It has been about two months since I last reported on Redwood City’s biggest projects — ELCO Yards and Broadway Plaza — and although the changes since then haven’t been earth-shattering, there are a couple of interesting things going on with both of those that I think you may find interesting. As well, I have an update on Docktown Marina, and a bit of follow-up on the county’s office building project (“COB3”). But first, a couple of restaurant-related items.

I’ve been watching what used to be the Signarama building ever since mid 2016, when that business relocated. The building, which sits at the corner of El Camino Real and Winklebleck Street (at 851 El Camino Real) sat idle for a handful of years, but finally, in early 2020, I noted that the building was getting remodeled. At the time I dug around a bit and came up with two interesting tidbits: it was slated to be a restaurant, and the restaurant would apparently be called “Maizz.” Between then and now I’ve learned little else, but watched as the on-again, off-again remodeling of the building took place. Finally, there is light at the end of this now four-year tunnel: a temporary sign (perhaps made by Signarama?) has gone up on the building:

The sign went up just after the parking lot was paved and striped, so the words “coming soon” might possibly be read as “quite soon.” The sign confirms that the place will indeed be called Maizz, but adds a rather cryptic tagline: “The corn cravings.” From this, we can probably infer that this will be a restaurant serving Mexican (or South American) cuisine. The emphasis on corn may refer to elotes — Mexican street corn — and/or corn tortillas. Or perhaps tamales? In any case, I hope to find out soon, when this place finally opens its doors. In any case, I have also confirmed that the business will indeed be a restaurant, but as yet there does not appear to be a liquor license application filed for this address or business name. Thus, unless they get going on that soon, Maizz won’t be serving alcohol.

Last week I mentioned that Mazra had opened its Redwood City doors to great acclaim along the closed-off section of Broadway. At the time my wife and I paid them a visit, it was a bit on the early side — 5:30 p.m. — and I observed that the restaurants across the street seemed pretty quiet. While they hopefully got busier as the evening wore on, it did cause us to realize that we hadn’t patronized one of our favorite Redwood City restaurants in a while: Vesta. Accordingly, when a friend came to visit a couple of days later, we got take-out from Vesta. As usual, it was wonderful. And it was accompanied by a lovely little note that I thought was worth sharing:

Not only do they express sincere appreciation for our patronage, I thought this line was interesting:

Thank you for continuing to order directly through our website. This helps us save on hefty 3rd party fees!

More restaurants should say things like this. I’m certainly happy to see that all of what we pay (when we order through their website) goes only to Vesta and their employees, and not to a third party.

On to ELCO Yards. This project, sitting as it does along both El Camino Real and Main Street in Redwood City, is extremely hard to miss. Ultimately it will consist of four office buildings and two residential buildings (well, three, if you count the already built affordable housing building at 1304 El Camino Real), but for now the development effort is being concentrated on the four office buildings, with the site of the two residential buildings being used for staging of materials and equipment. This week I spent time studying the progress of each of the four buildings, all of which are making great strides. Perhaps the most interesting, at least for now, is the four-story office building out on El Camino Real (“building B”).

On the ground floor building B will have a “family entertainment tenant” in a large open space facing the street, a childcare center on the building’s backside (facing Lathrop Street) and an outdoor space for the children to play on the side facing, but set back from, Cedar Street. There will also be a lobby and a bit of office space on the ground floor, with the remaining office space occupying the entirety of the upper three floors.

The third floor of the building will have two small outdoor terraces, one facing Lathrop Street and one facing Beech Street. The fourth floor will have a much larger terrace also facing Lathrop Street, plus one stretching the entire width of the building (and wrapping partly around the two adjacent sides) facing El Camino Real. The structures that will shade both of these large terraces are now clearly visible (note the red arrows):

Don’t confuse the light-colored metal wall structure at the very top of the building with a terrace; that is for a rooftop screen that will hide the HVAC and other equipment that will be installed up there. The two large terraces will be on the fourth floor level, not the rooftop.

