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The Redwood City Planning Commission on Tuesday unanimously recommended that City Council approve the first phase of the long-planned Veterans Memorial Senior Center/YMCA project.

“This project is really exceptional,” Commissioner Michael Smith said. “As a member of that general neighborhood, this is going to really put an interesting focus on our neighborhood.”

The commission recommended that City Council certify a final environmental impact report and approve a zoning amendment for the first two phases of the project, which has been in the works since 2010 and aims replace the Veterans Memorial Building/Senior Center facility and YMCA facility at Palm Park, both of which are aging, with a combined project at Red Morton Park.

The project involves demolishing the existing Veterans Memorial Building, Herkner Pool, Wellness Center (Old 49er Building), Resource Building and the NFL Alumni Building, and replacing them with a 45,000 square foot Veterans Memorial Building/Senior Center and a 35,000 square foot Sequoia YMCA building.

The project is set to be constructed in two phases. The first phase, just approved by the Planning Commission, would make way for the Veterans Memorial Building/Senior Center, which will include a 270-seat theater, mini-gymnasium, second-story outdoor track, multipurpose rooms, conference space for the NFL Alumni Association, and exhibit spaces for various branches of the armed services. The first phase also includes a public promenade, traffic calming measures at four nearby intersections and a parking lot with the capacity for 57 vehicles and 44 bicycles.

The second phase, which still needs to go through environmental review, would construct the Sequoia YMCA Building featuring indoor and outdoor pools, fitness center, multiuse rooms, locker room facility, a day care facility that’s open to the public and can accommodate 72 children, a parking lot for 222 vehicles, 11 motorcycles, and 18 bicycles.

To ease concerns about traffic safety in the area, the first phase of the project includes installing a new roundabout at Vera Avenue and Valota Road, a new median island and curb extensions at Valota Road and Madison Avenue and a new mini traffic circle at Madison Avenue and Myrtle Street. The project would also expand the existing traffic circle at Hudson Street and Madison Avenue and remove the two-way stop control on Madison.

For more information on the project, visit the city’s website here.

The first thing a visitor notices when walking into the new Stanford Hospital is how open and spacious everything is, and it’s not just an optical illusion.  

The new 824,000-square-foot, seven-story hospital, located at 500 Pasteur Drive in Palo Alto – just down the street from the older facility at 300 Pasteur – has been designed to offer patients the feeling that they are entering an uplifting, nature-connected healing place.  

Beginning with a light-infused, three-story atrium, the dramatic entry looks more like the lobby of a world-class hotel than a hospital. Expansive, comfortable seating areas, Internet stations, and floor-to-ceiling windows, along with a gift shop, cafeteria, patient-discharge lounge and outdoor seating make up the public-facing portions of the hospital’s first floor, known internally as “On Stage.”  

Visitors to the new hospital will never see patients in wheelchairs or gurneys “On Stage.” “Off Stage” areas dedicated to patient care include treatment rooms in the new emergency room, operating suites on the second floor, wellness facilities on the third floor, and four stories of private patient rooms.  

And what patient rooms they are. 

Each one features large windows with spectacular views of the surrounding area, from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the San Francisco Bay. Comfortable sofas and work tables that convert to fold-out beds encourage family members to stay with their recuperating relatives. To give patients more control over their entertainment and their ability to communicate with hospital staff, a 55-inch TV screen that can be operated by cell phones or bedside computer tablets is mounted prominently in every room.  

David Entwistle, Stanford Health Care’s president and chief executive officer, said that the creature comforts and high-tech capabilities in the new patient rooms are all part of a focused effort to improve the patient experience at the hospital. 

“We hope that our efforts to engage with patients through technology they are already using will help them more fully participate in their treatment,” he said. “The computer tablets we supply, or their own cell phones, can be used to navigate their treatment process, connect with their caregivers, research therapy options, order food, etcetera. 

“By eliminating visiting hours and improving amenities for family members who want to stay with their loved ones,” he continued, “we are trying to offer the most healing and supportive environment possible for patients to improve treatment outcomes.” 

