I took my usual long walk on Tuesday, trying to visit as many projects as possible. That meant walking out to the Bay and checking on the large project underway at 557 E. Bayshore Rd., plus the next-door environmental cleanup project. I of course visited the Broadway Plaza project (which apparently will be called Broadway Village by its developer), as well as the ELCO Yards project. All of those proved interesting for various reasons, but two of them were notable not (entirely) for what I saw on Tuesday, but for what I saw today (Friday) as I drove by them.

First is the hotel project that replaced the Shell gasoline station at the corner of Veterans Boulevard and Brewster Avenue: the temporarily named 690 Veterans Hotel project. On Tuesday, the site looked like this:

Just three days later, it looked like this:

In just three days, the builders have made great progress on the framing for the hotel’s third floor. As a reminder, this is going to be a four-story, 91-room hotel, so after this third level is complete, there is just one more to go. I remain amazed that they can squeeze 91 hotel rooms into three floors with such a small footprint (the ground level contains the hotel’s parking garage, its lobby, and various other spaces needed to support the operations of a hotel; all of the guest rooms will be on the upper three floors). Because this hotel is located so close to both downtown Redwood City as well as the various buildings that make up San Mateo County’s County Center, the building’s owner expects that many of the hotel’s guests won’t come in their own cars, but will take taxis, Lyft vehicles (and the like), Caltrain, etc. Which explains why this 91-room hotel will only be able to accommodate 71 vehicles (plus some number of bicycles) in its single-level internal parking garage. And doing so will require the use of both a valet and mechanical car stackers.

The other project I visited this week (twice!) is Stanford Health Care’s so-called “block E” project, on the Stanford Health Care campus at 500 Broadway in Redwood City. On that site, Stanford is constructing a nine-story medical office building out closer to the street plus a four-level, 650-space parking garage in the back of the property, up against the freeway. On Tuesday, I stood and watched as small bits of the building’s metal skeleton were being craned into place:

Today, just three days later, the site looks like this:

Clearly, this phase of the build is going to go quickly, and fairly soon we should be able to see a complete skeletal outline of what the final building will be like.

The Stanford Health Care project in particular seems to be moving at a very rapid pace, but then again, it was approved in December of 2023, so Stanford and its contractors have had 18 months or so to get all of their ducks in a row. For a typical construction project like this, one of the “ducks” typically involves arranging financing, but I’m guessing that for Stanford, coming up with the money for a project like this is one of the easier tasks to be done. Instead, those 18 months were used to finalize the building plans, arrange for offsite construction of the needed pieces and parts (such as those being rapidly assembled on the site right now), and of course hire and schedule all of the contractors and subcontractors. Stanford and its main contractor — Level 10 Construction — have a lot of experience with projects like these, and thus the rapid progress I am no witnessing.

Out by the Bay, although I continue to see a lot of activity on the former site of the Century Park 12 Theaters (where work is underway to construct one of the two planned apartment buildings along with the VillaSport fitness club), all of the work is being done to prep the ground for construction, and thus doesn’t make for very exciting photos, so I’ll not include any here. Next door, however, the environmental cleanup project doesn’t seem to have changed much, except for one thing: the site seems to have flooded:

I thought at first that the flooding was intentional, and indeed it may have been, but as I walked along and looked closer, I had to wonder:

There are three or four of these A-frame “Danger” signs that are pretty much entirely under water. If the flooding was intentional, I would have thought that the contractor would have removed these signs from the area before breaching the wall of soil that had been holding the water back. So perhaps the flooding was not intentional at all.

Because I needed to loop all around the two project sites in order to get the best look at both, I had to go by the automobile dealerships that flank the former theater site. I was interested to note that the building that houses the Acura dealership is being remodeled:

Over at the Broadway Plaza/Broadway Village project, things are looking really good:

This project still has a way to go, of course. In particular, the third apartment building that you can just barely see peeking out from behind the two others in the above picture is fully framed, but has yet to receive its exterior finishes and most of its windows:

(The above photo shows that third building as viewed from Bay Road.)

