Search result

main st. - page 21

211 result(s) found.

Entertainment Galore, But… How can downtown Redwood City become a shopper’s paradise?

in Business/Community/Featured/Headline by

By Scott Dailey

Two years ago, the City of Redwood City asked 476 residents where they shopped. Guess how many patronized stores downtown. How about 200? Too high? Maybe 100? Try 15.

That’s right.  In a downtown district that one local merchant describes as “hopping,” with crowded restaurants, bars and coffee shops, a huge cinema complex, a well-attended regional theater, new high-rise apartments, a major employer such as Box and a central gathering place that attracts thousands of people for summer concerts and other events, just 3 percent of the survey’s respondents said they shopped there.

It might sound surprising – but the reasons turn out to be pretty simple.  In comparison with downtown Burlingame or Laurel Street in San Carlos, for example, there’s just a handful of stores.  And instead of being clustered in a single location, those shops are sprinkled throughout the area.  That makes it difficult for customers to stroll, compare goods and window-shop.  In addition, regional malls such as Hillsdale and Stanford soak up potential shoppers, as do nearby downtown districts that offer major retailers including Apple, The Gap and up-and-coming chains such as Lululemon.

Then there’s competition from other retail zones in Redwood City, principally along El Camino Real, Woodside Road and Veterans Boulevard.  There, reported rents for retail storefronts run approximately 30 percent cheaper than downtown, attracting business people and their customers to such locations as Woodside Plaza, Kohl’s Center and other open-air malls.

Indeed, even with the relative lack of shopping downtown – that is, principally along Broadway and nearby thoroughfares from El Camino to Veterans Boulevard and Brewster Avenue to Maple Street – retail business in general appears healthy in Redwood City.  Because of the way business categories are grouped together, sales tax revenues represent an imprecise measure of retail shopping; that said, the city government received nearly $19.5 million in sales tax revenues in 2017.  Of that, around 30%, or nearly $5.9 million, came from general retail sales (as opposed, for example, to business-to-business sales, car sales and sales in construction and other sectors).  In turn, that translates to roughly $590 million in business for the city’s retail shops, restaurants and other such establishments (cities receive one percent of gross sales as their share of California’s basic 8.5 percent sales tax).  According to city economic data, the largest geographic contributor to Redwood City’s sales tax revenues was Redwood Shores, which generated $2.3 million.  Downtown was second, with more than $1.3 million.

Catherine Ralston, the city’s economic development manager, reports that even with the downtown district’s higher rents, the retail vacancy rate there is just 2.5 percent.  (“Retail” in this sense refers to everything from shops to restaurants, nightclubs, dance studios and hair salons.)  Although she counts herself among those who wish for more shopping downtown, she cautions it may not happen soon.

“In downtown, rents are very high,” she observes, quoting average monthly rates of $4 to $5 per square foot for retail space.  “Restaurants are able to support those rents, but not necessarily retail.  You have to sell a lot of items to keep that rent up on a regular basis, versus a restaurant or a bar, where you get a lot higher customer turnover and sales happening.”

How much does a retailer need to sell in order to justify a given rent?  Michael Berne, principal of Berkeley-based retail planning and real-estate firm MJB Consulting, says sales need to be approximately 10 times the rent.  Throw in additional overhead such as insurance, utilities and other expenses, and the multiplier grows to perhaps 12.  At a monthly rent of $4.50 per square foot, that comes to minimum monthly sales of $54 per square foot.  If business owners can afford those rates, Berne says, they can consider a class-A mall where their stores can cluster with others of their ilk.

“Rent is a very big factor,” confirms Scott Dewar, whose consultancy, Site Perfect Solutions, helps businesses select locations.  “It’s huge in terms of people making their decisions.”

Even more than rents, however, the lack of clustering may be affecting downtown Redwood City’s shopping prospects.

“When there are large clusters, more retailers want to be there and the clusters get even larger,” says Berne, who gave a presentation about retail business to the Redwood City Council last August.  “So you see these concentrations, whether it’s at Stanford Shopping Center or Valley Fair (in San Jose) or Burlingame Avenue or Union Square or Fillmore Street (in San Francisco).

“Downtown Redwood City right now doesn’t have an existing cluster to play off of, at least with stores selling goods,” Berne continues.  “If it had 15 clothing stores, for instance, that would be one thing, because the sixteenth would want to be there.  They’d want to be able to take advantage of all the people who were coming there to shop.  But since it doesn’t have 15, it’s not as much of a shopping destination as retailers aren’t as eager to be there, and you’re fighting something of an uphill battle.”

Ralston agrees with the clustering concept, but says, “The other piece is, I don’t have vacancies right now to put a cluster of retail stores in.  It’s one here and one there.  Ultimately, we can get to that goal.  But it’s going to take a really long time.”

Berne says building a successful retail shopping district is an evolutionary process that has stages in which retailers start to arrive, prosper and attract others.  Those phases, Berne says, include drawing first not major retailers such as Apple and The Gap, but “maybe boutiques or small, local chainlets, so that you’re starting to build that cluster.  And if boutiques and small local chainlets start to perform and do really well, larger chains will start to take notice.  And then you’ll get interest from the early adopting chains, and then, over time, you could become another Burlingame Avenue.”

Burlingame Avenue.  That’s what people often say when they’re asked how they want downtown Redwood City to look.  So how did downtown Burlingame become what it is today – a thriving retail district with more than 500 businesses, from mom-and-pop stores to major chains such as Apple, J. Crew, Pottery Barn and others?

Cleese Relihan, Burlingame’s economic development specialist, points to numerous elements, including steady foot traffic, a large streetscape project completed in 2014, the presence of supporting professionals such as attorneys, business advisors and accountants, the city government’s relationships with present and potential business owners, and, not least, a variety of store sizes.

“There’s a lot of flexibility on Burlingame Avenue for larger and smaller spaces,” Relihan says.  “That’s come up in a lot of discussions I’ve had with brand names.”

With its retail vacancy at just 2.5 percent, downtown Redwood may lack that type of available space.  And what Relihan doesn’t mention is the concentration of wealth in Burlingame and especially neighboring Hillsborough, which has no commercial district of its own.  Redwood City, on the other hand, is more economically diverse.  That said, it’s not poor, either, and Atherton sits just next door.  But downtown Redwood City does face significant competition on the Peninsula from other places that attract retailers who decide rationally about where to set up shop.

Dewar, the location expert, says those decisions tend to focus on several factors.  Included are the service area, demographics and their fit for a particular business (Neiman-Marcus and Target are looking for different customers), the presence of competition, and the site itself – especially how easy it is to get to and who else is around to help drive business.