Asked if he encourages patients to use their in-house digital tools to collaborate with caregivers in the treatment they receive at Stanford, Entwistle responded with an enthusiastic “Absolutely!” 

“Patients today, especially in this area, have access to nearly all the information used by physicians to treat them. By working together, physicians can partner with patients to achieve more successful treatment.”   

Advanced digital capabilities are evident not only in patient rooms, but throughout the hospital. Nurses’ stations look more like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise than the paper-stacked counters of old. Monitors line the walls, desks, and common areas throughout the facility, suggesting that somewhere very large computers are working to keep information flowing. 

In an effort to “future-proof” the new hospital, Entwistle has tried to anticipate the changes that may take place in medicine in the coming years, as well as the fact that changes in technology may require as-yet unknown resources in the hospital itself. 

“On the medical side,” he said, “we’ve built in features such as cutting-edge imaging facilities in some operating suites so surgeons can verify that tissue removals are complete during an initial surgery instead of waiting a day or two to obtain MRI data and possibly needing to perform a second surgery. 

“Architecturally, we’ve built in capacity for increased data storage and tried to design in the ability to adapt to whatever is coming next. When you think about it, ten years ago, when this project began, we didn’t have most of the technology we are now using every day, so for this facility to remain viable, we have to embrace and try to plan for that degree of rapid technology evolution.”  

Two needs that Stanford Health Care did anticipate and plan for were a vastly improved and expanded emergency room and the need to manage a mass-casualty situation such as an earthquake or region-wide power outage like the one recently experienced in the Bay Area. 

Over the years, the ER at the 300 Pasteur site has come increasingly under pressure from  overcrowding and inadequate physical resources.  

In the new hospital, the ER has been designed with more than double the square footage of the older facility, giving patients and families more room to wait comfortably for access to care. Instead of curtained alcoves where patients can often hear the distress of other patients in need of treatment, the new ER offers 66 enclosed, sound-dampened single-patient treatment rooms with space for family members to accompany loved ones through the treatment process.  

As the only regional Level 1 trauma center between San Francisco and San Jose, the current Stanford ER is one of the busiest in the country, according to a 2017 ProPublica report on hospital emergency rooms. With this in mind, the new Stanford ER has been designed to handle an ever-increasing demand for urgent care services in the future.  

 In mass injury situations, or during peak seasons of infectious diseases such as influenza, the covered ambulance bay – now a separate entrance from the walk-in area – can accommodate overflow patients. If the six-foot “floating wall” between the adjacent staff parking garage and the trauma center is removed, the entire garage, large enough to accommodate 900 cars, can be converted into a triage center that connects directly to the emergency room. 

And then there are those power outages.  

According to Jennifer Winder, Stanford Hospital’s public relations manager for planning design and construction, the new hospital has sufficient back-up power-generating capacity to keep the entire facility up and running for a full 96 hours without refueling. 

“It’s taken more than a decade of planning and a $2 billion dollar investment, but if the worst happens and everything goes down, health care will still be available at Stanford Hospital,” said Winder. 

But what about that earthquake that will surely hit one day?  How will this 21st century hospital fare when “the big one” hits? 

Once again, Entwistle cites use of advanced technological design to “future-proof” the facility. To meet California’s new seismic standards — a requirement for all hospitals by 2030 — architects mounted the entire structure on 208 massive base isolators that will allow the building to shift up to three feet in any direction.  

“The building is designed to withstand an 8.0 earthquake, rotating on its base to stay intact and avoid major damage,” Entwistle said. “I hope we never have to, but it would be quite amazing to see that.” 

In addition to all the futuristic, high-tech design built into the new hospital, a major emphasis on the healing influence of the natural world is also evident.  

Starting with the floor-to-ceiling windows and soaring, three-story domed atrium in the On Stage areas, natural light is brought into every corner of the hospital wherever possible to eliminate the closed-in feeling common to other facilities, including the 300 Pasteur site.  

At ground level outside the new ER, landscaped areas include an 85-tree orchard with fruit and flowering trees selected for medicinal properties in Eastern, Western, and native cultures.  

