It’s the end of an era. After 33 years, 10 months, and 10 days, City Pub issued its “last call” and has pulled its last pint:

I, for one, will really miss them. I was there on day one (July 4, 1991) and enjoyed many a pint (not to mention, burgers, salads and dishes of spaghetti) at City Pub over the nearly 34 years of their existence. Thankfully, I was alerted to their impending closure just in time, and so was able to enjoy its final evening with my wife and with friends. Thanks for all the great memories, City Pub!

Although City Pub has closed, I’m happy to report that the doors won’t stay closed for very long. In just about a month — they’re aiming for mid-June — the doors should reopen at 2620 Broadway on a new, somewhat similar venture: an Irish pub called “The Wild Rover.” I’m told that it is to be a “gastropub,” meaning that it should be placing more emphasis on the food side of things (while still pouring my beloved Guinness, I presume!), and so will undoubtedly appeal to many. So mourn the loss, but celebrate the new!

With considerably more advance notice, I RSVP’d for the ribbon-cutting over at 500 County Center, the county’s newest office building. This building, which you can’t miss on Marshall Street directly across from the (rear of the) county’s historic courthouse:

In case you are confused, thinking that this building was completed quite some time ago, you are correct: this ribbon-cutting is long overdue, and took place well after the building welcomed its first occupants. In fact, the building has been in use for about a year now. In any case, I made my way to the historic courthouse (attendees began there, and eventually paraded over to the rear of the new building for the actual cutting of the ribbon) at the appointed time, and immediately discovered that many more people had been invited than the planners had made room for. The historic courthouse’s central atrium was completely packed, and a great many people (including me) wound up standing outside, on the steps or even out in the plaza, while various speeches were given inside (that those of us outside could not hear; there were no speakers set up to accommodate the overflow). Fortunately, we all chatted and generally had a good time while we waited for the procession to begin. Then, because we were already outside, we were near the front of the parade, which benefited us when we got to the new building: we were among the first able to sit on the (too few) chairs that were set up there. After a couple of more speeches (those we could hear, fortunately!), a ribbon was strung up and quickly cut, after which the doors were opened and we were able to tour the inside.

A year ago, shortly after the first county staffers had moved in, I walked through the lobby and took some pictures, so I already knew what that looked like. Here is one of the photos from that particular walk-through:

This time, I was able to go into the County Supervisors’ meeting chamber:

It’s a really nice room, although a bit smaller than I expected. In any case, I still plan to actually attend a meeting in person in this room sometime, to see how well it works.

Back out in the lobby, I noticed that they’d set out a neat model of the building (although it’s actually only a model of the front half of the building; the rear is pretty much a mirror image of the front, with the entire building shaped a lot like a capital ‘H’):

I’ve written a great deal about this building both before and as it was being constructed, so I won’t repeat that here. But I will mention that the various speakers took great pains to note that this is now the “greenest civic building in the United States.” And I can believe it. It is a “low carbon” building, 70% lower than a comparable building of conventional design thanks to its use of mass-timber construction for nearly all of the structural elements and wood for many of the exposed interior surfaces. As well, the building is designed to be “net zero energy”: it should generate all of the energy that is required for the building to operate (I do suspect that many of the solar panels that provide power to the building are not actually on the building itself, but on the top levels of the two parking garages elsewhere on the campus, but that’s still a really good thing). Add to all of that the large glass windows that provide tons of natural light throughout the building during the daytime, and you wind up with an office building that is both attractive to look at and a really nice place to work (one speaker noted that so many employees want to come into the office rather than work at home that there already is more demand for space than the building can provide).

Kudos to the County of San Mateo for an award-winning project that is also a real showpiece. And thanks for building it here in Redwood City!

On the subject of building in Redwood City, the second floor of the 690 Veterans hotel project is now underway:

The first floor, being made entirely of poured concrete (using wooden forms that were constructed on-site), took quite a while to erect, and it sat for several weeks with little visible activity taking place on the second floor. I had thought that perhaps the upper three floors (this will ultimately be a four-story building) would also be made largely from concrete, but obviously I was wrong: apparently all three will be constructed using conventional framing. That should speed things up considerably, although clearly this project still has a long way to go.

A quick recap: this hotel is being built at the corner of Veterans Boulevard and Brewster Avenue, on the former site of a Shell gas station. All of the hotel’s 91 rooms will be located on the upper three floors. Most of the building’s ground floor will be consumed by a single-story, above-ground parking garage that uses stackers to squeeze 71 vehicles into the available space (entry to the garage will be from Brewster Avenue). The building’s lobby will be on the corner of Veterans and Brewster, and along the Brewster side the ground floor will include a meeting room, offices, restrooms, and the hotel’s laundry room. Facing Veterans Boulevard, the ground floor will house the building’s two elevators, a “board room” (a smaller meeting room), the dining area, a bar, the “pantry” (presumably stocked with “grab and go” food items) and the “food prep” area (given the name, this may not be a full kitchen but rather one that can heat up pre-prepared dishes). There will also be a small ground-floor patio out along Veterans Boulevard, and a larger rooftop deck shaded by a “flexible trellis.”

