Before I get into this week’s post, a couple of updates regarding last week’s. First, the Planning Commission review of the 1900 Broadway and 847 Woodside Rd. projects that had been scheduled for September 3 has been postponed, and that day’s meeting has been canceled. The review of those two connected projects is now tentatively scheduled for September 17, but note the word “tentatively”; keep an eye on the Planning Commission’s schedule of upcoming meetings to know for sure. Second, the design of the affordable housing project planned for 847 Woodside Rd. recently changed. For one thing, the proposed number of units has been reduced from 86 to 72. And although the overall structure of the building remains similar to what had been proposed earlier, the appearance of the building has changed rather significantly from the old to the new. As a reminder, here is what the building would have looked like, given the earlier design:

Now, though, the developer is planning something that would look like this:

Ignoring the cosmetic changes (but note the floral murals the architect is suggesting in the new design!), you can see that the building would still consist largely of two separate masses connected by horizontal bridges on the second through fifth floors. The ground floor would contain the building’s single-level parking garage, its lobby, a computer/library lab room, various utility spaces, and, in the old design only, a central landscaped courtyard providing an outdoor private space for the building’s residents. In the new design, the courtyard seems to have been lifted to the second level, with the space below it being made available for additional bicycle parking, secure storage for the building’s residents, and various other small utility spaces. Plus, a couple more vehicular parking spaces: the old design had room for 50 vehicles total, while the new one has room for 57.

The office portion of the overall project, as described in last week’s blog post, appears not to have changed from what I wrote then; only the residential portion was updated. Many thanks to Samuel Hughes, Associate Planner for Redwood City, for bringing these latest changes to my attention.

Now, onto this week’s walk. Although I didn’t see anything that struck me as brand new (other than, perhaps, the closing of Applebee’s; I’m not sure how I missed that), significant progress is being made on many of the active projects going on throughout the city. One small one: the rebuilding of the Maple Street overpass over Highway 101 is looking good. The new wall and fence on the north side seems about complete:

This certainly will make things safer for those walking or cycling across the freeway here, as I occasionally do. I’m hoping that once the north side of the street is repaved, work will shift to the south side, where something similar will be done — although I haven’t yet found any plans for this project, so I can’t say if this will actually happen. I’m also hoping that when this project is complete there will be a proper sidewalk on one side or the other (or, both sides, ideally); in the past, we pedestrians either had to navigate a very narrow sidewalk along the south side, or we had to walk on the street itself, along the north side. With the low railings that had been there, I always was mindful that I could have fallen over the side and landed on the freeway. These days, as much as possible I use the Highway 101 underpass that connects Main Street (on the northwest side) to E. Bayshore Road (on the southeast side) to make my way east of the highway. However, on occasion Maple Street is still more convenient. Fortunately, traffic tends to be light along that portion of Maple Street, so even with the low railings and narrow sidewalks I still felt pretty safe. But these improvements will be most welcome by me and by the many folks living in the new County Navigation Center who use this over-crossing to reach downtown Redwood City.

On the east side of the freeway, I spent more time this week gazing out over the former parking lot of the Century Park 12 Theatres complex. That parking lot has now been elevated rather significantly:

Having watched other projects do this very thing to guard against sea-level rise, I won’t be surprised if the parking lot now sits, as is, for some months. I believe that they do this to allow the soil to settle and compact, providing a solid base for the construction of, in this case, the large “VillaSport” sports club that is to be built on this part of the property. But given that the theater building itself still stands (as does the sign; I’m curious as to why that hasn’t already been torn down), I plan to keep checking on the property in case the contractor tears the theater down and raises up that portion of the property as well (which of course has to happen if the two large apartment buildings are to be built).

Out along Broadway at Chestnut Street, the residential portion of the Broadway Plaza project is now moving along rather rapidly:

The above is the six-story building that will stand along Broadway, with retail spaces on the ground floor facing the street. Over on Chestnut Street, the five-story affordable housing building is even farther along: it has attained its final height, and windows have now been installed in some of the openings:

While I was there I noted that the residents of this building, in particular, are going to have a rather interesting view on occasion:

Fortunately, those trains don’t run very often.

Here is one more view of the affordable housing building, this time from across Bay Road:

Note the entrance to the parking garage just to the right of the building. To the right of that you can see that the contractors are still forming the ground-floor level of the portion of the parking garage that will be the “podium” beneath this third apartment building.

Moving on to the ELCO Yards project, the building that will be located along Chestnut Street near Main Street is starting to look like a real office building:

(This view is from Chestnut Street, looking across the Caltrain tracks towards Main.) Now that this portion of the building has mostly been sewn up, I was interested to note that the forms for the foundation that will support the restaurant building to be located closer to the corner of Chestnut and Main streets were being put into place:

That restaurant building, as you may recall, should look a lot like the metal “Perry Feeds” shed that used to stand close to this spot (the restaurant building will be smaller than that corrugated metal shed, though). Beyond the restaurant building, towards the crane and the other, less-finished wing of the building you can see in the above photo, there will be a public plaza where both restaurant patrons and members of the general public can enjoy our “climate best” weather.

