The Port of Redwood City recently announced a pilot program to gauge interest in Redwood City’s upcoming (presumably; the service’s actual feasibility has yet to be determined) ferry service. The Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA), the folks who provide ferry service in the San Francisco Bay, intend to run a limited set of ferries from the Port of Redwood City up to Oracle Park for five selected Sunday SF Giants games. Yet to be announced are some key details, such as exactly which games will see ferry service, at what time they will depart, and from which Redwood City pier. However, the pilot is scheduled to begin on July 28, so I would think there’s a good chance they’ll be running on that day. What we do know is that the trip will take about an hour each way, and that it will cost $18.75 for adults and $14.00 for youth, disabled, and seniors.

If this is at all interesting to you — personally, it sounds like a really fun way to get to the park — follow this link to sign up to be notified when tickets go on sale. Signing up for that link doesn’t obligate you in any way, but should give both WETA and the Port of Redwood City some idea of public interest in general ferry service from Redwood City to San Francisco (actual ticket sales over the course of the pilot will be even more meaningful, of course). If there is a chance you might occasionally or even regularly use ferry service from Redwood City to San Francisco, for Giants games or for other reasons, I encourage you to click the link and supply an email address.

Switching gears, throughout the construction process I periodically wrote about the terrific 125-unit affordable housing project over at 353 Main St. That project broke ground in November of 2019 and opened its doors to new tenants one year ago, in July of 2023. Sometime over the last month or two, though, a neat new detail was added. A nice bit of public art:

Like so many large murals, the folks behind this one had few choices as to where it could go. Thus, unfortunately, it is not visible to anyone driving by the building on either Main Street or Veterans Boulevard. While driving, the one place you can get a glimpse of it is when you cross over the bridge over Redwood Creek, leaving the Peninsula Boardwalk shopping center (where Kohl’s and Sports Basement are located). The best view, though, is reserved for those folks walking along the public walkway that runs between the 353 Main St. building and Redwood Creek (which is where I was when I took this picture). Just another benefit to exploring Redwood City on foot…

Last week I provided an update on the ELCO Yards project; this week I spent some time circling Broadway Plaza. The three residential (some with bits of commercial space) buildings being constructed at the Chestnut Street end of the project are all well under construction at this point, with the tower crane being used to move materials and some equipment all around that end of the large parcel. Each of the three buildings is at a different stage of construction, though, which indicates that crews with particular expertise in one phase of construction are likely focusing on one building at a time.

Here is how the three residential buildings will be laid out:

(Ignore the building in blue at the right edge of the rendering; that is an office building that will be constructed in a separate, later phase of the project.) In this image, Bay Road runs across the bottom, Chestnut Street runs up the left side, and Broadway runs near the top, at a bit of an angle. The developer has helpfully numbered the three buildings, with Building 1 facing Broadway, Building 2 facing Bay Road, and Building 3 mostly facing Chestnut Street (but also partially facing Bay Road).

Not clear from the layout is the fact that a large underground parking level has been constructed beneath this entire half of the parcel. Atop it, and also not clear from the rendering, will be a concrete “podium” level; this podium will largely consist of a single above-ground garage level and will be surrounded on various sides by portions of the three buildings.

Right now, Building 3 — which faces Chestnut Street and Bay Road — is the farthest along of the three. Its podium level is complete, and as of today one or two additional levels (depending upon which portion of the building you look at) have been framed up using conventional wooden construction methods:

This building will contain all of the development’s affordable housing: 120 apartments in sizes ranging from studios to three-bedroom units. Five of those units will be on the ground floor looking out at Chestnut Street, and three more will be on the ground floor facing Bay Road. These eight units, together with the building’s lobby, mail room, community room, and property manager’s office, will all help shield the ground level internal parking garage. The remaining 112 apartments will be on the building’s four upper floors (making this building five stories tall in total).

Building 3 has been designed with a rough “C” shape; the interior of the C, atop the podium (and thus on the building’s second level) will be a landscaped private courtyard for residents of that one building. It will feature a play area for children, BBQs, and outdoor seating.