This week I took a walk through San Carlos: I had heard that the Cherry Street Commons Family Housing project had broken ground, and I wanted to get some pictures. Most projects take a while to actually get underway after their mostly symbolic ground-breaking, but this one didn’t seem to wait very long. When I last visited the site — just over a year ago — the small one-story commercial building that at one time housed an eye clinic had already been demolished, but the other building on the site where this new affordable housing project will be built — a six-unit apartment building — was still in place. That second building was scheduled to be demolished just last month, after several weeks of utility relocation work, and apparently it all went as scheduled; when I was there on Tuesday it appeared that initial preparation of the site was well underway (along with some utility work, it appeared):

With this new affordable housing project (33 apartments in a five-story building) being located mere steps from Laurel Street, and only a short distance from the San Carlos Caltrain station, it should be ideal for families that don’t want to (or can’t afford to) own a car. Which is good, since the building’s garage will only have room for 21 vehicles. It will otherwise be quite family-friendly, though: of the 33 apartments, nine will have three bedrooms, and another nine will have two (the remainder will be one-bedroom units).

Because the building will occupy nearly the entirety of the parcel upon which it is being built, the building’s second floor — which will contain a couple of apartments, a community room, a meeting room, and the building’s communal laundry room — will also have a medium-sized outdoor courtyard where residents can sit outside while enjoying some degree of privacy.

While in San Carlos, I took the time to check up on the progress of the 24-unit condominium building (with two ground-floor retail spaces) now nearing completion at 560 El Camino Real.

This building, which has been under construction for nearly three years now, sits just north of San Carlos Avenue and replaced the former Applewood Pizza building plus an adjacent one-story commercial building.

While walking through San Carlos, I noticed a number of stickers affixed to various points along that city’s sidewalks. They are a bit like the two that I had discovered in Redwood city and mentioned in a recent post, but here each one is specific to its location and mentions some historic building or business that used to be located at that spot. For instance, this one was affixed to the sidewalk in front of the San Mateo County Transit District building at 1250 San Carlos Avenue:

As you can see, it notes that this used to be the site of the Carlos Theater, which had been built sometime in the 1940s. Each of the markers has a QR code that you can use with your smartphone to look up a bit more information about that particular site (and, in this case, see a photograph of the former theater). On my walk this week I found a number of them, but after I got home I checked the Historical Markers website (which lists all of them) and I saw that there were quite a few that I didn’t run across that day. One of these days I may just string them all together into a route that shows off San Carlos’s history, and walk it. If and when I do, I’ll of course write about it and let you know, in case you want to walk it for yourself. But I should warn you that it’ll likely be a long walk: one of the sites is over where Palo Alto Medical Foundation has their San Carlos facility (north of Holly Street on Industrial Road) while another is a couple of blocks southwest of the intersection of Alameda de las Pulgas and San Carlos Avenue. Still, I at least think it would be fun…

That’ll about do it for this week’s post. I’ll leave you with one last photograph: Fireside Books & More, the terrific new bookstore on Broadway right at the Caltrain tracks, finally had their sign installed. Hopefully that’ll catch the eye of some people alighting from the nearby trains…

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On Memorial Day (Monday, May 26) there will once again be a ceremony to honor the soldiers who are buried in Redwood City’s one and only cemetery: the historic Union Cemetery, at 316 Woodside Rd. The hour-long program will begin at 10 a.m. and will feature speakers, patriotic music, the decoration of soldiers’ graves with flowers, and the “much-anticipated firing of the anvil.” It is always a terrific (free) event, and well worth the small effort you may need to make in order to find nearby parking (I always have luck finding some in the nearby residential areas, and walking two or three blocks to the cemetery). More information can be found here.

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Music on the Square kicks off its summer weekly concert series on Friday, May 30, at 6 p.m. (in Courthouse Square, of course). This year, immediately before this first concert, there will be a “Summer Concert Kick-Off Party” on Hamilton Avenue right next to the square. The suggested donation of $25 gets you food tastings from downtown restaurants, live music provided by Sound Union, and access to a cash bar supplying beer and wine. Click here for more information.

For those of you, like me, who have a preference for the Stafford Park concerts, never fear: Redwood City’s Music in the Park series returns on June 18, with concerts each Wednesday from June 18 – August 20. Those concerts will run from 6 – 8 p.m., with the final two (August 13 and 20) starting a half-hour earlier, at 5:30 p.m. (and ending at 7:30 p.m.). Hope to see you there!