Right up front this week, a reminder that Redwood City’s Hometown Holidays kicks off tomorrow, December 7, in Courthouse Square, and runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. There will be a holiday parade, live entertainment, photos with Santa, carnival rides, food and holiday vendors, the Caltrain Holiday Train, and even a petting zoo (this last for a fee). For more details and a schedule of the day, head over to the city’s calendar entry for this event.

As long as we are all putting holiday-related events on our calendars, the Parks Department’s annual family Holiday Music and Light Show in Red Morton Park will run from December 15 through January 1, with two 20-30 minute shows each evening: one at 6:30 p.m. and one at 7:30 p.m. (shows on New Year’s Eve will take place at 8:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.). Certain nights will have special themes (Santa will be there on December 16, for instance), and depending on the weather some nights will also feature “Laserpalooza.” So bookmark the Park’s Department web page for the event and plan accordingly. The show takes place at the Valota Road end of the park, with some parking available in the parking lot next to the Veterans Memorial/Senior Center building, just off Madison Avenue. I took the following photo from that parking lot while out walking this week; as you can see, the show elements are already being set up, and are a very short walk from the lot:

Looking to do some creative holiday shopping? The Yard Coffeehouse is holding its “Festive Finds” event tomorrow, December 7, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. There you will find locally crafted gifts, art, food, and, of course, coffee. On Sunday it appears that they’ll also be hosting “Leaf and Loot,” a holiday plant fundraiser, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. You’ll find The Yard at 1080 Main St. They’re good folks who (my wife tells me) pour a nice cup of coffee (I go for the tea, not being a coffee drinker).

I took another spin around the Century Park 12 Theatres site this week, and lingered for some time watching the current activity. By now the buildings are long gone, as are the asphalt parking lots. All of the old building materials other than the concrete appears to have been hauled away from the site. The concrete, though, is being ground up and is being spread on the property, helping to raise the site while, I presume, helping to provide good drainage.

A skid steer loader digs into the large piles of ground concrete and fills an articulated hauler. The hauler then heads to a part of the site where the ground-up concrete is needed, and empties its load while moving, leaving behind a small linear pile. Next, a motor grader comes along and spreads the pile, after which a drum roller compacts the loose concrete granules. All-in-all it makes for a flat, neat surface that reuses pretty much all of the concrete that would otherwise have been hauled from the site. And a fun thing to watch, I might add…

I don’t know how long this part of the process will take, but I’ll keep watching. Soon, I presume, trenching will commence for the utility pipes and electrical conduits that will run to and between the three buildings (two large apartment buildings at the Bay end of the property, and a roughly 100,000-square-foot fitness facility much closer to E. Bayshore Road), after which the foundations will be formed and poured. I don’t expect that any of that will take place before the end of the year, though.

Over at the intersection of Broadway and Chestnut Street, framing on the three large apartment buildings that will make up half of the Broadway Plaza project continues:

The largest of the three apartment buildings, shown above, has almost reached its final seven-story height. From the rear (along Bay Road), you can see that the somewhat T-shaped building is being framed up fairly evenly. And there is where you will find the small temporary construction that shows the project’s various external finishes (towards the right in the following photo):

On the subject of finishes, the one building (of the three) that will contain all of the project’s affordable apartments is rapidly receiving all of its:

Along Middlefield Road, the Rise City Church’s new main building is, well, rapidly rising:

This is going to be a truly fascinating building. Just look at this view from the parking lot side:

The four large office buildings (one with family-friendly retail and a childcare center) that will make up the ELCO Yards project are close to being buttoned up, and so those buildings are showing less and less activity, at least from the outside. But the small restaurant building that will stand near the corner of Chestnut and Main streets is getting lots of attention now:

