For nearly ten years now I have been closely monitoring the progress of pretty much all of the larger development projects (and many of the smaller ones) in and around Redwood City, and I find it fascinating how some projects proceed quickly, while others positively drag their feet. I’m pleased to note, for instance, that the ten-unit condominium project at 910 Woodside Rd. is essentially complete and the units are for sale, but this project is one of the slow ones: it was initially approved in January 2017, and got underway in May 2020.

Construction has been going on, then, for nearly three years. Hopefully the result is worth it! Certainly, the units look nice enough. And people seem to agree: as I write this, three of the units are marked as “sold,” three more are in escrow, and two are marked “on hold” — which I assume means that they have been reserved by people who are in the process of obtaining financing or some such.

One project that truly is dragging its feet is the 10-unit residential project underway at 112 Vera Ave. The five side-by-side duplexes currently under construction are replacing five units that appear to be nearly identical to what is being built. According to my records, the project was approved in April of 2019 and construction got underway in August of that same year. For such simple little buildings, the project — which is far from done — is taking an amazingly long time. I have observed it sitting idle for months at a time, only for work to then resume. It feels as if the people working on the project are on other jobs, and only working on this one when they have a few free days. But whatever the real reason for all of the delays, these little duplexes appear likely to be priced at the lower end of the scale (whether they will be sold or rented, I don’t yet know). And given our need for housing, whatever those prices turn out to be, I hope this project will wrap up soon. In any case, here is what the project looks like after three and a half years of construction:

Sometimes you get the impression that a project is moving slowly, but when you pull up the numbers, you realize that it isn’t. One project that falls in this category is the small office building under construction at the corner of Woodside Road and Massachusetts Avenue (by Woodside Plaza):

This project was approved in mid-2021 and got underway not long afterwards. The new, very modern looking building, which consists of about 12,000 square feet of office space on the second floor above a mostly open ground floor parking area, replaced a Citibank building that had sat empty for years. The project still isn’t finished : it may take a full two years when all is said and done. To be fair, it was under construction during some of our most challenging times, and thus was likely affected by both labor and supply-chain issues. Otherwise it might have fallen into the “fast” category. In any case, I’ll be curious to see who moves in: I have no idea of whether this building has been pre-leased, or whether it’ll go on the market once it is complete. I’ll be watching: if “for lease” signs go up on the building, that’ll tell me that the building wasn’t pre-leased.

Most projects take longer than one might expect to complete, but every once in a while a project comes down the pike that is the opposite: it gets built in record time. The county’s navigation center is one of these, especially if you don’t count the time it took to raise the site (to protect against sea level rise). It’s a little hard to pin down when actual construction began, but May 2022 seems about right. If that is accurate, when completed (the project is due to be done in mid-March) it will have taken about ten months from start to finish.

Because the navigation center project is being built using modular construction, one might regard it as a bit of a cheat. So for a more conventional project, I bring you the seven-unit townhouse project now underway at 31 Center St. This project remained in the planning stages for quite some time: it was proposed in March of 2018 and approved in September of 2019, but it didn’t actually break ground until November of 2022. Since then, though, the project has seemingly been in high gear. Here is what it looks like after just a tad less than four months of work:

Considering that they had to demolish the single-family home that used to sit on this large lot, run the underground utilities and construct the foundations for the two buildings, and finally frame those buildings to the point you see here, I’d say that they were zipping right along. Especially when you compare this project to, say, the twelve-unit townhouse project that was recently completed at 120 El Camino Real (where Mountain Mike’s used to be), which began the demolition process in January of 2021, began construction in March, and didn’t wrap up until the end of 2022, after some 21 months of work.

Now that Redwood City has approved its 2023-2031 Housing Element (which had previously been given the thumbs-up by the state), the City Council has just ensured that we’ll be seeing housing construction projects, some fast and some slow, for many years to come. Sincere congratulations to the city on getting its Housing Element approved, though; we are one of only four of the 101 Bay Area cities that managed to do so. (For the curious, the other three cities that managed to get their plans approved by the deadline are Alameda, Emeryville, and San Francisco.) This means that Redwood City won’t be subject to the dreaded builder’s remedy that you may be hearing about in other parts of the region. Redwood City showed that it took the process seriously by going well beyond what was being required of it: the city’s Housing Element calls for as many as 7,000 new residential units (houses, townhomes, apartments, Accessory Dwelling Units, and the like) built between now and the beginning of 2031, and some might argue that the “builder’s remedy” alternative might have been preferable. But with the plan now in place, new housing of that magnitude means that we’ll be seeing a great deal of housing construction over the next eight years, particularly along the busy traffic corridors of El Camino Real and Woodside Road.

If news of so much construction gets you fired up — pro or con — this is an ideal time for me to point out once again that the Redwood City Planning Commission has two partial-term vacancies it needs to fill. Community members “who are passionate about sharing their knowledge and experience to help shape City programs and policies” are encouraged to apply. But don’t delay: applications are due by next Tuesday, February 28. Want to know more, or ready to apply? Point your browser to https://www.redwoodcity.org/departments/city-clerk/advisory-boards-commissions-and-committees/advisory-boards-commissions-and-committees-recruitment.

Encore Books on the Square — the wonderful used bookstore beneath the San Mateo County History Museum — has a ton of new books, thanks to people cleaning out their collections during the COVID lockdowns. Accordingly, they are having their first half-price sale of the year (on top of their already very low prices!) on Saturday, March 4. Encore is currently open only on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., but if you, like me, love to read, it’s well worth making the effort to pay them a visit. Look for their banner on the railing leading down to the basement beneath the museum, just to the left of the old courthouse’s steps.