Across Main Street, along Cedar Street, the office building being constructed on that particular parcel has received much of its exterior skin (which, like its sister building at Cedar Street and El Camino Real, is brick):

As for that sister building out on El Camino Real, it now has glass in most of its openings:

When I walked along the El Camino Real side of this building, I discovered that work was underway, as planned, to bend Beech Street so that it lines up with Lincoln Avenue, across El Camino Real:

(Note the newly poured concrete curb just behind the red flagging, and, barely visible, behind the blue-and-white crane.) As I’ve noted in the past, although the two streets will line up, I believe that the intention is to construct a small center median to block cars from attempting to drive directly across El Camino from Beech to Lincoln or vice-versa. Nor, it appears, will traffic be able to make a left turn coming out of either of those streets. From what I can tell, northbound traffic on El Camino Real will be able to turn right onto Beech or left onto Lincoln, while southbound traffic will be able to turn right onto Lincoln but will not be able turn left onto Beech. But with the streets now lined up, if at some future date the city (or the state; El Camino Real is a state highway, after all) decided to turn this into a proper four-way intersection, all it would take is the removal of the island, some new paint striping, and, I would think, the installation of some traffic signals. But I know of no plans to do so, so please don’t take my words as implying that this will happen at any point in the future.

The last of the four office buildings being constructed as part of the ELCO Yards project has exhibited little external progress lately, but I suspect that is because, unlike the other three, much of its exterior will be all glass, with some simple metal frames. An exterior that will, I’m guessing, be installed rather quickly once it gets underway.

All of the recent road work along Maple Street between Stambaugh Street and the Caltrain tracks (work that has affected traffic along Main Street recently) has involved using drills to install purple pipes beneath the street, thereby bringing recycled water to the ELCO Yards project site. Although I don’t believe those pipes have been run beneath the Caltrain tracks yet, on the other side I did note that there is a large purple water main spanning Redwood Creek alongside Lathrop Street, just waiting to be connected up to the lines now running beneath Maple:

At this point in my walk I crossed El Camino Real and walked a couple of blocks down Vera Avenue to check on the five-unit townhouse project being  built at 239 Vera Ave. That project continues to make good progress:

Next, I jogged over to Woodside Road, where I continue to be impressed by the speed at which the new McDonald’s restaurant is being built:

Further down Woodside Road, at 955 Woodside, the eight-unit townhouse project seems to have all of its windows installed, and most of the exterior painting seems to have been done:

The driveways and landscaping have yet to be installed — those are some of the last things to be done on a project like this — and I don’t know what state the unit interiors are in, but clearly this project will be done soon. Surely, sometime in the next month or two. I’ll be curious to find out what these townhouses will cost, and I’ll be looking forward to taking a tour and hearing for myself how much (or, hopefully, how little) you can hear the next-door carwash.

Although most of the projects around the city are making good progress, not all are. My last stop was over in Red Morton Park, where the under-construction Veterans Memorial Building/Senior Center seems to have stalled, at least externally, over the last month or so. I’m not sure why this project is proceeding so slowly, but I checked the project website and discovered a recent status update:

The building construction is currently estimated to be 79% complete, with the contractor estimating construction completion in the first half of 2025, with a potential opening date after the installation of exhibits and the commissioning of building systems are complete.

So for those of us hoping to see this project wrapped up by the end of the year, that apparently isn’t going to happen. Fingers crossed, it’ll be open by next summer…

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Recently I’ve heard some chatter around the various alterations that have been made to parts of Roosevelt Avenue — in particular, near the Key Market at Upton Street. Earlier today the city published a blog post about traffic calming in general within Redwood City, with some mention of Roosevelt Avenue. In that post is a link to the city’s website dedicated to its major traffic calming projects, one of which is along Roosevelt Avenue. The web page dedicated to that project has a pretty good history of the project (which apparently is now pretty much done, at least for now), plus links to a number of supporting documents. Perhaps most importantly, it has a link to the plans for the quick-build phase of the project, which details all of the various elements used throughout. Hopefully, those of you who are interested in this or any other traffic calming project within Redwood City find some or all of these links useful.

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It seems that West Nile Virus has made its way to Redwood City, in the form of a dead bird with the disease found within city limits. As a reminder, West Nile Virus is spread by mosquitoes, and thus we all need to be ever vigilant for standing water in which mosquitoes can breed. Also, consider using insect repellent with DEET to protect you and your loved ones when outdoors where mosquitoes might be active. For more information, check out the county’s Mosquito & Vector Control District’s website.

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Oktoberfest in Redwood City will take place this year from September 20-29, as usual in Courthouse Square. For more information and to buy tickets (this event can sell out, so advance purchase is suggested), see the event’s webpage.

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Now that The Baker Next Door is up and running in their permanent home (at 851 Main Street; they’re open Tuesday – Sunday from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.), in addition to bread and pastries and coffee they are now serving items from their cafe menu. So if you are looking for a breakfast sandwich, avocado toast, a lunchtime salad, or something else along those lines, do keep them in mind!