On the third-level wellness floor, four acres of outdoor gardens, walking trails, and rest areas invite recovering patients to reconnect with the outside world. Inside, a meditation room, family resource center, dining room, and assembly hall for lectures and staff meetings offer relief from the clinical setting for patients, families and employees.   

To compliment the connection to green spaces outside the hospital, mural-sized photographs of forests and trees have been placed throughout the facility. World-class, commissioned works of art, donated by friends and supporters of the hospital, highlight the soothing, healing theme of the institution. 

Ultimately, though, it is the quality of medical care available at the new Stanford Hospital that will determine its success. 

As a veteran of academic medical centers where he has spent the majority of his more-than-20-year career, Entwistle believes that teaching hospitals set the standard for healthcare in more ways than one. And although Stanford Health Care, the nonprofit that owns and operates Stanford Hospital, is an entirely separate entity from Stanford University, Entwistle points out how cooperation agreements between the two organizations benefit everyone. 

“We teach and train the physicians of the future, provide much of the medical research happening today, and enable providers to put new ideas into practice. Our clinicians can tap genetic data to create targeted care plans for patients based on what their bodies will respond to best,” he said. “This access to deep data sets developed in academic institutions combined with cutting-edge technology have helped our healthcare providers solve some medical cold cases that have stumped other doctors. As a result, Stanford clinicians are now able to diagnose up 25 percent of patients coming in who were previously undiagnosed.”  

Although the formal ribbon-cutting ceremony took place Oct. 23, the new Stanford Hospital at 500 Pasteur officially opened its doors to patient care on Sunday, November 17. 

This story was originally published in the print edition of Climate Magazine. 

While representatives for Chick-fil-A are set to open a “freestanding Chick-fil-A restaurant in Redwood City in 2020” (the San Mateo Daily Journal broke the story that its permit to operate at 536 Whipple Ave. was approved last month), it turns out local residents can already access its menu.

The fast-food chain has quietly begun operating from DoorDash Kitchen in Redwood City, offering pickup and delivery service from San Mateo to Sunnyvale. By now, of course, the local and national media have caught on.

In October, DoorDash launched the shared commissary kitchen with multiple restaurants at 1531 Main St. in Redwood City. Other restaurants serving from the shared kitchen are Nation’s Giant Hamburgers, Rooster & Rice, Humphry Slocombe, and The Halal Guys.

The Chick-Fil-A menu can be found on the DoorDash site here.

This, of course, is happening several months after news that Chick-fil-A faced opposition in the community over possible plans to open in Redwood City.

The fast food chain has faced criticism for donating to organizations accused of having anti-LGBTQ+ views. Today, Chick-fil-A is making a new set of national headlines over its announcement it has changed its focus on charitable giving. Per the Washington Post, the changes include discontinuing controversial multiyear commitments with two religious groups, Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army. The chain said it will “deepen” donations to a smaller number of organizations that work in the areas of education, homelessness and hunger. Those organizations “could include faith-based and non-faith-based charities,” the company said.

Will such decisions quiet the fury a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Redwood City?

At this point, Chick-fil-A reps sound optimistic.

“We look forward to joining the community and serving all of our guests delicious food in an environment of genuine hospitality,” representatives said in the statement.

If you were with us around this time last year you may remember that I railed, not ever so slightly, against all things “pumpkin spice.” Why? I hold that “pumpkin spice” is an overly used, oft-abused “flavor.” But here’s the thing, I still love pumpkin. Real pumpkin, that is. Pumpkin curry, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and yes, pumpkin ice cream. Because when it’s still 80 degrees in early October and it feels like summer will never acquiesce to fall, ice cream in November is not that far-fetched an idea. Especially when it’s rich, creamy, and the flavors — pumpkin, ginger, cinnamon, a few cracks of black pepper — come together in such pure pumpkin concert that you can, if not for the briefest of moments, imagine a world where pumpkin spice air fresheners don’t actually exist.

