Boy, it feels good to be back to my keyboard again. My posts have been a little erratic of late, but life has a way of showing you that you aren’t always in control. I had really hoped to write a post last week, but right after our Friday morning drive for Meals on Wheels (an organization I am proud to be volunteering with, especially at this particular time), my wife and I had to hit the road and drive to LA. for a weekend-long celebration of a good friend’s retirement. Then, on Sunday night, we had to drive from LA to San Diego to deal with some residual items from my parents’ estate. That took two days; we finally were able to make the drive home on Wednesday. But I’m back, and ready to write about what I meant to write about last week (I haven’t had any time this week to actually walk around Redwood City, although I did keep my eyes open while making this morning’s Meals on Wheels deliveries). I am really looking forward to just being home and resuming my regular routine for the next couple of weeks!

The main item I intended to cover last week is a big one: the first new project of significance to be submitted to the city this year (since late November of 2024, in fact). Eden Housing, a Hayward-based developer and operator of affordable housing, has proposed construction of a five-story, 76-unit affordable housing building at 705 Veterans Blvd., which is located at the corner of Veterans Boulevard and Brewster Avenue diagonally across the intersection from where the four-story Hampton Inn is currently under construction. Currently, the site of this newly proposed project is occupied by a single-story commercial building with a handful of tenants, one of which is a FedEx Office outlet:

Here is a rough idea of what the proposed development might look like:

I say “rough idea” and “might look like” because on Monday, October 27, Dixie Baus, the Director of Real Estate Development for Eden Housing, introduced the project to the Redwood City Council prior to formally submitting the project, and during her presentation she took pains to note that the exterior finishes and materials, in particular, had not yet been decided upon. Thus, not only is the final building (assuming it gets built) likely to look somewhat different from the one rough rendering included with the basic project plan (and shown above), it could actually look quite a bit different if feedback received during and after the meeting causes Eden Housing to redesign their project. Know, though, that the basic specs — the number of apartments, the height of the building, and so forth — aren’t likely to change much if at all.

As currently designed, the building’s ground floor would occupy nearly the entirety of the parcel and consist of a small lobby/mailroom (on the corner at the intersection), some utility rooms, and a 38-space parking garage. The upper four floors would be arranged in an L-shape, leaving an outdoor space on the second level for the building’s residents to enjoy. That second level would also contain a number of the building’s apartments, plus a laundry room, a fitness room, a community room, and offices for the building’s management and support staff. Finally, the upper three floors would consist almost entirely of apartments, with a small common open space area on the building’s fourth floor exterior corner (visible in the rendering) plus a small private balcony serving the manager’s apartment, both of which would face out over Veterans Boulevard.

Except for the manager’s apartment, which would have two bedrooms, all of the building’s apartments would be either studios (35 of the units in the current design) or one-bedroom units (40 of them). Again, excepting the manager’s apartment, all would be for seniors (aged 55+) and all would be affordable: 10 at the Extremely Low income level (for those earning at or below 30% of the county’s median income, or AMI), 25 at the Very Low income level (at or below 50% AMI), and the remaining 40 at the Low income level (at or below 80% AMI). Note that actual income figures vary from year-to-year and are based on the household size; for 2025’s numbers, including what the maximum rent a household would pay at each level, see San Mateo County’s 2025 Income & Rent Limits.

This looks to be a really good project in a pretty good location. Eden Housing excited to get going, and intends to formally submit it as an SB35 project, which streamlines the approval process. Not that the City Council is likely to push back on this one; they are all for more senior affordable housing, and seemed pretty positive in their feedback during the meeting. And they seem pleased with the number of housing projects that are springing up along Veterans Boulevard and really changing the character of that particular Redwood City street. So chalk this up as another project for the books — or at least the electronic version thereof, that being Redwood City’s Development Projects webpage.

As I noted, this project would stand kitty-corner from the new hotel, which looked like this (when viewed from Brewster Avenue) when I was last in the area:

Until two weeks ago I hadn’t known what brand of hotel this might be, but signs on the construction fencing let me know that it indeed will be a Hampton Inn.

Both this hotel and the Eden Housing’s project would be just a couple of blocks from the heart of Redwood City — Courthouse Square — which should soon include the new Taube Family Carriage House and Automobile Gallery. That new museum, which has been grafted onto the rear of the historic courthouse, is looking great these days:

That is the view from County Center, just across Marshall Street from the block containing this new museum, the Lathrop House, the historic courthouse, and, of course, Courthouse Square. The Carriage House museum is located at the corner of Marshall Street and Middlefield Road; here is what it looks like from across Middlefield Road:

Elsewhere in Redwood City, I paid my regular visit to the Syufy site project, the large housing-and-fitness-club project that is being built out on E. Bayshore Rd. where the Century Park 12 Theatres used to be located. The first residential building in that project continues to make steady progress. From the east side of the project site, it’s clear that the internal parking garage (around which apartments will be wrapped) continues to rise into the air:

From out on E. Bayshore, that same structure looks a bit different. More importantly, work was underway on the main driveway into that portion of the property:

And on the southern end, close to the car dealerships, it appears that the future site of the VillaSport sports club is being readied:

Interestingly, the two structures (the apartment building and the sport club) are being built by separate contracting firms.

Finally, down along Broadway in the midst of Redwood City’s Friendly Acres neighborhood, the metal skeleton for Stanford Health Care’s nine-story medical building continues to extend ever higher into the sky. At the end of October, it looked like this when viewed from Broadway:

Today (November 7), though, I had my wife take a picture from our car as we drove by at the conclusion of our Meals on Wheels route. From the freeway you can see that it has gained a couple of extra stories.

Those two upper levels will shortly be extended to the full width of the building. I think that there is just one additional level yet to be added to the structure, so soon we should see it at its maximum height.

Next week we are slated to get some rain, but fortunately that should be until the latter part of the week, giving me plenty of time to get caught up on the latest all throughout the city. Until then…