With the 49ers in the Super Bowl once again, I feel a bit obligated to write something here about them, which, given their historic connections to Redwood City, is easy. As some of you will recall, the 49ers had both their headquarters and their practice facility here in Redwood City, in Red Morton Park, from 1956 to 1988. Team headquarters were located in this building, at 711 Nevada St.:

Team owner Eddie DeBartolo’s office was on the ground floor, while head coach Bill Walsh had his office on the second floor. Apparently, Walsh was able to watch the team practice from a second-floor balcony; it looked out over this field (well, an older version of this field) that was used for practices by the team:

The building at 711 Nevada St. is long gone: it was torn down some two and a half years ago, along with Herkner Pool and one other small building (plus the portion of Nevada Street that protruded into the park, for that matter) to make way for the new Veterans Memorial Building/Senior Center (VMSC), which you can see above. The VMSC is still under construction, and is making steady progress, weather permitting.

Sticking with the theme for just a bit longer, that “one other small building” that was also torn down to make way for the new VMSC was the NFL Alumni building:

This building was, I believe, home to the NFL Alumni – Northern California Chapter: a charitable organization that I believe is made up of former members of the National Football League. These days the organization has digs in the Community Activities Building at 1400 Roosevelt Ave., just on the other side of Red Morton Park. But that address is, I believe, a temporary one: once complete, the new VMSC is slated to have both a second floor office labeled on the plans as “NFL” that surely will be for the NFL Alumni organization, and a set of displays that will honor the NFL (focusing, I’m guessing, on the 49ers and their past relationship with Redwood City) along a public corridor that will also have windows looking out over the field.

Switching gears, at long last the new CVS Pharmacy on Bay Road at Woodside Road is open! I went by at the beginning of the week, and although the move to the new building had been completed, due to what I’m guessing was our recent storms they didn’t have power. So, ironically, the store apparently opened (perhaps over the weekend?) only to close shortly thereafter, when they lost their electricity. But I went by again today, and it was very much open for business:

As a reminder, this new store has a drive-through pharmacy window (it’s around the back of the building, with signage and painted lanes providing clear directions). Although the pharmacy’s main driveway entrance and exit is off of Bay Road, here’s a pro tip: you can easily get to the pharmacy from Broadway, by turning in at the Smart & Final store and driving straight ahead into the CVS Pharmacy parking lot.

Here is what the new store looks like from the outside:

In case you go by tomorrow (Saturday), be aware that they will be celebrating the official grand opening of the store from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. that day. They will have music, raffles, gifts (including free gift bags for the first 150 customers) and “fun for the whole family!”, so it could be worth attending. Me, I’m just glad that the store is finally open, so I can put this particular project to bed.

Although I can stop writing about the new CVS Pharmacy, I’m not quite done with their old location, just across Woodside Road. I was hoping to get one last close-up picture of the old store when I was there early in the week, but apparently the work crews on the Broadway Plaza project put up construction fences around the old building and its parking area just as soon as the new store was opened for business, so I couldn’t get any closer than the Jack in the Box parking lot:

This picture from atop the fence will do, however. Note that the sign has already been removed from the building, although the lights were still on. I guess there is a possibility that the construction company will use the building for a while as offices or safe storage of materials or something, but I plan to keep an eye on it since I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they simply tear the building down (it’ll have to come down at some point, once the next phase of the project underway: that second phase will focus on the half of the project that will be built on this Woodside Road end of the parcel). At the moment, work is concentrated on the end over by Chestnut Street, where the lower level of the two-level garage has mostly been formed and work on the upper level is well underway:

The three residential (with some retail spaces along Broadway) buildings will sit around and atop this upper garage level.

Here is a closer look at the work going on at the far end, as viewed from Broadway near the Chestnut Street intersection:

For the curious, one entrance to this portion of the garage will be from Bay Road (there will also be an entrance from Broadway). The “tunnel” you see in the center of the following image is that Bay Road entrance:

Ultimately, the garage will span the entire property, with a total of 1,922 parking spaces (there will also be 244 bicycle parking spaces, but those will apparently be inside the buildings themselves, and not in the parking garage). Parking for the residential buildings will be in what you see above, and parking for the office buildings will be beneath the half of the property where the old CVS Pharmacy building still stands. The two portions of the garage will be connected, and there will be some amount of shared parking between the two (that is, some of the spaces will be for office use during the day, and then will be made available for residential use after business hours). There will also be garage entrances off of both Broadway and Bay Road (both closer to Woodside Road) that will lead into the office half of the parking garage.

While I was out today, I noticed that the 91-room hotel project slated for the corner of Veterans Boulevard and Brewster Avenue seems to be underway:

At the moment, dirt is being pushed around and chunks of rock and/or cement are being used to serve as temporary driveways onto the site from both Veterans Boulevard and Brewster Avenue. This particular project will have an internal, ground-level garage (using mechanical stackers to squeeze in the requisite number of cars); the crews won’t be digging an underground garage. Of course the workers will be running underground utilities and constructing the building’s foundation, so expect to see some amount of digging for a while.

Finally, some small project updates. First, that modular home at 183 Ruby St. in San Carlos was actively being worked on when I went by on Tuesday, but boy, is it ever proceeding slowly:

I thought that modular construction is supposed to speed the process, but it feels as if a conventional, stick-built project would have proceeded at about the same pace as this one…

Speaking of slow, the office project at 1390 Woodside Rd. (next to Woodside Plaza) is in the same boat: I saw people working on the building when I was there, but I continue to see almost no visible changes from one visit to the next:

The Bravo Taqueria restaurant building and the next-door 5th Quarter Pizza building on Woodside Road just down from Kentfield Avenue are both being remodeled, and both are making steady progress. Here is the Bravo Taqueria building as it currently stands:

Just across the parking lot between the two, here is the 5th Quarter Pizza building. This building used to extend a lot farther to the left, but has been chopped down to a shadow of its former self:

Not having seen the plans, I have no idea what the ultimate shape of this building will be. Nor do I know who will occupy it. Unlike Bravo Taqueria, who certainly intended to reoccupy their building once the remodel was complete (then again, that project has taken significantly longer than expected, so who knows), 5th Quarter Pizza closed their doors long before their building’s remodel got underway, and didn’t plan to reopen. So unless anyone knows for sure, we’ll all just have to be surprised together.

Across Woodside Road from the two restaurant buildings, the eight-unit townhouse project being built at 955 Woodside Rd. is moving along at a nice clip:

And down at 31 Center St., the seven-unit townhouse project being built there is rapidly nearing completion:

The driveway between the two buildings has been poured, and the sidewalks, walkways, and front stoops were under construction when I was there. From the outside, at least, once the concrete work is done it appears that all that remains is to finish up the small roof overhangs above the unit front doors (they don’t have their shingles yet) and install the landscaping. Presumably some work is still going on inside, but this project looks weeks away from hanging out its “for sale” signs.

Redwood City’s largest project — ELCO Yards — is also making great progress, but I’m going to save that one for a future post since I can do an entire blog post about that project alone.

That’ll do it for this week. For you football fans, have fun watching the Super Bowl, and the San Francisco 49ers!