Heading down Chestnut Street to check out the ELCO Yards project, I noted that the extension to Jardin de Niños park (on Middlefield Road at Chestnut Street) seems close to wrapping up: the basic structure of the gazebo is in place (although it is not yet complete), all of the concrete seems to have been poured and benches are in place. When I went by on Tuesday, a couple of people appeared to be installing irrigation piping:

Finally, ELCO Yards continues to march rapidly towards completion. I’m no longer seeing much activity on the small restaurant building at the corner of Chestnut and Main streets, indicating that the actual building may be pretty much done (although I’m not sure any of the necessary restaurant fixtures and fittings have yet been installed). A great deal of activity is currently focused on the public plaza that will be located in front of and alongside that restaurant building:

This rendering shows what that open plaza is expected to look like:

Just down Main Street, the Main Street Dog Agility Park was getting a lot of attention:

Hopefully that park will be back open soon; I know that a lot of people (and their dogs, of course) really miss that park. I should note that Main Street itself right in front of the dog park is currently being rebuilt, so even if the park wraps up soon, we’ll likely have to wait for Main Street to be fully reopened before they’ll open the park itself.

Although not yet open to vehicles, parts of Lathrop and Beech streets are now fully accessible to those on foot: the sidewalks are complete and are no longer blocked off. Accordingly, I on Tuesday enjoyed walking around all four sides of ELCO Yards building B, which is the one on El Camino Real at Chestnut Street. While I’ve been able to study that building’s El Camino and Chestnut Street faces for some time now, I finally got to walk right up to the building’s main entrance, on Lathrop Street:

There is a really whimsical new bench just in front of this building:

I have to wonder if all of the colorful shapes are going to remain, or are just some sort of temporary protection.

From Beech Street, with my back to the above building, I got a nice view of the parcel where eventually a large apartment building will be constructed:

I then turned around, and took a photograph of the ground floor interior of building B:

Those windows to the right face out onto El Camino Real; this part of the building is what is intended for some sort of “family friendly” retail or activity. There was talk of a roller rink in here, to make up for the loss of the former Redwood Roller Rink, which was torn down to make way for one of this project’s other office buildings. Whether or not that is what we get, note that the double-height space is entirely clear, with no supporting posts to interfere, making it ideal for a wide variety of uses.

Here is another view of this wide-open space, taken from the El Camino Real side of the building (pardon the reflections; they can be hard to deal with):

In the above you can see the stairwell leading up to the space’s L-shaped mezzanine. That seems an ideal spot for, say, parents to sit and watch their kids skating or playing hockey or whatever, below…

One last note on the ELCO Yards project: of the four main buildings, the last to get underway was building C, which fills the block bounded by Main, Beech, Lathrop, and Cedar streets. Although some visible work continues on the exterior of that building, it seems to mostly be minor cosmetic work. Here, for instance, is the building’s main entrance (which is located on the Main Street side of the building):

As you can see, it is nearly done, with just a decorative panel or two to be installed above the ground floor entry doors and windows. But the sidewalks are done, even to the point of having the trees installed in their tree wells, so those construction fences should be coming down very soon, I’m thinking.

Personally, I’m really looking forward to the day when all of the construction activity on ELCO Yards has ceased, and I can get a closer look at all four of the project’s office buildings. When that day comes, work should get underway on that empty lot I showed earlier, where a large seven-story apartment building will be constructed.  (Yet another apartment building is slated to be built along Maple Street where the Main & Elm restaurant used to be located, but I believe that it will be built last.) Although I may never set foot inside the apartment building itself, along with it should be a lovely public path between the building and the open section of Redwood Creek that runs there, and I’m really looking forward to being able to enjoy that path. I’ll leave you with a rendering showing a bit of that path, with the future apartment building directly behind: