In September of 2020 I wrote about a newly proposed project for a site at 77 Birch St., where today there stands a 5,000-square-foot office building. That building, like many along Birch (and neighboring Arch) Street contains a medical practice or two, along with a real estate firm. This place:

The block is a mix of housing — both single-family homes and multi-family buildings — and small office buildings similar to what stands at 77 Birch St. today. So the proposal, which is for a nine-unit townhouse-style condominium complex, isn’t really out of line.

Over the years since the project was first proposed I kept an eye both on the site and on the project online, and I observed no real progress until last February, when an updated plan was submitted. Then, a couple of weeks ago, the Planning Commission reviewed, and then enthusiastically approved, the project. Hopefully, in a year or so we’ll see some activity on the site, as demolition occurs and construction gets underway. But given the current economic conditions as they relate to development projects — lenders just aren’t lending for new construction projects at the moment — don’t be surprised if this project, already nearly four years after it was originally proposed, drags on even longer.

Redwood City has seen a handful of small townhouse projects lately; I’ve been monitoring the seven-unit project at 31 Center St. (which is now done: the units are for sale), the eight-unit project at 955 Woodside Rd. (about to get its exterior stucco), and the five-unit one at 239 Vera Ave. that recently poured cement for the unit foundations. But all of those have fairly conventional layouts, with each townhouse being three stories tall, and with a garage on the ground floor, public living spaces (kitchen, dining room, living room, and a bathroom) on the second floor, and bedrooms and bathrooms on the third floor.

While the project recently approved for 77 Birch St. consists of two buildings separated by a common driveway, with one building containing five townhouses and the other four, the townhouses themselves have a couple of uncommon features. For one, each townhouse is four stories tall. And they are large, ranging in size from 2,850 – 3,200 square feet (including a 400-square-foot two-car garage).

Previously, the plan was to have two buildings containing four four-story townhouses each, joined at the front by a sort-of bridge that itself was the ninth townhouse. The plan for the bridging unit — which had a very odd layout — has been scrapped in the new design, in favor of the 5/4 arrangement. Then, because there is a very old, very large redwood tree in the back corner of the property that the city wanted to see preserved, the rearmost unit in the right-hand building (as viewed from Birch Street) was rotated 90 degrees so that, from the driveway, it is wide and shallow, rather than narrow and deep, unlike the other eight units. This results in the following layout:

[click the image to get one you can zoom in on]

As you can see, the entrances to each unit are on the ends opposite the central driveway: the units “face” the neighboring properties. And note the small bit of open space at the rear of the property; this is common space that I believe is usable by the residents of any of the units.

Given the large square footage and the extra floor, just how are these townhouses laid out? The ground floor, of course, contains the two-car garage, but also a den/office space, a full bathroom (with shower), a closet, and the main entryway. And, optionally, an elevator. Yes, each unit can have its own private elevator, something that I can imagine would come in real handy when you have a four-story home. To the best of my knowledge, however, that elevator is optional; the initial buyer of the unit can specify that it be included, but they’ll of course have to pay extra for it.

On the second floor, each unit has a kitchen, dining area, living room, half bath, and a small (67-square-foot) deck. Up one flight of stairs (or one stop in the elevator!), we find two bedrooms, each with their own dedicated full bathroom and closet, and the unit’s laundry room. Head up the stairs once more, and you reach the top floor, where there is yet another bedroom, a full bathroom, an indoor “flex space” (perhaps a game room, or an office, or…?) that opens, via double-doors, out onto a 220-square-foot private deck with BBQ, sink, and a small fridge. That deck, incidentally, is fully open to the sky unless the initial owner opts for an optional “cementitious wood” (it looks like wood, but is made of more durable concrete) trellis structure that would provide partial shade.

