From the city:

The Redwood City Engineering and Transportation Department is planning on upgrading Jefferson Ave to improve pedestrian safety between Alameda and Hudson St. They are seeking community input on two proposed alternatives that will both include marked crosswalks, corner bulb-outs and median refuges for pedestrians. Alternative B goes a bit further by reducing the car flow to 2 travel lanes and a center turn lane like we have on Hopkins Ave. A robust community response would help secure county funds for this traffic safety project.

Accordingly, we are being asked to fill out the very brief Jefferson Avenue Traffic Safety Improvement Project Survey. If you have not already done so, please take just a moment and respond: the survey closes October 31. The more responses, the better the chances that the county will provide funds for this project. Embedded in the survey is a brief description of the two options, so it contains all you really need to know in order to give meaningful feedback. However, if you want to know more about the project (including documents generated for, and as a result of, the two community meetings that have been held so far), visit the project’s web page.

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“They” say that 90% of restaurants fail in their first year, but apparently that’s just a myth. According to Owner.com, the actual number is 17%. And just over half — about 51% — of restaurants survive past year five. Still not ideal, but not as bad as you might think. I haven’t worked the specific numbers for Redwood City, but those numbers feel about right. And Redwood City seems to have firmly established itself as a place where restaurants succeed: when one goes out, quite often a new one quickly steps in to replace it (Applebee’s notwithstanding…). First up this week, the space at the corner of Broadway and Winslow Street. Most recently this was home to Baires Argentinian Bakery, but that business closed at the end of April after a fairly short run. Today, October 24, the doors have reopened, now on Sana’a Café: a coffee house serving premium organic coffee made from beans cultivated in Yemen.

I took the above photo on Friday morning. If you can make out the wording on the banners above the door, you’ll know that today marks the business’s soft opening in Redwood City. One good sign for the stability of this particular shop: they currently have seven other stores, most of which are in the Bay Area. So not only are they more likely to stick around, they also must have a handle on their client base, and thus have some idea of where their business will find customers. Not being a coffee drinker I have yet to check them out, but they have other things I can drink, along with pastries that I’ll willingly sample. Those of you who love coffee, though, should give them a try! And then let the rest of us know what you think by leaving a comment.

On the same block, but near the corner of Broadway and Marshall Street, from August of 2020 to late October of 2024 the space at 314 Broadway was home to La Cocina de la Abuela, a nice little taqueria where I enjoyed a handful of meals. That storefront has been empty for the past year, but no longer: yesterday I noticed that a new Mexican restaurant has taken its place:

This latest is called Taqueria La Gallina, and they, too, are currently in soft opening mode with a limited menu. That menu lists fried chicken, quesadillas, regular and super burritos, tacos (including grilled fish tacos) and nachos. I’ll give them a try when I get the chance, and of course I’ll report back when I do. But again, feel free to beat me to it and let us all know what you think. Oh, and these folks seem to have at least one other existing location, on the Cabrillo Highway in Half Moon Bay. That one currently has 4.2 stars (out of 5) on Yelp, for what that’s worth…

Still on Broadway, but west of the tracks, The BottleShop (a wine bar at 2627 Broadway) closed in May after operating for about 4-1/2 years (a previous version, under different management, operated in that spot for a little under two years before that). I was delighted to see this week that a similar business is taking over the spot, and will soon be opening as “de Vine Wine & Beer” (@devinerwc on Instagram):

I don’t know anything more about this business than what you see on the sign, and its Instagram page so far is devoid of any useful information, so I guess I’ll have to wait until they open to say more. But I do plan to give them a try once they do, so expect a report in a future blog post.

Construction on the fully affordable, seven-story, 178-unit apartment building to be constructed at 112 Vera Ave. is underway! I went by this week and saw that excavation for the building’s foundation has begun in earnest:

Given that the building’s footprint is not much smaller than the lot itself, and given that there isn’t really any room beyond the lot where construction equipment and materials can be housed, I’d been wondering how this thing was going to get built. It turns out that this will largely be a modular building: the top five floors will consist of pre-fabricated modules, which not only will simplify and speed the building’s construction, but may also reduce the building’s cost. It does appear that the first two floors will be built using more conventional methods, though.