“I think one of the differences between a downtown location and a (shopping center) is the draw potential,” Dewar says.  “You also have potentially a different proximate customer base.  Downtown, you might have more businesses with people from offices and such.  Is that appropriate (for a given business) – is that who you’re looking for?”

In a sense, Redwood City’s recent strategy for developing its downtown has been the opposite of the famous line from “Field of Dreams” – “If you build it, they will come.”  Instead, by seeking residents in large apartment complexes and employees at organizations such as Box and the coming headquarters of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, it’s been more like, “If people come, retailers will follow.”  So far, that’s worked especially for restaurants, which are indeed clustered along Broadway and Theatre Way, and whose patrons jam sidewalk dining areas even in winter.  Restaurants, in fact, benefit from two shifts – the lunch bunch from downtown offices and the dinner trade from nearby residents.  They also profit, Dewar says, from variety, because people often want to try something different.

Volker Staudt sees the service-versus-shops issue from both angles.  Along with his wife, Mary Ann, he owns Gourmet Haus Staudt on Broadway – a combination German restaurant and grocery-and-gift store.  With more people coming – and living – downtown, both businesses are flourishing.

“It’s no longer Deadwood, it’s Redwood,” Staudt says.  ”For a person owning a business on Broadway, everything’s been pretty positive, in my opinion.”

That said, Staudt adds, “I wish there were more retail.  But I get why there is no more retail.  It’s tough to be in the retail business, with Amazon and everything else going on, and the cost per square foot to operate in this environment.”

Cost per square foot – in other words, rent.  In interviews with merchants, the “R” word kept coming up.  Steve Goetz, who recently moved his family’s decades-old Goetz Brothers sporting-goods store from Broadway to the industrial east side of San Carlos, cited concerns that “we were going to be priced out” among the many factors that led to relocating his business.  (The others included a need for more space, more parking and freeway access for a regional customer base.)  Even so, he says, “Both communities have been really good to us.  We hated to leave Redwood City.”

Retailer Stephanie Kolkka also relocated her business, Brick Monkey2, to Theatre Way after the building on Broadway where she operated the original Brick Monkey store was sold in January 2017 and the rent increased dramatically.  Brick Monkey2 specializes in clothing and jewelry, and stays open late to catch the crowds coming out of adjacent restaurants and the Cinemark movie multiplex.

Although she felt forced to move, she says when it comes to rents, “I get it.  I understand that if I owned a building down there, I’d want to get the maximum out of it.”

And even with the relatively high retail rents downtown compared with other parts of the city, building owners are not necessarily maximizing their investments.  Ralston, the city’s economic development manager, says rents even for non-premium office space downtown are topping $8 per square foot, as opposed to the $4-to-$5 range for retail.  To promote retail business and prevent downtown from converting strictly to office space, the city has zoned the first floors of buildings on Broadway and Main Street as retail-only.

Even that move arouses suspicions among retailers who are skeptical of downtown landlords.  One merchant said he thought building owners would keep first-floor rents artificially high, and then, failing to rent to retail businesses, would ask the city to permit ground-floor offices again.

To that, Ralston says, “There may be a few landlords who may try that.  I think at the city, at this point, we’re seeing that there is enough interest in those spaces.  So we’re not going to quickly jump and let office uses go back in on the ground floor.

Ralston says, in fact, that the city government is seeing so much interest from potential downtown businesses that it’s currently not recruiting additional retail establishments to locate there.  At the same time, she’s aware of the desire for more retailers, and the city is now forming a retail task force to create a vision for retailing in Redwood City.  The group is expected to begin meeting this month, and should report its findings to the Council by year-end.

Rather than seek certain business types, Ralston says, “It’s really great to let that kind of naturally happen, because those are businesses that are ready to be a business downtown.  They can support those higher rents, they’ve done their market studies, they know that this is the place that they want to be.  And so those often times are your more successful businesses (rather than those that the city might try to bring in) that may not be ready for this market.”

Ralston says Internet-based sales may be part of the reason why brick-and-mortar retail stores aren’t at the top of the list of businesses looking at Redwood City, although she also says shop owners are adjusting to the challenge posed by e-commerce.  For example, Jim Hornibrook of outdoor-gear supplier Redwood Trading Post notes that his business is developing a website that will lead customers into the store after they find what they want online.

Another necessity – as vital as adjusting to the Internet – is parking.  Ralph Garcia, the owner of Ralph’s Vacuum and Sewing Center on Main Street, notes its importance for retailers, especially those who serve customers from around the Bay Area, as he does.  Garcia’s business includes a parking lot, but, he says, “I feel for the other folks who don’t have parking, or whose customers may have difficulty finding parking or may have to pay for it.”

Ralston says gripes about a perceived lack of parking downtown – a common grievance of shoppers and business people alike – disappeared after the city installed electronic signs showing the number of spaces available at garages.

“Several years ago, people would have said there’s no parking downtown,” she says.  “Within a week of those signs going up, we stopped hearing complaints that there was no parking.”

That notwithstanding, shoppers still may not be able to park on the same block as the store they’re visiting.  That, Berne says, offers an advantage to shopping centers, whose parking lots can more easily cater to what he terms the “in-and-out” shopper.  Downtown shopping districts, on the other hand, are built more for the strolling shopper who may want to accomplish many things in one trip.

That’s the sort of customer who drops into Holly Hill, an upscale women’s clothing and jewelry store on Laurel Street in downtown San Carlos.  The shop sits on the same block as a card store, a kitchenware shop, a pet-supply-and-grooming outfit, a shoe-repair shop, a dry cleaner, a jeweler, a barber shop, several restaurants and a bank.

“I think what really works for this town, at least just from how we see customers, is that people here have many errands they run when they’re downtown,” says owner Holly Hill.  “They go to the dog-food place, they get their shoes repaired, their husband gets a haircut.  They stop at Hallmark and buy a card.  They pick up their coffee.  So it’s a real walkable, errand-running downtown.  We fit right into that, and we’re a regular stop-off for many, many women who live here and around here.”

Hill says the multitasking nature of the downtown San Carlos shopper results in a high volume of foot traffic, and Laurel Street’s popular restaurants lead to what she calls “nose prints on the windows” from passers-by in the evenings.  Her prescription for downtown Redwood City, where her sister and store manager Shelley Hill resides, is for three or four stores to go in simultaneously – to which Shelley Hill asks, almost rhetorically, “And where would that be?”