Moving on to Building 1, the long, rather oddly shaped building stretching along Broadway, this six-story building will contain both a couple of retail spaces (totaling 11,000 square feet), a 10,000-square-foot childcare center, and the various offices and such necessary for the building to function (lobby, leasing office, mailroom, an “amenity space” and a “bike cafe”). All of this will be located on the ground floor, and with the exception of the childcare center, will face Broadway and thus shield the ground-floor parking garage from view.

The “notch” in the Broadway side of the building will be the driveway entrance/exit to the ground-floor level of the garage (entrance to the underground level will be from Bay Road, between Building 3 and Building 2). To the right of that notch (that is, away from Chestnut Street) most of the building’s frontage will be retail space. Between the notch and the Chestnut Street/Broadway corner is where one would find the leasing office and the various other common spaces for use by the building’s residents. Finally, on the ground floor the odd little “arm” that reaches back towards the center of the property is where the childcare center will be located. In the layout drawing, to the right of the childcare center you can see two yellow “sails”: those will provide shade to the secure outdoor space in which the children in the childcare center can play.

At this time, the podium level for Building 1 is just about complete: the concrete support pillars and the podium’s concrete top deck have mostly (or, perhaps, entirely; it’s hard to tell from street level) been poured, but the temporary supports have yet to be removed.

Once the concrete that makes up the top deck has cured, the framers will begin constructing the upper five stories, where all of the building’s market-rate apartments will be located.

Shifting over to Bay Road, we come to Building 2. This U-shaped building is pretty much all apartments; its small lobby/mailroom and a dog wash will share the ground floor with, I believe, 11 apartments. Six of those apartments will face out onto Bay Road, while the other five will face across towards the office portion of the project. As for the building’s upper five floors — this building, too, will be six-stories tall — they will contain the rest of the building’s units, plus, on the second floor, a “club room” and a fitness center.

Building 2 is the least far along of the three: at the moment, the pillars that will support the top deck of the podium level have yet to be poured (although the rebar that will end up embedded within them is in place):

You may have noticed that I didn’t say how many apartments there will be in Building 1 or Building 2; that is because these two buildings will be managed as one, and thus the plans only include a total number for the two (Building 3, the affordable housing building, will be separately managed by an outfit that specializes in managing affordable housing projects). Combined, these two buildings will contain 400 apartments: 20 studios, 255 one-bedroom units, and 125 apartments with two bedrooms. And because the two buildings will be considered one complex, they will share a single large private amenity space. That space, which will have a pool, a spa, one or more BBQ areas, and, of course, outdoor seating, will be located within Building 2’s “U” and between the two buildings.

Finally, between the residential portion of the project and the office portion (which will be located on the Woodside Road end of the large parcel) will be some public outdoor spaces that will extend from Broadway to Bay Road. Coming in from Broadway, the landscape plans show a hardscaped plaza at the end of Building 1 where the retail spaces will be, some sort of water play feature behind that, then two large spaces: an open lawn, and a tree-shaded seating area. Then, between Building 2 and the nearest office building there will be a public dog park that will extend out to Bay Road.

This rendering shows the entry into the public outdoor spaces from Broadway:

In it, residential Building 1 is on the right. The other two buildings shown in this rendering are office buildings.

This should be a rather lovely development, one that will not only provide a great deal of much-needed housing at various levels of affordability, but also some retail to make up for the loss of the shopping center that used to be on this site. And, of course, some nice public spaces that I personally will welcome when I am out walking in that part of town. I’ll be very curious to see how quickly The Sobrato Organization (the project’s owner/developer) gets to work on the office portion of the project (not scheduled to begin until the residential portion is complete, I believe), but even if it takes a while we’ll all have this large new development to enjoy. I’m also very curious to see how the addition of 520 apartments in this part of town affects traffic — most particularly the already jammed at times intersections around Woodside Road and Highway 101. Certainly, the project to redesign and rebuild the Highway 101/Woodside Road interchange (along with some of the surrounding roads) cannot come soon enough…