It’s been a while since we’ve seen a significant project proposed for Redwood City’s harbor area, but in late October, Metlife Investment Management submitted a preliminary proposal for two fairly good sized life science/office buildings along Penobscot Drive, which is in the part of Redwood City along Redwood Creek directly opposite Blu Harbor (nee Pete’s Harbor). Before I get to that proposal, though, I took a long walk this week through many of my most frequented neighborhoods, and saw a couple of things worth sharing.

Down at the Broadway Village project (formerly “Broadway Plaza,” but the developer has officially dubbed their large development off Broadway between Woodside Road and Chestnut Street “Broadway Village”) the third of three large apartment buildings is rapidly nearing the end, at least as far as the building’s exterior is concerned:

The side of the building facing the Woodside Road end of the parcel is still being worked on, but at the rate they are going, I don’t expect that it’ll take all that long:

One of the three buildings — the one you can just barely see at the very left edge of the above photo — is essentially done and is already leasing (and the wait list for the building’s 120 affordable apartments is already closed!); that building has been dubbed The Millton. The largest of the three buildings, which fronts onto Broadway and contains a couple of street-level retail spaces and a 10,000-square-foot childcare center along with its many market-rate studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments, seems not far behind. That building will be called The Colton, and these days it looks something like this:

The apartments in The Colton are not yet ready to be leased, but the apartment floor plans are on the project’s website, and interested persons can submit their basic contact info to receive further information and presumably get on a waiting list.

As for Broadway Village’s third apartment building — the one with which I started — it does not yet have a name and does not even have a spot on the project’s website (yet). But that building, which faces onto Bay Road and encloses a large resident’s courtyard that’ll be shared with The Colton, will also have a great many studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments, giving potential residents a wide choice of views and, potentially, sound levels (Bay Road being somewhat quieter than Broadway).

The sidewalks around Broadway Village are still behind construction fences and orange traffic barriers, but I was delighted to see that the sidewalks along two sides of the Taube Family Carriage House and Automobile Gallery (on Marshall Street, behind Redwood City’s historic courthouse) were open when I was out walking on Tuesday. I’ll note that on Thursday I saw that the construction fences had been taken down altogether — but I didn’t have an opportunity to take photos showing the fencing gone altogether:

The open sidewalks allowed me to get a better look at the small courtyard between the Carriage House and the next-door Lathrop House:

As someone who makes good use of the city’s sidewalks, I really appreciate when developers finally reach the stage where the sidewalks can be reopened to the public. Thus, I was delighted to discover that the folks behind the ELCO Yards development have finally poured asphalt to make a temporary sidewalk along the one-block section of El Camino Real that borders one of the project’s two currently empty parcels where large apartment buildings are soon to be constructed:

Close to the above, in a previous post I had guessed that a cement pour was surely imminent at the site of the seven-story affordable apartment building that is underway at 112 Vera Ave. I had based my guess on the fact that perimeter forms and a great deal of rebar is now in place for the building’s foundation. But I had forgotten about the various utilities that need to run through and beneath the foundation. This week I saw stacks of PVC pipes plus, attached to the rebar, numerous metal brackets (with orange safety caps) that presumably will hold those pipes in place:

So maybe a concrete pour isn’t quite as imminent as I thought. Oh, and I should note that an article in SF Yimby indicates that the building’s apartments will be what I presume are prefabricated modules (the article says that the building “will be comprised of 100% affordable, modular apartment homes”) and given the tight confines of the parcel that type of construction indeed makes a great deal of sense. But I’m having trouble finding confirming evidence, so this project might be conventionally built. Whichever it is, though, we’ll know very soon…

Finally, the five-story, 222-unit apartment building that will wrap a five-level parking garage out at 557 E. Bayshore Road continues to come along nicely:

Just one parking level to go! Apartments will ultimately cover this side of the parking garage, hiding the garage itself from view (I took this picture from E. Bayshore). So far, though, the framers are working primarily on the apartments that will cover the opposite side of the garage, facing the bay.

Okay. Time to talk about 505 Penobscot. In short, the project would replace three existing single-story life science/office buildings plus surface parking sufficient to hold 453 vehicles with two five-story life science/office buildings and two parking structures containing a total of 1,499 parking spaces. The existing buildings and parking today occupy five separate parcels with three separate addresses: 505 Penobscot Dr., 301 Penobscot Dr., and 701 Galveston Dr. In addition to those five parcels, the developer is proposing to vacate what appears to be the entirety of Penobscot Drive, along with a portion of Galveston Drive. Adding those streets to the five parcels, the developer would find themself with 13.65 acres of land upon which to build their project.

Thanks to Google street view (since learning about the project I have yet to walk out there), here is what 505 Penobscot looks like these days:

Note the view of the Blu Harbor apartments visible near the left edge of the photo; between it and 505 Penobscot lies an arm of Redwood Creek.

Here is a rendering showing one of the most (to me) attractive features of the proposed development — the central green space, which will be open to the public — and, to the right a portion of the building that will stand roughly where 505 Penobscot stands today (the other building, only a small portion of which is visible at the left, is where today’s 301 Penobscot stands):

(Thanks to the developer and their architect for this the other renderings I’m showing in this post; all of them can be found among the preliminary plans submitted to the city thus far.)

In the rendering, note the creek and the Blu Harbor development. As for the bit of street you can see in the lower right corner, that is roughly where Penobscot Drive is today — but it appears that in the new development that wouldn’t actually be a street, but instead would be a private driveway connecting the two buildings and leading to the parking garages, one of which would be at each end of the project’s L-shaped parcel. The following drawing, which shows an overhead view of how the four buildings would be laid out, should help clarify things:

Both buildings would be five stories tall (the south building — the left-hand one in the above drawing — would also have a basement) and would stretch to right around 70 feet high. The south building would contain about 316,000 square feet of interior space, while the north building would be somewhat smaller, with “only” about 267,000 square feet of interior space. The three buildings that they would replace currently contain, in total, about 324,000 square feet.

Finally, one last rendering, this one showing what the development and some of the surrounding buildings would look like when viewed from high above Blu Harbor:

I find the timing of this particular project submission to be interesting: it shows real confidence in the need for more life science/office space in the next five to ten years than already exists or will exist by then. Given the large amount of such space currently sitting either wholly or partially empty in San Carlos right now, plus the number of other such projects in the pipeline both in San Carlos and in Redwood City, this developer, at least, seems to have a pretty rosy outlook for our economy in the not too distant future.

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Once again Redwood City’s Annual Family Holiday Light Show, at the Valota Road end of Red Morton Park, has returned. The show is put on twice nightly, at 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., each night from now until New Year’s Day (on New Year’s Eve only, shows will instead be at 8:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.). Look to the Veterans parking lot along Madison Avenue for nearby parking.