One location that will offer approximately 12,000 square feet of retail space is the new headquarters of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, currently going up on the corner of Broadway and Jefferson Avenue.  (The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is a philanthropic organization started by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.  It will occupy the building’s more than 100,000 square feet of office space.)  Scott Smithers, managing partner of the building’s developer, Lane Partners of Menlo Park, told the San Francisco Business Times in July that he had received “a ton of interest” from retailers.

Another prospective location sits on Main Street, between Ralph’s Vacuum and Sewing Center and Angelicas Bistro.  Dubbed “851 Main Street,” the proposed four-story development would offer nearly 79,000 square feet of office space and close to 7,000 square feet for retail and parking for 246 vehicles.

More retail space – even if filled by competitors – would be a welcome sight to Elizabeth Strumpell, owner of downtown linen and gift store Pomegranate Seeds.

“We would love more competition, we would love more people here, we would love just to have more retailers on the street,” Strumpell says.

Like Kolkka, a member of the coming retail task force who describes herself as “way-pro-Redwood City,” Strumpell is high on the community.  She wishes the city government would do more to attract retail stores because, she says, “Redwood City’s a great spot.  I really like the town.  I like the people.  I like the feel.  I think (the city government) has done a really nice job of balancing the residential and the office space component of things.  I think it’s a nice, growing community, and kind of the heart of the Silicon Valley.”

When it comes to the importance of a vibrant downtown, Ralston gets it.

“The downtown is really the heart of the community,” she says.  “I like to refer to it as the living room of the community.  It’s the spot where the community can come together and gather for special events and occasions and fun things to do.  And so when you have a lively downtown, it becomes that part of your home … a great, thriving downtown increases property values, and it becomes a quality-of-life piece for the entire community.”

As Staudt says, there’s no doubt the downtown district has traded “Deadwood” for “Redwood.”  The new residents and employees have helped turn the area into a throbbing hub of dining and entertainment.  To turn “Field of Dreams” on its head, the people have come.  Now the question remains:  Will the retail shops follow?

One Man’s Quest to Keep Redwood Creek Clean

in Community/Featured/Headline by

Upon arriving at Docktown 18 years ago, David McCallum was shocked by the amount of trash he found floating along and up the banks of Redwood Creek. “It cascaded down the banks like a waterfall. There was so much garbage that ducks wouldn’t get their knees wet when walking on it,” McCallum remembers. So, as a lifelong steward of the environment, he enlisted some of his Docktown friends to help clean it up. By the time they had finished, eight tons of refuse had been fished out of the creek.

McCallum grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and he and his whole family enjoyed hiking and camping. They loved spending summers camping in national parks all over the United States.  His father operated by one basic rule: leave the environment cleaner than you found it.

“When we broke camp, we went out and picked up trash in and around our camp,” McCallum recalls.  “It was disturbing to see how much of other people’s garbage we collected.”  The experience left such an impression that he became an unofficial garbage collector wherever he lived — which tended to be by the water. While he was living in St. Croix in the American Virgin Islands, hurricane Hugo came rumbling through and left in its wake mountains of debris. McCallum helped clean it up. When the locals would hold a celebration on the beach, he’d return the next day to clean up.

“The lack of concern for the environment by the locals was appalling,” he says. “It was a Third World culture and these people would leave every bit of trash they had on those pristine beaches. It just wasn’t on their minds to clean up after themselves.”

Returning to the U.S., McCullum found himself in Redwood City and discovered the  small floating community called Docktown. He built a two-story houseboat and bought a secondhand skiff which he christened “Tidely-Idley.” His first ride up Redwood Creek was an eye-opener: “There was a piece of garbage every square foot, from the water to all the way up the embankment.”

McCallum decided to investigate. His first stop was Creekside Plaza, which backs up to Redwood Creek. When he asked about the garbage in the creek he says he was told “it’s not our garbage. It comes from up stream.” Though there was some truth to that, he suggested putting in some garbage cans but was told that would attract more. Ultimately, though, they did.

McCallum then went to the city’s Pride and Beautification Committee. “By this time I’m a little upset,” he admits. “I asked, ‘What about all this garbage in the creek?’”

Then-Mayor Diane Howard, who has led the committee for 25 years, pointed out that garbage flows from many sources and it’s impossible to recover it all. The committee was doing something about it but its efforts were not concentrated in a single area.

Now there are two annual cleanup days in Redwood City, one on Earth Day and the other is Coastal Cleanup Day. Three or four sites along the water are selected, and  McCallum has been a crew captain every year.

So when it came to Redwood Creek, McCallum enlisted his Docktown friends and proceeded to do what he knew best: collect the garbage, averaging six tons per year for the first eight years.  The haul has included some amazing items. Automobile engines. Bicycles. A motorcycle and a 20-foot-wide plastic swimming pool. The volume of trash that ends up in the creek has been reduced by the ban on plastic bags, according to McCallum, and the clean-up crews typically collect a mere three tons per year.

Not one to let up, McCallum came up with the idea to construct a trash boom that could gather the garbage as it floated downstream and proposed it to the city. Then-Councilman Ian Bain brought the idea to Terrence Kyaw of the Public Works Department. Kyaw understood the concept of installing a such a device upstream near the Bradford storm water pump station or near Veterans Boulevard. But when Kyaw passed the idea on to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, agency officials voiced concern that fish and other wildlife would be trapped in the net and die.

In addition, Kyaw recognized that a net could trap unpredictably large items in the storm drainage system, which could lead to flooding.  Instead, smaller trash-capture devices have been installed in storm drain inlets throughout the city. More than 500 are in place, with more scheduled. These, along with regular street sweeping, help minimize the amount of trash ending up in the waterways. However, no one can keep up with the tonnage of garbage that keeps being thrown or swept into outlets like Redwood Creek.

Eight years ago, McCallum and his wife, Judi, had an idea to raise awareness by inviting the Redwood City community to help out and established an event called “Romancing the Creek.”

“We scheduled it around Valentine’s Day,” Judi notes, “basically saying, ‘If you love your creek, help clean it up.’”

According to McCallum, over 120 volunteers showed up for their first effort and in two hours fished out almost 4,000 pounds of garbage, much of it metal. This year some 80 volunteers collected 2,300 pounds of trash. Most of that was plastic.

Redwood Creek isn’t the only one that McCallum has tried to clean up. Working all over the Bay Area as a self-employed welding equipment maintenance and repair man, McCallum would continue to take his skiff on garbage-collecting rounds whenever he had the energy and time.