This recipe, which is simultaneously homey and sophisticated, is courtesy of Chez Panisse-alum, David Lebovitz. He was named one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Top Five Pastry Chefs in the Bay Area, and there is never really any reason to doubt his recipes — this one included. While I first started making his pumpkin ice cream with fresh pumpkin that I would roast and puree myself (they were simpler times), even Lebovitz himself says canned pumpkin will do. Just get pure pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling, as the latter will have spices and sweeteners added in.

This ice cream is, simply put, the fall season in dairy form. Serve it at Thanksgiving with ginger snaps or just keep it on hand for when you need a break from the pumpkin spice takeover. But do make it. You won’t regret it.

David Lebovitz’s Pumpkin Ice Cream

Makes about 1 quart

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups (375ml) whole milk

1 cup (250ml) heavy cream

1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons (95g) granulated sugar

big pinch of salt

5 large egg yolks

3/4 cup (180g) fresh or canned 100% pure pumpkin puree

(not pumpkin pie filling, which has spices and sweeteners added)

1/4 cup packed (60g) dark brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground dried ginger

a few turns of ground black pepper

optional: 2 teaspoons whiskey or brandy

Directions:

1. Make an ice bath by putting some ice and water in bowl that is large enough for a medium, 2-quart bowl to nest inside of it. Place a sieve on top of the medium-sized bowl.

2. Measure the cream into the medium bowl nested in the ice bath. In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks.

2. In a medium saucepan, warm the milk, granulated sugar, and salt.

3. Once the sugar is dissolved and the milk is starting to simmer, turn off the heat and, while whisking the egg yolks constantly, pour about half of the warm milk into the eggs. Do not stop whisking the eggs while pouring. This process is called “tempering” and it prevents the eggs from cooking as soon as they’re introduced to the hot milk.

4. Scrape the tempered yolks back into the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a heatproof spatula. Really make sure to scrape the bottom and sides of the pan — you want to make sure everything is cooking evenly. The mixture will start to thicken. You’ll know it’s ready when you pull the spatula out from the mixture and run your finger in a line down the spatula. If the trail of your finger stays, the mixture is the right thickness and you’re good to go.

5. It’s ice bath time. Grab the sieve if it’s not already nested on the medium bowl with the heavy cream. Pour the mixture through the sieve and right into the heavy cream.

6. Stir until the mixture (which is now a custard) is cool. This may take a few minutes and you may need to replenish the ice.

7. Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

8. Pull the bowl out of the ice bath and wipe the bottom so no ice water gets into the custard during the next step.

9. Pour the cooled custard into a blender with the pumpkin puree, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, and whiskey or brandy, if using. You could use an electric hand mixer if you don’t have a blender handy. Mix well.

10. Cover and chill thoroughly in the refrigerator, preferably overnight.

This story was originally published in the November print edition of Climate Magazine. 

Balsam Brands, a home décor and consumer products company whose roots, as it were, go back just over a decade, is a rare breed of business. Best known for its Balsam Hill artificial Christmas trees, the company headquartered in Redwood City has taken the artificial Christmas tree industry by storm. And, almost as notably, it’s done so without venture capital backing.  

But there’s more to the story of this unicorn that refuses to buy into the industry of Silicon Valley unicorns. Founder and CEO Thomas “Mac” Harman doesn’t just have a vision for business growth, he has a vision for the growth and happiness of his 250-plus employees. 

 The route to producing trees — the beautiful, artificial kind using his True Needle™ technology — came through a love of the real thing. An avid hiker and skier who holds an undergraduate degree in environmental studies, Harman has spent a lot of time amongst trees. “I have spent so much of my time in nature,” he said. “… I was well set up to design trees. If I went through my photo reel on my phone, you’d see that I document interesting trees, all the time.”  

Still, it might seem like a leap from loving real trees to designing and manufacturing fake ones. Especially Christmas trees, since the real-versus-artificial question can ignite holiday debates on par with the whole-berry-versus-jellied-cranberry-sauce conundrum.   