As well, the low brick walls that will be topped with fencing to enclose the childcare center’s outdoor play area (on the Cedar Street side of the building that fronts onto El Camino Real) are rapidly being built up, as are the conical structures that will (I believe) provide ventilation to the three-level subterranean garage beneath that particular building. Those structures have metal frames, but are being clad in brick. Construction fencing made photographing the walls and the one bricked-up ventilation shaft difficult, but I was able to get a picture of the metal frame for the one that stands close to El Camino Real:

The new AutoZone store that is taking over the Five Points Center space that used to house Bed, Bath & Beyond is making good progress; the exterior looks complete, including signage and glass-enclosed frames on the front walls where I presume advertisements for on-sale items will be placed (the latter are a bit hard to see in this photo, but look a bit like windows on either side of the entry pillars):

Inside, the walls, floors, and ceiling look about done, but I believe that electrical and other work is still underway and needs to be completed before sales counters and shelves can be installed. Then, the store will presumably be stocked by transferring the contents of their old store, just a couple of blocks north along El Camino Real, to this one. For now, though, the interior is mostly just one big empty (but clean) space.

Work on the eight-unit townhouse project at 955 Woodside Rd. continues apace. The buildings themselves seem to be about done, although the driveways and sidewalks have yet to be poured, and none of the landscaping is in.

This project just might be done by the end of the year, but if not, the units will surely be on sale shortly thereafter. There is already a “coming soon” sign from Intero Realty, but I’m not seeing a listing on their website as yet, so I can’t share just how much these units might cost.

All of these projects continue to make good progress. One that is not — and, apparently will not — is the “Arguello Mixed-Use Development” that had been planned for 1125 Arguello St. (where the red brick A-1 Rental Center building still stands).

That project, which would have consisted of a four-story office building, a separate building containing something like 33 for-rent affordable apartments, and a childcare center that would have occupied the two historic homes at the corner of Arguello Street and Whipple Avenue, has vanished from the city’s list of development projects. Presumably, the developer can no longer make the project pencil out, which is a bit of a shame. Although I know that at least a few of the project site’s residential neighbors were less than thrilled with the project proposal, the office building was slated to use mass-timber construction (in which the structural elements are made of wood, not metal) and, at least according to the renderings, would have shown off that wood to great effect. Hopefully another building will come along and use that particular technique, as the county did when it built their new “County Office Building #3”:

If you haven’t stepped inside that particular building on Marshall Street in Redwood City, by the way, you should. It is magnificent inside. This is just the lobby:

I have yet to attend a County Board of Supervisors meeting and thereby to see what their chambers look like, but I feel sure that they measure up to the lobby’s standards.

Getting back to the apparently dead project at 1125 Arguello Street, although an old sign providing notice of the project still shows through one of the A-1 Rental Center building’s windows, the building is completely empty, while the large parking areas between the building and the Caltrain tracks are being used as a U-Haul Rental facility:

Finally for this week, it appears that the city may slowly be replacing the parking payment machines downtown with upgraded ones:

Although these somewhat confusingly have the full keyboard with which, in other cities, you enter your license plate information, for now, at least, you can ignore those keys; just enter your space number as always. What I find exciting, though, is the fact that these new machines seem to accept tap-to-pay (just to the left of the keyboard, below the coin slot), so those of us who have wholeheartedly accepted the tap-to-pay lifestyle need not haul out our wallets and dig for a credit card just to pay for parking. Me, I’ll be tapping my Apple Watch… I’ll also note that these new parking machines have much nicer, color displays that — hopefully! — will be easier to read in bright sunlight.

That’ll do it for this week. Have a great week, and, if you can, get out and enjoy Hometown Holidays and/or The Yard’s “Festive Finds” event tomorrow (Saturday). Oh, and if you are into decorating your home for the holidays, you are not alone! I’m seeing more and more yard displays and lighted houses out there. For instance, on my walk this week I came across this rather impressive display of Christmas-themed inflatables:

I’ll keep my eyes open for other such displays, and will try to highlight the best ones I come across in future posts.