Collection requires two people: one to operate the boat and the other to pull in garbage. “I have twisted arms so often it came to the point that my friends at Docktown would run the other way when they saw me coming,” he says with a laugh. “But after the rains especially, the garbage keeps coming. It’s relentless, and frankly, it has worn me out,” he adds more seriously.  With the impending closure of Docktown, the McCallums recently relocated to Fremont – but that won’t stop him in his mission to keep Bay Area waterways clean.

Why should anyone even care about collecting the garbage that so many want to disown?

One might be lulled into thinking Redwood Creek is an isolated issue. Floating trash flowing from Redwood Creek and other outlets finds its way to the Pacific Ocean and contributes to the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

The name conjures images of a floating landfill in the middle of the ocean, with miles of bobbing plastic bottles and other miscellaneous synthetic household items. But it is only one of many such “patches,” and is very large (think the size of Texas). The patch consists of microplastics, small bits of plastic; broken down bits of garbage that become suspended throughout the water column, trapped within a swirling current.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Debris Program’s Carey Morishige says, “A comparison I like to use is that the debris is more like flecks of pepper floating throughout a bowl of soup, rather than a skim of fat that accumulates—or sits—on the surface.”

Morishige is not downplaying the significance of microplastics or their ecological effect. Even though much of the impact on marine life remains unknown, it is acknowledged that the ocean life that ends up on people’s dinner plates is eating this stuff.

Bain, who is now mayor, acknowledges the problem and recognizes McCallum’s efforts, but admits, “We just don’t have a whole lot of resources to throw at Redwood Creek alone. This is a big city to keep clean. Our best bet is to find a group of volunteers to lead the effort Dave McCallum has started.”

“David has made a tremendous impact on Redwood Creek,” says Howard. “He has been the guardian angel of that area.”

How to fill the void left by McCallum? Howard believes it will be tough, but feels education can play a big part. “We need to raise awareness,” she says. “This all starts with everyday people and must be ultimately be controlled by everyday people.”

 

Fair Oaks Community School to close as school district grapples with decreasing enrollment

in Education/Featured/Headline by
Fair Oaks Community School to close as school district grapples with decreasing enrollment

Fair Oaks Community School is set to close after this school year due to decreasing enrollment “as Bay Area families continue to move out of the region,” the Redwood City School District announced Friday.

About 180 students and their teachers and staff at the school at 2950 Fair Oaks Ave. will transfer to one of three larger neighboring schools: Garfield Community School (3600 Middlefield Rd. in Menlo Park), Hoover Community School (701 Charter St. in Redwood City) or Taft Community School (903 10th Ave. in Redwood City).

As part of the plan, an independent charter organization that currently operates on portions of both the Hoover and Taft campuses will consolidate its operations at the Fair Oaks site, where RCSD will no longer provide services, the district said in a statement.

That transfer will allow Hoover and Taft to occupy their whole campus, the district said.

The school’s enrollment has dipped from just under 500 in the 2008-9 school year, it added.

“Families are moving out, school districts are restructuring schools on the Peninsula and throughout the Bay Area, and we are not immune to this change,” RCSD Superintendent Dr. John Baker said in a statement. “Allowing for any school with low enrollment to continue to operate means less resources and this is not something we will allow in RCSD.”

Fair Oaks families making the transition will continue to have the same services provided at the family center, along with access to after school programs at the three neighboring schools, transportation for their children for the first two years and summer school options. Incoming kindergarten families will still have the option of enrolling in the Bilingual Education program, the district said. Families who want to attend any other RCSD program or school can follow the Schools of Choice application process, the district added.

RCSD said its staff will meet with all Fair Oaks families individually to guide them in the transfer.

Fair Oaks Community School is located at 2950 Fair Oaks Ave. in Redwood City, Garfield Community School operates at 3600 Middlefield Rd. in Menlo Park, Hoover Community School’s address is 701 Charter St. in Redwood City while Taft Community School is located at 903 10th Ave. in Redwood City.

The perfect springtime dessert: Eton mess

in A&E/Community/Featured/Headline by

I don’t remember the first time I learned of Eton Mess, a simple yet refined dessert of soft whipped cream dotted with shards of crushed meringues and juicy, ripe strawberries. What I do remember is thinking, “Ooh, I bet there’s a good story behind this dessert.”

It turns out I was wrong. My research quite sadly revealed that there’s no real story behind Eton Mess. There is plenty of lore—including one story that has the dessert created when a golden retriever sat on, and ruined, a strawberry pavlova. This tale has since been discredited which makes sense; after all, who would really eat something after it has been sat on by a dog?

The only real background information I was able to gather was that it dates back to 1893, was made popular at the British all-boys school, Eton College, and is the traditional dessert served at the cricket match between Eton College and Harrow School. For someone who loves food history, that’s not the most exciting of tales.

Even without a cool back story, there is much to love about Eton Mess. In addition to be being creamy, crunchy and fruity all at once, it is one of the easiest desserts to pull together. And, despite its sloppy name, it presents beautifully.

The first step to Eton Mess is to crush meringue cookies. While I made the meringue cookies from scratch, this is definitely not a requirement, as even I will admit the Trader Joe’s variety is lovely. Whether they’re store bought or handmade, grab ‘em and crush ‘em with your hands, leaving the crumbles and shards haphazard and varied in size—this will guarantee a nice texture.

Next, whip your whipped cream. This is the only step I insist you make from scratch. Making whipped cream by hand is essential here (and really, always) because 1) whipped cream from a can is gross and 2) you want the cream to be lighter and softer than the ready-made stuff. Last but not least, chop up the ripe strawberries and mix them with a little sugar and lemon juice. Blend all three components together and voilà, you’ve got Eton Mess.

Now it’s time for the presentation. Take your whipped cream with crunchy bits of meringue and juicy bites of strawberries both hidden and poking out from its silky peaks, and gently spoon into serving cups. Adorn with a mint leaf, and there you have it: a perfectly elegant, but totally not fussy dessert ready to be served and wow your guests.

Other versions of Eton Mess suggest that you can mix up the fruit, making this an even more versatile dessert. Simply put, back story or no back story, this dessert is the perfect way to start celebrating the fruits of the season. Bon appétit!

Eton Mess Recipe

By Nigela Lawson

This is one of those the desserts that it’s okay to “wing it” with the measurements.  It  just depends on how many you intend to serve, how big your serving dishes are, and how crunchy or fruity you want the end result to be. For those who find that idea more daunting than freeing, start off with this recipe, courtesy of Nigela Lawson.

Recipe:

  • 4 cups strawberries
  • 2 teaspoons sugar
  • 2 teaspoons pomegranate or lemon juice
  • 2 cups whipping cream
  • 1 packet individual meringue nests*

Directions

Hull and chop the strawberries and put into a bowl and add the sugar and pomegranate juice and leave to macerate while you whip the cream.