Note the difference in appearance between those two lower floors and the five upper ones:

Most buildings like this have an internal or underground (or both) parking garage, but not here: this project will have no on-site resident parking at all. Instead, the ground floor will contain 15 apartments along with a leasing office, a mail room, a bike storage area, and various utility rooms. Each floor will be mostly made up of apartments plus two communal laundry rooms and at least one community room or work room that the residents can presumably use. In addition, the second floor (only) will also contain a multipurpose room, a fitness center, and a manager’s office.

Except for the two manager’s units, all of the building’s apartments will be affordable at either the Low, Very Low, or Extremely Low income levels. Twenty five of the 178 apartments will be studios, with the rest being one-bedroom units.

I’m still going to be very curious to see how the construction goes, and how much (or little) the surrounding streets (Vera Avenue, primarily, but also the alley that runs behind the building site) are affected during the process. I will certainly be on hand to watch at least some of the modular units being craned into place. Expect updates, with pictures, in future posts.

The piece of public art slated for the corner of Main and Chestnut streets (next to the free-standing restaurant building that is part of the ELCO Yards project) has finally been installed:

The little holes you can see on the faces of the cubes allow internal lights to shine through. I peeked through the holes and was able to see some of the lighting inside:

I do need to see this thing at night. It should be cool…

Walking through the part of Redwood City that used to be Docktown Marina, I was momentarily excited to see active work underway on the large parcel that is slated to be home to a 131-unit townhouse development. Two backhoes were clearly moving some soil around:

Wanting to see what was going on from a better angle, made my way to the other bank of the creek (between Redwood Creek and the One Marina condominium complex) and saw that although work was indeed going on, it wasn’t for the 1548 Maple Street townhouse project. Instead, it was part of the city’s effort to erase all traces of the former marina and restore the banks of the creek to a more natural state. As you can see, the piers that used to line the southern side of the creek in this area are essentially all gone now:

I’ll be curious to see if/when (and how) those concrete posts sticking up out of the water are removed.

Lastly for this week, on Thursday I watched as construction fencing went up around the old A-1 Party Rental and Events building, on Broadway between California Street and the Caltrain tracks:

Don’t expect anything to happen here for a while, at least: there are no demolition or building permits filed for this site that I can see. At one time it was proposed as the site of an affordable housing project (connected to the 901 El Camino Real office project, I believe) but that project changed direction and its associated affordable housing project is now planned to be constructed in place of a self-storage facility at 920 Shasta St. If the Caltrain tracks in this part of Redwood City are someday widened (to four tracks, from today’s two, to support the High-Speed Rail project) I believe that this site will no longer be available for development, and thus the building will be demolished.

So why the fencing? For now, probably to keep people from trying to occupy the building. Since this fencing went up at just the same time that the green fence cloth was also applied to the construction fencing around the 901 El Camino Real project site (which has had fencing for a while, but that was ordinary chain-link with no vision-blocking cloth), I’m guessing that that project’s developer has some form of control over this site and is just protecting this existing building until the fate of the High Speed Rail project in our area is known for sure. Time will tell…

Finally, I should note that the green cloth around the 901 El Camino Real project site also doesn’t signal that anything will be happening there soon; although the project itself was approved last April, the developer has yet to apply for demolition and building permits — and I don’t expect that to happen until sometime in 2026 at the earliest. So get used to seeing green…

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The folks behind the Redwood Shores Sea Level Rise Protection Project have put together a community survey asking for feedback on the system of trails throughout Redwood Shores. Whether you live in the Shores, work there, or simply use the recreational amenities the area has to offer (like me), your input would be most welcome. It’s a simple survey, and one that you can take quickly, but as an added incentive there is a chance to win a $100 Visa gift card.