I was traveling most of this week and part of last, but am blessed with readers who let me know when things happen that I need to see for myself. Thus, upon my return, I knew just where I needed to focus my attention: Hoover Park, and the affordable housing project at 112 Vera Ave.

Redwood City began the process of revamping Hoover Park — which is located at the corner of Spring Street and Woodside Road, and is immediately adjacent to Hoover Community School — more than four years ago. In early 2022 the city solicited bids from landscape architecture firms interested in developing a new master plan for Hoover Park, which has been around for decades and, although updated over the years, still had some amenities dating back to 1966. In early 2023 the city held a pair of community outreach sessions and published an online survey to obtain public input on preferred play amenities and the use of space. A couple of conceptual designs were then created and presented to the public, who were asked to indicate their preferred design and select from a set of optional design elements. Over the summer of 2023 the park’s master plan was finalized based upon the final round of public input: that master plan was completed in October. Various state, county, and city approvals were then sought and obtained, and the city purchased a new restroom structure for the updated park. The project was put out to bid in September 2025, and a contract with Azul Works, Inc. (the low bidder) was approved in November. Now, as planned, work has commenced, beginning with the demolition of the existing park.

For those not familiar with Hoover Park, here is an aerial view of the park as it was before demolition, with the park boundaries outlined with a yellow dotted line:

(The sports fields beyond the park boundaries are part of the school. The basketball court and the adjacent building along the left edge of the image are the city’s Boys and Girls Club.)

In its previous incarnation, the park contained two pools (little used in recent years), a fenced play area for younger kids, a more open play area for bigger kids, a picnic area, and a large grass-covered mound. From the driveway entrance to the park, along Spring Street, the park looked like this:

Here was a closer look at the “bigger kids” play area, which you can barely make out in the center of the above photo:

The smaller kids had this:

And the pools looked like this (pardon the fence; I couldn’t get around that):

Today, though, things look quite different. This is where the pools used to be located:

And here is what is left of the “big kids” play area:

Hoover Park also used to have a number of large trees, nearly all of which have been torn down, regrettably. Fortunately, though, a great many new ones will be planted. Here is the master plan for the park’s new design:

(You’ll probably want to click on the above and zoom in on it!)

In the new design the pools are gone. Instead, there will be a large “splash pad”: that blue kidney-shaped area in the master plan. The new design includes a pair of pickleball courts, a volleyball court (with artificial turf), a couple of ping pong tables, two playgrounds (one for kids aged 2-5, and one for kids from 5-12), an outdoor classroom area, some picnic areas, a fitness area, a community garden, and, away from the main portion of the park, separate parks for large and small dogs. There will also be that new restroom building the city already purchased, which in addition to restrooms will contain a concession stand and some storage.

That’s a lot for this little park (officially, the park is just over 10 acres in size, but that includes the adjacent sports fields and the basketball court up against the Boys and Girls Club building, all of which will remain). But this new design should make the park far more popular with the many residents who live in the immediate area, as well as with the kids who attend Hoover School and/or are members of the Boys and Girls Club.

I’m looking forward to watching this park come together. This project will be quite different from most of the projects I’ve monitored and written about in the past, and it should go a lot faster. I do not know how long the project is anticipated to take, but I’m hoping that it’ll be done by summer. Given how slowly some of the city’s recent projects have gone, however, I’m not going to hold my breath…

One project that is zooming along is the affordable housing project at 112 Vera Ave. When I was last there, the rebar and piping to be embedded in the building’s foundation was in place, and I was anticipating a large concrete pour very soon. Naturally, just as soon as I left town one of my readers wrote in and sent me a picture of cement mixers waiting along El Camino Real and Vera Avenue. Now, exactly one week after that pour, not only has the concrete set, the contractors have done a great deal of work to place rebar for the support pillars that will run through the first two levels, and rebar for the few concrete walls that will help form the building’s first level:

Around back, not only has rebar for the support pillars been placed, some of that rebar has already had its surrounding forms added, the concrete poured, and the forms removed to expose the completed concrete pillars (for the first level, at least; I assume the remaining half of each pillar will be concreted once the first level ceiling/second level floor has been constructed):

Much of this building is supposed to use modular construction; certainly I would think that the building’s 176 apartments would be individual modules. But especially on the first two floors, there are a number of spaces that are unique and thus are likely to be built using conventional construction techniques. This includes the mail room, the leasing office, the boiler room, the building’s handful of offices and work rooms, and the like. In any case, given the speed with which this seven-story building is rising just one parcel back from El Camino Real on Vera Avenue, we’ll have the answers to questions like these very soon.

Redwood City recently received a new project proposal! Before you get too upset at the prospect of yet another large multi-family housing project or office building, though, relax. This is a small project, very much on the order of when the McDonald’s restaurant on Whipple Avenue was converted to a Chick-fil-A. In this case, though, it is a Carl’s Jr. restaurant — the one on the corner of Veterans Boulevard and Main Street — that is being converted, this time to a Raising Cane’s (which apparently serves (almost) nothing but chicken fingers, plus french fries and coleslaw and drinks). Unlike with our McDonald’s conversion, this time it appears that much of the existing restaurant building and its drive-thru might be preserved — although the final product will leave little evidence of the Carl’s Jr. that is there today, thanks to several different design choices and a lot of “interesting” branding:

I appreciate that this place will have outdoor seating; Carl’s Jr. used to have it in this same spot, but it was removed during or just after the COVID shut-down. I’ve never eaten at a Raising Cane’s; I’ll be interested to try it. (I’ve only tried Chick-fil-A once, and that was before the Redwood City restaurant was built. It was fine, but I didn’t think it was anything special, so I’ve never actually gotten food from our local Chick-fil-A.) I’m well aware that both Chick-fil-A and Texas-based Raising Cane’s have their ardent fans, so I expect that this new restaurant will do great. Certainly better than this Carl’s Jr. seems to be doing, if the relative lack of activity I often notice whenever I walk by is any indication…