Whip the cream in a large bowl until thick but still soft. Roughly crumble in four of the meringues nests. You will need chunks for texture as well as a little fine dust.

Take out about half a cupful of the chopped strawberries and fold the meringue cream and rest of the fruit mixture together.

Arrange on four serving plates or glasses or in a mound, and top each with some of the remaining macerated strawberries.

*This is British-speak for meringue cookies.

Redwood City’s Civil War general

in A&E/Community/Featured/Headline by

By Jim Clifford

St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated March 17, so let’s salute General Patrick Edward Connor, an Irish-born Civil War-era soldier who is famous, or infamous, in military history books but little known in Redwood City where his family lived.

The Connors once occupied the Lathrop House, now located on Hamilton Street adjacent to both the San Mateo County Government Center and the history museum. There are plans for moving the house, a prime example of Steamboat Gothic architecture, to the parking lot behind the museum.

The structure is no stranger to being moved. Built in 1863, the 11-room, gabled mansion was initially located near the site of the present Fox Theatre. It was relocated in the 1890s but remained in the same general area until 1905, when It was moved again — this time to its present location. Connor purchased the home in 1870 and owned it until 1894, when the school district bought the site for the Central Grammar School that opened in 1895.

Despite Connor’s military accomplishments, the name of a civilian outranks his locally:  Benjamin G. Lathrop, the first clerk, recorder, and assessor of San Mateo County. Conner even takes second billing to the third owner of the house, Sheriff Joel Mansfield, who joked that the mansion, now on the National Register of Historic Places, should bear the Mansfield name. After all, he owned it longer than Lathrop.

While he goes largely unnoticed in local histories, Connor is prominent in books about the West. He is noted in such works as “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,”  “Men to Match My Mountains” and “American Military History,” a thick volume published by the United States Army.

Connor, who married Johanna Connor (no relation until their marriage) of Redwood City, fought in the Mexican War and then battled Arapahos in Utah, where he is buried. He developed silver mines in both Utah and Nevada, but it as a soldier that he will be remembered, mainly for his role in the Battle of Bear River in Idaho on January 29, 1863. When the gunfire stopped, 21 soldiers and 350 Shoshone were dead, including 90 women and children.

“Undisciplined soldiers went through the Indian village raping women and using axes to bash in the heads of women and children who were already dying of wounds,” Utah historian Brigham Madsen wrote in “The Shoshone Frontier and the Bear River Massacre.”

Slaughter was not unknown in the war for the West. In her memoir, Connor’s daughter, Kate, said her mother “came across a devastated camp where the Indians had killed all. A baby’s head was bashed against a wagon wheel.”

The Redwood City house is mentioned in Kate’s memoir. She called  the residence a “seven gabled” house where, at 14, she fell into a nearby waterway. Almost nothing was known of the Connor family’s years in Redwood City until the 1931 memoir by Kate, then Mrs. Bartley Oliver, surfaced during her descendants’ search for their roots.

The Connors lived in Redwood City many years, Kate wrote, without saying just how many. The memoir states that Kate was four years old when the family moved from Utah to San Francisco, but the weather in San Francisco did not agree with her mother. As a result, the family moved to warmer Redwood City where Kate was married in 1884 at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Her brother, Hillary, was born during the time in Redwood City.

Interestingly, a 1928 feature story in the Redwood City Standard made more of the Connor connection than it did of Lathrop’s. The home was “Redwood City’s most imposing residence – this house of many gables with its well-kept grounds, its flowers and fruit and shade trees, a place of beauty and comfort, with all that wealth could provide.” The writer said the doors of the Connor home were always open “to all, with a welcome that was genuine and generous.”

A sweet thanks for Stanford’s $1M contribution to affordable housing

in Community/Featured/Headline by

How do you say thanks for a $1 million gift? With chocolate, of course.

Sister Christina Heltsley, executive director of the St. Francis Center in North Fair Oaks, presented a bar of chocolate with wrapping made to look like a $1 million bill to Stanford officials at the Redwood City council meeting on Monday.

The sweet gesture followed Stanford’s announcement last month of a $1 million contribution to the St. Francis Center to assist in the purchase of the 25-unit Benedicere Apartments at 780 Bradford St. in downtown Redwood City. The contribution allows existing tenants to remain in their homes at their existing, lower rental rates, and moves forward an eventual plan to convert the units into permanent affordable housing, according to Stanford.

“There actually is no way to say thank you for a $1 million gift,” said Heltsley, who added she decided on chocolate, something she loves. “We promise, the St. Francis Center makes a serious commitment to take that $1 million and make sure we use it well for the dignity, safety, the cleanliness and the homes of many families.”

The investment will “help low-income families for decades to come,” Redwood City Mayor Ian Bain said.

The contribution occurred amid the construction of the Redwood City campus set to be complete in 2019. The campus “is expected to provide more than $15 million in public benefits to Redwood City, including the enhancement of neighborhood streets in Friendly Acres, Redwood Village and North Fair Oaks, improved community sustainability, recreation and wellness, and contributions to the Redwood City Education Foundation,” according to the university.

Giselle Hale announces City Council candidacy

in Community/Featured/Headline by

City Council hopeful Giselle Hale formally announced her candidacy this morning in a most fitting way – a Facebook post.

The director of media partnership at Facebook, who currently serves on Redwood City’s planning commission, is a young leader with years of professional experience and community service under her belt. Hale said she is running for City Council to “ensure residents and families of all ethnic and economic backgrounds” can live and thrive in the city.

“I believe my combined experience as a businesswoman, current Redwood City Planning Commissioner, community volunteer and most importantly a mother provides me with a broad perspective on what it will take to create and maintain a vibrant and livable Redwood City for all residents,” Hale said in her announcement.

Hale joined Facebook in 2010 after co-founding the startup Civio. Professionally, she is an expert in fields including marketing, program management, business development, channel strategies and startup operations.

She’s also been very active in the public sector, serving as campaign manager for Congresswoman Anna Eshoo in 2008, who won re-election decisively that year. Prior to that role, she was a regional field director for former President Barack Obama’s campaign.

Hale has served on the Redwood City planning commission since 2014, and is also active with the National Partnership for Women & Families, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit promoting fairness in the workplace, reproductive health and rights, health care access, and policies that help parents meet the demands of work and family.

She earned an undergraduate degree in International Relations from University of Wisconsin-Madison and a graduate degree from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.

“My husband and I came to Redwood City to start our family because it was a place that matched our personal values of hard work, kindness, family and fun,” Hale said. “Redwood City stands out across the Peninsula as a place that embraces diversity, families and every generation with an unmatched quality of life.”