As for the smaller terraces, those will be, as I noted, one floor below, and both will apparently be open to the sky. One is visible from the Beech Street side of the building; I’ve added a red arrow in the following photograph, marking the location of that terrace:

Of course, if you are like me, that smaller terrace isn’t what catches your eye. Instead, it is that odd roof structure just behind the terrace. That is a “gable roof” that will sit atop the three story wing of the building that will sit at the corner of Beech and Lathrop streets. It can be a bit hard to find this gable roof among the renderings that Greystar (the original developer, who sold the project to IQHQ) submitted with its application to the city, but you can see it in the following rendering, where I’ve added an arrow:

One thing I really like about this project is the variety of building styles being used; these six buildings will all be different, and some of the buildings will even utilize multiple styles. The above rendering shows the view looking south down Lathrop Street, with one of the residential buildings against the right side of the rendering and the other residential building shown against the left. Building B is farther down the street. Note how the part I’ve highlighted looks somewhat industrial? Then see what appears to be a separate building beyond it? Allow me to zoom in:

What appears to be two buildings, made from different materials and in different styles, are really just one building. The black industrial-looking part with the gable roof is just one wing of building B. Behind it you can get a feel for what most of the rest of the building will look like (there the building is only three stories tall, with one of the fourth-floor terraces, which you can just barely make out through the branches of the tree).

Building B may employ multiple styles, but it looks nothing like one of the two buildings whose structures are nearly complete on the east side of Main Street. Both of these are referred to in the preliminary plans as “building E”, likely because they both sit atop a common two-story subterranean garage. But the northernmost of the two — the closest to downtown Redwood City — is going to be unlike anything else in this development:

As you can undoubtedly see, this one is pretty much all curves (there will be one sharp corner, in the back along the Caltrain tracks). And it will be clothed almost entirely in glass. This, too, will be a four-story office building, but one with only a single terrace. That terrace (which will not be open to the public, sadly) will sit atop the second floor, almost dead-center in the above photograph. Nearly all of this building will consist of office space, although there will be a small public cafe on the ground floor, below where the terrace will be.

Here is a rendering of this same corner of the building, showing the cafe and the balcony:

Look closely and you can see a train passing by, just peeking out from the trees on the left. Behind those trees, and to the left of the planter that is beneath those trees is where the Main Street Dog Agility Park is (and will continue to be) located. I expect that many folks using the dog park will find the cafe rather convenient.

Count the floors in the photograph I took of this building’s progress so far, and you’ll see that the building has reached its full height (although as you can probably tell they are still pouring concrete for what will be the top floor’s ceiling). It’s “sister” — the southern building E — has also attained its maximum height (it, too, will be a four-story building):

As you can see, this one is as square as its sister is curved. But like building B, it will not look like one monolithic structure. See that part of the building that protrudes out towards Main Street, on the left? Take a look at the roof — or, more accurately, the lack thereof — on that part of the building. As you can see, there is a roof structure being constructed around the perimeter of this portion of the building’s fourth floor, but the center has been left open. That is because that portion of this building will also have an industrial look, this one with a more conventionally peaked roof:

These are going to be really interesting spaces in which to work!

For those who aren’t already familiar with the ELCO Yards project, that little free-standing building in the center of the rendering is meant to echo the large metal shed that once stood on that spot. This little building will be constructed later, once the office building behind it is much farther along, and will be a restaurant, somewhat replacing (and intended to be run by) the folks who brought us Main & Elm, the restaurant that operated on Elm Street (near Main Street) until it was torn down to help form the site for one of the future residential buildings. This new restaurant will of course be open to the public, and as you can see it will open out onto a nice-sized public open space that will undoubtedly get a lot of use.