But Harman has a spot in his heart for both kinds of trees. “I grew up with real trees,” he said, and added, “I love Christmas, I love Christmas trees.” When he started dating Stephanie, the woman who would become his wife, though, he was introduced to a different family tradition: the fake Christmas tree. Harman laughed as he recalled Stephanie’s ersatz tree. “It just wasn’t very good. I think I’ve called it anemic … It was just so not awesome, compared to a real tree.”  

That underachieving Christmas tree planted a seed for Harman. “I was just like, how come we have Avatar, or you know, all this amazing Lucas Film stuff … but no one has ever made a good-looking artificial Christmas tree?”  

That question would percolate for years until June of 2006. Harman, then a recent graduate of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, decided to capitalize on the market opportunity. He developed his True Needle technology, the full-bodied, as-seen-in-nature pine needles that put the flat, papery, single-toned “needles” of most fake Christmas tree to shame. He just needed a manufacturer which could produce the trees — and quickly: He only had three and a half months to get ready for that year’s Christmas season.  

 Harman did it all — designed and manufactured the trees, opened a pop-up shop at Stanford Shopping Center, and started an online, direct-to-consumer business —- in less time than it takes to turn out a Christmas fruitcake. Equally remarkable, he did it without venture capital funding. Harman shouldered the $2.6 million start-up and manufacturing cost with the help of family and friends.  

“I was totally naïve,” Harman told an interviewer for McKinsey & Company, of which he is an alum. “I never felt like I was taking a huge risk, but looking back, I was crazy. I can’t believe I took that much risk.”  

As it turned out, the risk was worth it. Harman was running the business out of his Palo Alto apartment and wearing so many hats — salesman, marketer, customer service rep — that he would often fall asleep at his desk. But that first season brought in $3 million in sales. By the second year, his Christmas trees were decorating the holiday stage of “The Ellen Show.” Then came the first of what has become an annual Balsam Hill float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.  

Soon Balsam Hill also had achieved the status as the go-to Christmas tree for both television shows and musicians’ stages. “Most legendary musicians, at some point, record a Christmas album,” Harman said. ”And when they launch that Christmas tour, many of them call us because we can elevate their sets. We’ve done some great things across all different genres.” 

But the moment he knew he was onto something came well before Balsam Hill was receiving Hollywood recognition. Rather, it was from seeing his business start to take off.  “I’d say you know, waking up one day that first year and seeing the sales come in order by order on the computer,” Harman recalled. “I was just like wow, this is actually happening.” 

The success meant Harman had to change his plans. “I had this poorly educated thought that this would be a highly seasonal business in terms of demands on my time … I really thought this would be a side business to fund my other businesses,” he added, with a laugh. 

“It’s not that I was special,” Harman said in response to a question about Balsam Hill’s success. “It was right time, right place, and good search engine optimization.”  

Since those early years Balsam Hill has grown into Balsam Brands, which has offices in Idaho, Ireland and the Philippines, and expanded far beyond “Christmas.” Under the Balsam Brands umbrella, customers can shop for outdoor furniture, as well as spring, fall and Halloween décor. The product offerings range from beautiful serving ware to a years’ worth of wreaths and floral arrangements so real to the eye they have to be touched to know they’re artificial. But it’s not just the other seasons that have gotten the royal treatment: The tree line has also expanded to offer even more natural-looking trees, not just artificial versions of what one would find in a tree lot.  

“The trees that I’ve been working on the last five years are the trees that aren’t as manicured,” Harman said. “An example is our Yukon Spruce. It’s asymmetrical. Some of the branches are intentionally longer than the branches next to them.” These less-manicured trees, Harman admits, have had his manufacturers, most of whom are in China, scratching their heads. “They’re not used to it,” he said.  “They’re like, ‘Wait, this doesn’t look right.’ But that’s the point.”  

Growth of product isn’t Harman’s only motivation. “If we don’t grow, we don’t create opportunities for our team members to grow. We want to be a place where people come and invest a significant part of their careers. If we aren’t growing at least 10 percent, I don’t think we’re going to create opportunities for people to take more on and have more autonomy.” 