Hale’s campaign website can be viewed here.

Political Climate by Mark Simon: Redwood City Council Race starts early; incumbent Seybert bows out

in Headline/PoliticalClimate by

For the last 13 years, I worked at the San Mateo County Transit District, and often I would tell people I was a recovering journalist. For the prior 35 years, I worked for newspapers as a political writer and local columnist, including the Redwood City Tribune, the Peninsula Times-Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle before leaving the news business.

Well, so much for that. Starting with this column, I am returning to the news business, writing for Climate Online and Climate Magazine. It is personally exciting to write and report regularly on the community where I have worked and lived for more than 40 years, a community I love for what it was and what it remains – dynamic, restless, always looking for what’s next.

There is no better time than right now to write about Redwood City. It will be a watershed political year at time when the city is poised to become the capital of the Peninsula, when change is occurring in every corner and when we all have to find a way to manage what is happening here.

As a columnist, I have the freedom to express a point of view, but, more than anything else, I believe in fairness, facts and openness in government and politics. Everyone will get a fair shake from me and everyone will be held accountable for what they say, including me. I have no interest in opinion masquerading as fact or opinion built on false assumptions.

As we launch this new enterprise, few things are dominating the local landscape quite like the race this year for the Redwood City City Council (that’s right – city, twice), which encompasses everything else on anyone’s mind – housing, transportation and traffic, digesting the changes that have occurred and the changes still to come.

Three council seats are up this election cycle, the first aligned with a statewide general election, an impact we’ll address in another column.

Incumbent Jeff Gee clearly intends to seek another term, and incumbent Diane Howard confirmed to Climate Online she is running and has formed a campaign committee.  See more on Howard below.

Incumbent John Seybert has decided not to run, telling Climate Online in an interview that he thinks there should be room in this election for some new faces, and that he looks forward to serving his community in other ways. Seybert sat down for an extensive interview, thoughtfully reflecting on what has occurred during his nine years on the council and nearly 20 years in city service. That interview will be featured in a subsequent column.

The filing deadline for this race is so far off in the future, the City Clerk has yet to receive the county elections department’s schedule for candidates to file for office.

Nonetheless, a number of names already have cropped up as declared or would-be candidates, and a few have bowed out already.

Among the non-incumbents running, a Facebook posting appeared to be venue du jour for announcing.

Diana Reddy, self-described affordable housing advocate, declared her candidacy on Facebook recently “after considerable soul-searching,” virtually guaranteeing that rent control will be a campaign issue.

Planning Commissioner Rick Hunter, whose experience includes serving prominently on the city Parks and Rec Commission, the Redwood City Education Foundation and the city Parks and Arts Foundation, also declared on his Facebook page.

Christina Umhofer, a board member of Corbett Group Homes, said she has yet to announce her candidacy, but has formed a campaign committee and is running. By the way, she was described elsewhere as a “residentialist.” She told me that’s a label “other people have put on me,” apparently after she said, “I’m from
Redwood City, for the people of Redwood City,” hardly the kind of statement to inspire labeling.

The emergence of all three at once prompted some to hope eagerly for a slate to take on all others, but Hunter, among others flatly declared to Climate Online: “I am not running on a slate with any other candidates.”

Planning Commissioner Giselle Hale confirmed she will run. Her political experience includes field director for the 2008 Obama presidential campaign and campaign manager for Congresswoman Anna Eshoo’s 2008 re-election campaign.

Other names in circulation: Planning Commission Chair Nancy Radcliffe and Planning Commissioner Ernie Schmidt. If all these commissioners run, it should make for interesting meetings.

We will report at more length on all of these candidates in upcoming columns.

What is clear already is that the most outspoken critics of the new Redwood City want to target Gee for defeat.

As an aside, I have no patience for the anonymous complaint filed against Gee with the state Fair Political Practices Commission. It appears spurious at best, a view reinforced to no small degree by the anonymity of the complainant. One of the expectations all of us should have for this election – likely to be heated and, by some descriptions, contentious – is honesty. Until the person steps up, the inclination is to dismiss the complaint as solely prompted by the meanest of politics, intent on winning by tearing someone down. Whoever filed the complaint ought to step out of the shadows. If you want to challenge his ethics, show some of your own.

Anyway, expect Gee to run hard and with considerable support from most of the community’s high-profile leaders. More on Gee in future columns.

Also running for re-election is Diane Howard, who is seeking her sixth term on the council. She served four terms, stepped aside in 2009, and then ran again in 2013. As the current vice mayor, her re-election is likely to mean she will be mayor in two years, when the balance of her council colleagues is up for re-election.

In an interview, Howard said she is running because, “I absolutely love serving. … I absolutely love every element of it – the good, the bad and ugly.” Her record of service beyond the council was sufficient for her to receive the Sequoia Awards Outstanding Individual Award, reflecting a long list of volunteer activities in which she engaged over decades.

She acknowledged the current political climate “is difficult these days, people jumping to conclusions, saying bad things without thinking.” The way for an officeholder to counteract that is to invite people of all opinions “to have coffee and let’s talk.”

It is evident to everyone that Redwood City has changed, she said, and the next campaign is an opportunity to understand what that change has meant and to ask, “What can we do to make Redwood City the community we want it to be?”

Her focus in the coming term would be on housing, transportation, the next wave of change on El Camino Real and the quality and character of the architecture of the city’s new look.

“I agree some of our architecture is not something I’m proud of,” she said. As the city turns its attention to development of El Camino, she sees that as an opportunity “to do some really good architecture and building” that sets a look and feel for the city’s principal boulevard and western edge.

Stamps

in A&E/Community by

The Glue of Friendship for these “Solitary” Collectors

By Bill Shilstone

To some, stamp collecting may seem a somewhat anti-social exercise. Poring over catalogs in search of an elusive prize. Meticulously organizing an album or two –or two hundred.

For members of the Sequoia Stamp Club, it’s more an excuse to party.

The club is just getting over its biggest party of the year, the annual Peninsula Philatelic Exchange (PENPEX) at the Redwood City Community Activities Building, where part of the fun is swapping stamps, and stamp stories. At the PENPEX show Dec. 2 and 3, there were plenty of both to be seen and heard in the Silent Auction Room, Exhibit Hall and the Stamps R Us Beginners Room.