Between building E (north) and building B (the one on El Camino I began with) will sit building C. This one isn’t as far along as the others, but it is well above its subterranean garage now:

The colored renderings don’t really capture this building well, but the plans do also include some monochromatic aerial views, one of which shows this new building nicely:

As you can probably tell, from Cedar and Main streets this building should look like a rather conventional four-story office building (with a three-story section at Lathrop and Cedar streets, atop which there will be a small terrace). But carrying on the trend established by the other buildings, this one will have a uniquely styled single-story section at the corner of Lathrop and Beech streets, one sporting a sawtooth roof with skylights. That portion of the building, at least, is captured in the colored renderings:

(The tall green-tinted building to the left is one of the two residential buildings; both are taller than their office counterparts.)

That does it for ELCO Yards this week. Quickly, on to Broadway Plaza:

Broadway Plaza will ultimately consist of three residential buildings and three office buildings. The project is being built in phases, with the residential buildings being constructed first, and the office buildings being constructed at a later date. Each of the residential buildings will face a different street: one will face Broadway (and will have some retail on its ground floor), one will primarily face Chestnut Street, and one will face Bay Road. The above shows the ground floor of the building that will face Chestnut Street (the corner is the intersection of Chestnut Street and Bay Road). Further down Bay, the beginnings of the building that will face that road are now rapidly taking shape:

Similar activity is happening over on the Broadway side, but I was more interested in what is happening down closer to Woodside Road. It seems that the old CVS Pharmacy is starting to come down. At least, the clay tiles that formed its decorative roof have mostly been torn off since I last visited the site:

Now that the new CVS Pharmacy across Woodside Road is up and running, my only real access to this property is from the sidewalks (where they are accessible; the one along the project side of Broadway have been temporarily closed off again) and from the Jack in the Box parking lot, which you see above. In any case, I’m pleased to report that the project is humming along now.

Moving along, over on the other side of the freeway, Docktown Marina is essentially gone (apparently, there is still one resident; I don’t know how much longer he’ll be there). Just this week the marina’s largest floating home, which has been boarded up for more than a year now, was finally hauled off to a new home, somewhere in the north bay. I wish I had been there to see it; according to this article, it had trouble contending with the waves on the bay, although it apparently did make it to its new home.

Just last week I had taken some pictures of the portion of Redwood Creek where Docktown Marina once thrived, and at the time I noticed that the large floating home discussed in the article had been moved from its former location, down towards the Highway 101 end, out to the creek’s eastern tip. That probably was in preparation for this week’s move. But the move prompted me to go back this week and take some more photographs, allowing you to see just how little is left of Docktown Marina:

Other than what you see above, there is just one other boat among the marina’s now-empty docks:

(These photos were of course taken at low tide; much of the time these vessels are actually floating.) I suspect that the now-decrepit docks that made up the marina may remain for some time; I’m not sure the city has the funds to remove them.

Back closer to home, I went back by the county’s new office building project — employees should be moving in almost any day now, it seems — and most of the construction fencing is gone. Perhaps more importantly, the low round structures that I initially thought were planters, but by last week had wood framing inside them, are mysteries no longer:

It seems that they are both planters (for one tree, at least in this case) and places to sit.

Finally, both out front and in back, signage has gone up above the main entrances:

That’ll do it for this week. But here’s something to add to your calendar: on Saturday, May 4, the Port of Redwood City will be hosting its second annual Port of Redwood City Lighted Drone Show, from 6 – 9 p.m. Being on May 4, (“may the fourth be with you”), naturally the show will have a Star Wars theme. In addition to the show itself, there will be face painting, a meet and greet with various Star Wars characters, and free lightsabers for the first 200 children. Starting at 6:30 p.m. a band (CASH’D OUT) will play Johnny Cash classics, and throughout the event there will be a number of food trucks (including Mister Softee ice cream plus beer and wine from Devil’s Canyon Brewing). As for the drone show, that will start at 8:30 p.m., when things should be nice and dark. Bring a low-back chair and/or a blanket. Coolers and dogs are permitted.