This rendering shows what the project will look like as viewed from Birch Street (and assuming that all units opted for the optional deck trellis):

Each unit’s two decks are on the front face, meaning that they look out over the neighboring property and not the central driveway. That is also the view you get from the second-floor kitchen and one of the third floor bedrooms. The windows in the fourth floor bedroom, the third floor master bedroom, and the second floor living room all look out over the driveway and towards your opposite neighbor in the complex.

There is a lot to like about this project. The large size of each unit is attractive, and although four and a half bathrooms seems a bit excessive, I do like that there are bathrooms on each level: you don’t have to navigate the stairs (or use the elevator) when you have to, well, go. The elevator will go a long way towards negating the seemingly endless set of stairs that the occupants will find themselves otherwise navigating each day, and it will serve nicely as a kind-of dumbwaiter to transfer groceries and other items up to the kitchen level from the garage, and to transfer food from the second floor kitchen up to the fourth floor deck: perfect for entertaining. Three bedrooms plus an office — which could serve as another bedroom in a pinch, although the plans show that each unit’s front door opens right into that ground-floor space — should be enough for most households. And the top-level deck provides valuable private outdoor space that I can imagine using quite a bit.

Location-wise, this development is in a great spot. Positioned midway between Whipple and Hopkins avenues, and being only two blocks off of El Camino Real, it should be easy to get to work, to stores, to restaurants, and the like. Redwood City’s Caltrain station is only a half-mile walk away, so commuters using that service can leave their car in the garage, as can folks heading for downtown Redwood City. Regrettably, there aren’t any parks in the immediate vicinity, but Wellesley Crescent Park isn’t too far, and Stafford Park is an easy ride up the bike lanes along Hopkins Avenue (did I mention that bikes can be stored in the garage or in that office/den space?).

Pricing on these is likely to be on the high side (these will be for sale, and not for rent), especially if you include the two optional components: the elevator and the trellis over the top-level deck. But we’ll have to see. I’m looking forward to touring one of these when they are built (assuming that they aren’t all pre-sold); they seem as if they’d be quite comfortable. And if I was downsizing from my current home — which is actually smaller than one of these units, square-footage wise — I’d consider one, given that it had the elevator.

Redwood City’s free Music in the Park concert series starts this coming Wednesday, June 19, and runs through August 21. Concerts take place each Wednesday, starting at 6 p.m. (the August 14 and 21 concerts will begin at 5:30 p.m.) in Stafford Park, on Hopkins Avenue between King and Lowell streets. The Optimist Club of Redwood City will have its usual concession tent selling hamburgers, hot dogs, potato chips and drinks, and I assume that there will be the usual food trucks parked on the street as well.

Of course, Music on the Square has been underway for two weeks now (Fridays, May 31 – August 30, from 6 – 8 p.m., in Redwood City’s Courthouse Square), so that’s another option. And as usual Sounds of the Shores will present three concerts out in Marlin Park in Redwood Shores (three Sundays, from 5 – 7 p.m.). Finally, don’t forget that the Port of Redwood City also has its Rock the Dock free concert series on Saturday afternoons from April through November; see their website for bands and concert times. So anyone looking for some free summer entertainment in the Redwood City area has no excuse…

I’ve been out of the country for the last two weeks, and had intended this post to be automatically published on May 31. But I got some settings wrong, and thus the two-week gap in blog posts. In any case, I’m back! I expected to see significant changes over the past two weeks, but upon returning I did a quick run-around through town and although some progress has been made on all of the projects I’ve been monitoring, all of that can wait another week. While I was gone I kept tabs on the local news and was greatly saddened to read about the fire that occurred at the under-construction affordable housing project in North Fair Oaks. While I’m hoping that the project isn’t actually a total loss, as some early newspaper articles indicated it may be, at the very least it will set the project back significantly. It does appear that only one of the development’s two buildings was burned, so there’s that. I last wrote about this project just about a year ago, when it was first getting underway, and have it high on my list to visit, to see for myself what state the project’s two buildings are in. Look for an update on that project in a future blog post.