At the auction, where the high bid was $350 for a worldwide collection of 5,600 early 20th century stamps, Jim Giacomazzi and club president Chris Palermo were discussing the world’s most valuable stamp, the British Guiana 1-cent magenta. Only one remains of the few made by special request in 1856. It last sold for $9.4 million and once was owned by convicted murderer John du Pont. (That reminded Giacomazzi of the stamp-collecting hit man in Lawrence Block’s novels who likes to relax with his collection after a particularly stressful assassination.)

The Sequoia club’s interests are more down-to-earth. Despite a sharp decline in the number of American Philatelic Society members in the Internet and email era, the Sequoia club remains vibrant because of its focus on picnics, pizza parties and other social activities, Palermo said. He and other well-traveled collectors and dealers at the show agreed that the Sequoia club is one of the healthiest they’ve seen, with at least 40 of its 100 members turning out for the twice-monthly meetings.

Many members have the same answer for why they collect – for the fun of it. “I’ve never met a member of the club I didn’t like,” said Eduardo Martino of San Carlos, who started in his native Argentina collecting soccer-star stamps. But there is also what Martino called “the thrill of the hunt for that missing piece.” Each meeting includes a member-supplied silent auction that just might have it.  Socializing, snacking and a speaker on topics philatelic also are part of the meetings.

In the Exhibit Hall, David McNamee of Walnut Creek, who was one of the judges, told what he looks for.  “I collect knowledge,” McNamee said. “I want to learn something.” He gave as an example an exhibit on scented stamps that taught him exactly how the aromas – coconut, chocolate, banana – are applied.

He and his fellow judges awarded one of the top prizes to that exhibit, by “Pepe LePew” (otherwise anonymous, in keeping with the fun-and-games flavor of the group). The 66 entries, mounted on large frames, were full of intricate artwork and lessons in history and geography. Another award, presented by the Northern California Council of Philatelic Societies, was to the show’s chairperson Kristin Patterson for her support of local clubs.

Most collections are thematic, such as Giacomazzi’s albums on Venezuela, where he served in the Peace Corps, and basketball, which he coached at San Carlos High School in the 1970s. Ed Rosen, the club’s senior member (since 1965), collects stamped envelopes, some canceled by hand, mailed from Redwood City, Woodside and Searsville from the 1850s to 1900.

He started collecting as an 8-year-old in San Francisco. “We didn’t have television, but we had a lot of foreign neighbors who got mail,” he said. “I steamed off the stamps.”

Richard Clever, a dealer specializing in Asia, said he got his start when an Army Air Forces friend of his father’s who flew “The Hump” over the Himalayas in World War II presented a supply of China stamps that quickly passed to young Richard.  Palermo, who specializes in narrow-gauge railways, said the Internet may be robbing the post office of revenue, but it also makes it easy to locate and identify stamps.

In the Youth Room, 95-year-old Richard Coleman told one of the 325 visitors to the show that he got hooked on stamps at age 7 when his family was living in a hotel and “the lady next door said if I was quiet she would give me stamps.” While three first- and second-graders soaked stamps off of envelopes and sifted hundreds of loose singles by the handful, Coleman’s fellow docent, Preston Chiappa, explained how the club attracts new blood to an aging membership.

“We have 30 members in the youth and beginner group,” he said. “For $5 per month, new members get an ounce of stamps (300) every month, and twice a year we give them albums and hinges for mounting.” The club annually awards a $500 scholarship to a Sequoia High School student with a good academic record and an interest in collecting (anything).

The club grew out of stamp clubs at Sequoia High dating back to 1927. Officially, the club was born in 1947 and so has just finished celebrating its 70th anniversary. Its first members gathered at the firehouse at Jefferson Avenue and Myrtle Street and made city recreation director Alfred “Red” Morton its first honorary member for his efforts in promoting the club and providing supplies.

As the club grew, it moved to larger quarters, first the YMCA building on Brewster Avenue, later to the Veterans Memorial Building, and in 1967 to its present home at the Community Activities Building at Red Morton Park on Roosevelt Avenue. Dues were $1 a year in the beginning, and now have inflated to $3. Giacomazzi said the club is financially healthy. Rent paid to the city is minimal, the club takes a 10 percent cut on its auction sales, and members are generous in donating and bequeathing collections. The club makes donations to community-building organizations including Samaritan House, St. Anthony’s Dining Room and the Redwood City Library Foundation.

“It’s not a profit motive for us,” Giacomazzi said. “It’s for fun.” He has a huge collection and a store of stamp knowledge to match. The first U.S. stamps were issued in 1847, all with images of either Benjamin Franklin or George Washington until Thomas Jefferson appeared in 1856. In 1893 commemoratives arrived, and today “Young Elvis” is the best-selling U.S. stamp, Giacomazzi said.

“You can be as sophisticated and involved as you wish,” he said, “focusing on tiny details regarding perforation or unperforation and water marks. The Scott catalog, the bible of stamp collecting, lists and illustrates (in eight thick volumes) all that have ever been issued (countless), with estimated values. Mint condition is essential to some collectors, but I like stamps that have done their job.”

“My story is typical,” he continued. “Started young and picked it up again later in life when I had the time. What’s the attraction? Somebody said, and I think it’s true, that some people are born with ‘organizing’ genes. If your life is chaotic, here is one part that will be organized.”

 

 

 

In Search of Redwood City’s New Normal

in Community/Headline/Infrastructure by

1867, “Year One” of Redwood City’s incorporation, corrected the basis for an offensive nickname: With the arrival of the “wet season,” a news editor lamented, the streets once again were quite muddy. “Outside barbarians,” he huffed, “have stigmatized our town as ‘Mudwood City.’” The ink was barely dry on the incorporation papers that May before the Town Council borrowed $5,000 to start a paving program and get the mud out of the moniker.

2018, and “Year 150-and-Counting” is here. A city mocked in recent memory as “Deadwood City” is relishing its turnaround while dealing with fresh challenges, some exacerbated by a rapid – some say unending – downtown makeover: Congestion. Parking shortages. High-cost housing. Budget problems. And the dilemma of how to build community in a city unsettled about its expanding identity.

“I think being in the transition is never really very fun,” said John Seybert, who just wound up a two-year term as mayor. What the city has been going through, he says, is like living in a house while it’s being  remodeled. “It comes with any change until we’re used to it and until there’s a new normal.”

Last year’s sesquicentennial celebration gave the whole city a timeout to take a look back with pride at 150 years of history, including recent changes that bring the story right back where it started: Downtown. If it took paving for Mudwood to sustain commerce year-round, it was the full-tilt implementation of Redwood City’s Downtown Precise Plan that set off an economic boom that began about four years ago and keeps altering the landscape.