There is also a genuine commitment to culture at Balsam Hill. So genuine that they don’t have coffee in the office. There’s a strategy behind the absence of coffee. Harman wanted employees in downtown Redwood City to go out for coffee to keep them connected to the customer experience. It’s a good excuse, Harman contends, for team-bonding, not to mention the chance to get some fresh air. 

“I want our employees to go out, experience retail, customer service … to be reminded of what it’s like to be the customer. We’re an online company. I want to make sure we’re not locked away in an ivory tower somewhere.”  

That said, and while Harman says the policy may change, Balsam Brands does buy the coffee, providing gift cards to local coffee shops.  

The recently remodeled Redwood City headquarters, which is mainly home to the Balsam Brands merchandising team, sits above the Bank of America office on Jefferson Avenue. It is an open and inviting space which bears no resemblance to Santa’s Workshop. Even without venture-capital backing, the office has the makings of a proper Silicon Valley office: The kitchen area accommodates space for foosball, ping pong and family-style tables. The furniture hints at mid-century modern, but without feeling like it was all swiped from a “Mad Men” fire sale. Out in the open office space, Balsam Hill-branded Patagonia jackets and hoodies are slung casually over desk chairs. One of the small conference rooms has a desk bike.  

Though Christmas music is not piped through a sound system, homage is paid to the big guy in red: Half of the conference rooms are named after Santa: “Santa Monica,” “Santa Cruz,” “Santa Rose” … and so on.  

Harman said it is his father, who owned a parts manufacturing company, who inspired his own focus on his employees. 

“I grew up around the decisions and what I saw was how the number one thing my dad cared about was taking care of his employees,” Harman said.  When the late Harman died suddenly at age 50, Mac Harman was touched by the responses of people at the funeral. “Oh my gosh, the people came out of the woodwork to come share how he had done things for them, like, (things) we didn’t even know (about). He didn’t make a lot of money, he wasn’t super ambitious with the business, but it was all about taking care of people.”  

That sense of caring about people emanated from Harman with such sincerity that it started to soften even this writer’s Grinch-like stance against the faux holiday tree. But for those who still need to see to believe, check out the Balsam Brands warehouse in Burlingame. Now open to the public (see BalsamHill.com for more details) this is the place to immerse oneself in the Balsam Hill forest, capitalize on holiday décor sample sales, and just get excited about the holiday spirit — and there’s nothing artificial about that. 

 This story was originally published in the November print edition of Climate Magazine. 

With Measure H, the proposed parcel tax aimed at supporting the cash-strapped Redwood City School District, still falling short of yes votes in the latest election count Tuesday, its supporters are bracing for the reality that it won’t pass.

The measure, a parcel tax of $149 per parcel annually for 12 years, experienced a slight uptick in approval after Tuesday’s count to 66.24 percent, just short of the required supermajority needed of 66.7 percent.

Results from a “small number” of Vote By Mail ballots that remain unreported are set to be released Friday, Nov. 15 and, if necessary, again on Tuesday, Nov. 19.

Measure H supporters don’t believe a defeat of the parcel tax, which would raise an estimated $3.45 million annually for the school district that is reportedly facing a $10 million deficit, would mean the effort went to waste.

“We ran an incredibly strong campaign that brought the District community together at a critical time and empowered emerging parent leaders,” said Jason Galisatus, executive director of the Redwood City Education Foundation. “We hope the outcome of Measure H serves as a call-to action to our parents and the Redwood City community at large that our kids need us to work together to support the District more than ever to put them on the path to success.”

On Facebook, Redwood City resident Lori Palmatier called upon the community to take action.

“Set up a GoFundMe, or just write a check donating to the school district,” she stated on Facebook, adding, “If you feel strongly that this is the way to save RCSD, then don’t let the outcome of this vote stop you.”

The stated purpose of Measure H is to attract and retain highly qualified teachers, support quality reading and writing skills in schools, maintain science technology, engineering and math instruction and reduce class sizes in kindergarten and first grade.

In 2016, Redwood City School District voters approved an $85 per parcel tax that raises $1.9 million annually.