and take a picture). Although the upper floor offices look finished, parts of the ground floor of the building don’t seem to be; until the building is completely ready, and the ribbon has been cut — something I expect to see happen in the next couple of months — I don’t think anyone will actually move in.

This five-story building, currently saddled with the rather unglorious name “County Office Building #3” (COB 3 for short) should have sufficient office and meeting space to accommodate 500 county employees. It will also house the chambers where the Board of Supervisors will hold their regular public meetings. Although you can no longer tell from the outside, this building was built using cross-laminated timber: the bulk of its structure comes from wood, rather than steel. Through the windows you can see the wood panels that were used to form the ceilings and floors of the building; those remain exposed, as do, I presume, many of the wooden structural elements. Hopefully the county will have some sort of public open house when the ribbon-cutting occurs; I’d really like to get some photographs of the building’s interior. Of course, parts of the building — including the lobby and the chambers where the Board of Supervisors will meet — will be open to the public, so at some point I should be able to get photographs of those parts of the building’s interior, at any rate.

COB 3 is likely to be wrapped up soon, and I’m guessing that the Veterans Memorial Building/Senior Center will also wrap up sometime late this year. Neither ELCO Yards nor Broadway Plaza will finish in 2024, so there will be plenty of activity to watch on those two sites all year long (once the four ELCO Yards office buildings are complete, work should commence on the two residential buildings that will stand on the site along Maple Street, so work on the ELCO Yards project will continue for a couple more years). But there you have them: Redwood City’s “Big Four.”