Before I get started, a quick reminder: Fireside Books & More, Redwood City’s new independent bookstore, is having its grand opening on Saturday, February 1, at, I believe, 10 a.m. I peeked in the window this morning and the place looks fully stocked, and about ready to go. So if you have some time or just happen to be in the area (they are just a couple of doors down from Mademoiselle Colette), do stop by and check out their new store. They’re located at 2421 Broadway, right where Broadway curves away from the Caltrain tracks towards the heart of downtown.

As you might have guessed, I was out of town last week, so there was no blog post. Upon my return, however, I took a long walk through the city, checking up on some of the many projects currently underway. It was a good walk, but I must confess that one of the most interesting things worth passing came not from my walk, but from an article in the San Francisco Business Times: it seems that two of the four ELCO Yards buildings have been fully leased! Apparently, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) — the outfit founded, run by, and largely (entirely?) funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan with the aim of “building a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone,” has signed a lease for, according to the article, 226,000 square feet of bioscience office and lab space. CZI is currently headquartered in the three-story office building at 1180 Main St., which is basically adjacent to the ELCO Yards development. Underneath the overarching umbrella of CZI is the Chan Zuckerberg Institute for Advance Biological Imaging, which is going to move into the newly leased space at ELCO Yards. Given the size of the lease, I’m guessing that CZI has leased the two buildings that fit between Main Street and the Caltrain tracks. Here is the one closest to (and pretty much kitty-corner to) CZI headquarters:

And here is its sister, which shares a single large underground garage with the above:

(The above picture was from November; shortly I’ll share a more recent picture showing the restaurant building that now blocks the view of much of this building from this angle.)

According to the plans, these two sister buildings together contain just over 250,000 square feet of office space. In construction the sizes may have changed somewhat and/or there might be some parts of one or both buildings that for some reason aren’t counted, so although the total space is a bit more than the lease calls for, this combination seem to be the best fit for CZI’s Imaging Institute. In any case, the remaining two ELCO Yards office buildings are too small to fulfill the lease on their own (and too large, if combined) — 109,347 square feet and 166,398 square feet of office space, respectively — and thus don’t seem likely to be part of the deal. However, with this one lease signing, the office portion of the large ELCO Yards development, still under construction, is now almost half leased. Which is a great thing not only for the developer, but for the city as well. And this deal is likely to cause other biotech firms to look closely at those two remaining ELCO Yards buildings (which as far as I know have not yet been leased).

I of course walked by the ELCO Yards construction site this week, and took some updated photographs. The restaurant building — the basic structure of which you can see in the above photo — is now looking a lot like the final building (minus its exterior skin, of course):

The above shows the restaurant building from the intersection of Chestnut Street (along which it stands) and Main Street. From the front, where there will be an open plaza, the building looks like this:

Building C — the larger of the two un-leased buildings — currently looks like this from Elm Street near Main (I actually took this photo while standing on the sidewalk by the CZI headquarters building):

That bit in yellow (those are yellow insulating panels; that part of the building has yet to receive its exterior skin) is particularly interesting from a design standpoint. From Main Street, it looks like this:

As you can see, it’ll have skylights along those upper angled portions, and will be reminiscent of an old factory.

From El Camino Real, the fourth building — which has the least amount of office space, but contains the large “family friendly” retail space on the ground floor plus a childcare center on the side facing Cedar Street — is looking pretty buttoned-up:

As a reminder, ELCO Yards is also destined to include two residential buildings containing a total of 540 for-rent apartments at the north end of the property (just off the left edge of the above photo). Construction on those should, I believe, get underway after these four buildings are complete.

Speaking of large apartment buildings, I of course also checked in on the Broadway Plaza project, on Broadway between Chestnut Street and Woodside Road. Progress-wise, I don’t have a great deal to report, other than I watched as some of the scaffolding surrounding the fully affordable residential building that faces Chestnut Street was being taken down:

That particular building is looking really good. As for the others, well, the one that faces Broadway and contains the project’s ground-floor retail spaces and its childcare center continues to make steady progress:

That childcare center, incidentally, will be located on the back side of the building, facing into the center of the development. You can just make it out from Bay Road. In the following image, it is that dark space on the ground floor in the center. In front of it will be a fenced outdoor playground for exclusive use by the childcare center:

Of greater interest are the signs posted on the construction fencing at the corner of Woodside and Bay roads:

They announce “Apartments coming soon 2026” (I was hoping for 2025, but I guess not). Even more interesting is the fact that they show images of the project’s second phase — the three office buildings that will be constructed at the Woodside Road end of the property — along with a link to BroadwayVillage.com, a somewhat interactive website that shows off various details of both parts of the project. To me this is a strong signal that the developer really does intend to move ahead with the second phase upon completion of the first (the three residential buildings). Although the developer will surely want to get those residential buildings occupied (and, thus, generating income) as soon as possible, the half of the large underground garage that will sit beneath the office buildings has yet to be constructed, and the developer may want to at least get that part done before opening the nearby residences to tenants. We’ll see…

This week I passed by the soon-to-be-open Ocean Oyster Bar & Grill (in the Old Spaghetti Factory space, at the corner of Broadway and Jefferson Avenue), and noted the “We’re Hiring Now” signage, indicating that this time they are serious, and the place will likely open just as soon as they can hire enough staff.

And of course I checked up on my perennial favorite, the city’s new Veterans Memorial Building/Senior Center project. Although that building still shows evidence of some work needing to be done, a lot of effort is now being put into the hardscaping (sidewalks and such) around the building. Particularly along the front, which faces what used to be a short section of Nevada Street but now is going to be a “promenade” that will draw people into the park and will separate this building from the yet-to-be-built YMCA building:

Here is another view of that promenade, taken from Madison Avenue:

In the above, the new Veterans Memorial/Senior Center is on the left, and the old one is on the right. Once the new building is complete and operational, the old one will be torn down to clear a space for the YMCA’s project.

Before I close, I just received Redwood City’s latest eNews. In it is an article on the city’s efforts towards tackling its homelessness problem. I was pleased to see that progress is indeed being made here in the city, although of course much work still needs to be done. To read that article, click here. To have the Weekly Redwood City eNews (and/or other targeted news publications from the city) delivered to your email inbox, click here.