Approved in 2011 and finalized in 2013, the Precise Plan allows for 500,000 square feet of office space, 2,500 residential units, 200 hotel rooms and up to 100,000 square feet for retailers. Though the “caps” in the plan for the first two categories have essentially been hit, construction on some of the projects is still underway and they aren’t occupied yet.  City leaders in 2018 and beyond will be grappling with the lessons learned from the downtown plan and whether to adjust going forward.  How that will that factor into the adjacent frontier for renewal — the El Camino Real corridor, where new apartments are being built – is a logical next question.

“I think we’ll look at how we manage our growth,” Seybert added. “That’s a huge topic to look at.”

There are, to be sure, many residents who are deeply distressed about the pace and scale of development, especially because of traffic and the difficulty finding parking. City Councilmember Janet Borgens hears the lament from older residents in particular that “it’s just not my Redwood City anymore.’”

“I don’t know that there’s going to be a new normal, to be honest with you,” said Kris Johnson, a 17-year resident who became a community activist several years ago, to oppose a proposed jail downtown. “I think the impression developers have is that we’re still an under-engaged community. The steady state of development is the new normal.”

But those multi-story apartment buildings are full of people like Jason Galisatus, 24, who embrace everything that downtown has to offer, from entertainment and restaurants to being able to jump on Caltrain. He grew up in Redwood City and credits all the new apartments for his being able to move back from San Francisco to his hometown.

“It almost feels like we’re pioneers because so many of the new people are completely new to Redwood City,” he said.

So what’s ahead for 2018?  Construction will continue on downtown and El Camino projects that are under way or are approved, notably the Lane Partners’ Building at 2075 Broadway at Jefferson Avenue that will be home to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, scheduled for completion next year. Tenants will move in this month to a five-story mixed-use building at 815 Hamilton St., behind the Fox Theatre. There are two floors of parking and another entrance and exit to the Jefferson Avenue garage under the movie theater.

Goodwin Procter, an international law firm, is moving from Menlo Park and has leased some 100,000 square feet of space in the eight-story office building at 601 Marshall St., which is slated to be ready for occupancy by March, according to Steve Dostart, president of Dostart Development Co. By summertime, about 500 people will be working in the building, which should help fill downtown restaurants at lunchtime.

His neo-Classical building could be seen as a “lesson learned” for people unhappy about seeing the skyline fill up with large, boxy structures. Dostart had gotten feedback about his original contemporary design and ended up redoing it, adding exterior friezes decorated with ships and other images from the city’s early days. (It was also reduced by three stories.)

“Redwood City really loves its history,” Dostart said, “so that building looks like it was built concurrent with the (1910) courthouse.  It was expensive, but it has a lot of character. Modern design is all about the shape of the building and the mass. Classical design is all about communicating what’s inside the building. It’s more organic.”

Count newly installed Mayor Ian Bain, 50, among those who would like contemporary design eliminated as an option in the future. He also favors height restrictions for development adjacent to the old courthouse so its signature dome remains prominent.

Though developers lapped up the office and housing allocations, two allowable uses in the Precise Plan have been largely unclaimed: hotel and retail space, both desired by the city’s residents.  A consultant was retained last year to advise the council about what retailers are looking for and strategies to attract them.  Bain thinks chances for a hotel within a few years are good but the future for retail – everywhere – is less clear in an era dominated by online shopping.  “It’s market-driven,” he says.  “The stores themselves are going to have to decide that Redwood City is a desirable place.  We know that it is a highly desirable place and I do think the retailers will recognize that.”

As for future development, “I would say the difference of opinion (on the City Council) is whether we are going to keep the current caps in place or do we do away with them altogether. I personally think doing away with the caps would be a mistake because I’m more on the side of managed growth, closely managed growth, especially with the amount of developer fatigue that this community has right now.”

An important key to the city’s path forward, both Bain and Seybert agree, is through the revitalized and reactivated neighborhood associations, to facilitate two-way communication and increased community involvement. The boundaries were redrawn last year and the number of groups expanded.

The newest is one that some might not even consider a neighborhood. But more than 50 residents showed up at Angelica’s restaurant in December for the first meeting of the Downtown Neighborhood Association.  “It really told me there’s a lot of energy among our neighbors to get involved,” said Galisatus, who is one of the three co-chairs.

Those who assume the denizens of the newly urbanizing downtown are young and rootless cliff dwellers, here today and gone with the next career move, should meet Matthew Self and his wife, Natasha Skok.  Intrigued by the vibrant new downtown, they decided to rent out their house in Emerald Hills so they could see what living downtown was like. Daughter Nika, now 14, was taking Caltrain to school in Palo Alto when they made the move to a three-bedroom apartment in the Indigo building, and being close to transportation was another benefit to relocating.

The one-year experiment was to end last August, but “we finished our first year and had a family meeting,” Self explained, of the decision to re-up for another year. “It’s just fun being a part of it all.” He walks to work at Box, the cloud security storage company, and “probably don’t get in my car five days a week.”

He also served as chairman of a citizens’ advisory committee that gave input on a vision for the next planning area, the El Camino Real corridor, which the City Council recently approved.  Among the many goals, the busy thoroughfare would be made more bike- and pedestrian-friendly through intersection improvements, protected bike lanes and the potential elimination of on-street parking. At this point, the El Camino plan is just a vision for the future that would need to be followed up with zoning modifications to give more flexibility for housing, as several speakers advocated, especially affordable housing.

Isabella Chu, a Friendly Acres resident for the past four years, urged the council to do the necessary rezoning to allow for “desperately needed housing.” Of 27 homes in the city listed for sale recently, Chu noted, only three were under $1 million. “This was a working class town,” she said.  “We need to zone El Camino Real in such a way that it’s really easy to build lots of housing.”

Johnson, the community activist, contends that Redwood City already allows the highest building heights from San Francisco to San Jose and the hundreds of El Camino units that are already coming on line aren’t even occupied yet. “Without question there is a need for more housing in every community on the Peninsula,” he said. “Without question Redwood City has done more than its fair share of market-rate housing. High density housing close to transportation makes a lot of sense, but it doesn’t mean the sky’s the limit.”

Over coffee one recent morning, Vice Mayor Diane Howard and Councilmember Borgens reflected on the last few years of frenetic building downtown.  Is El Camino Real a chance to get it right this time?

“You know what,” Borgens responded, “15 years ago we thought we did . . . We had consultants, we had charrettes—”

“We really believed that we would have benchmarks along the way where we could stop and say, ‘Are you liking what’s happened so far?’” Howard replied. “We weren’t given that because of the rush. It was like a tidal tsunami coming in.”

Nobody predicted how the economy would take off. Property owners wanted to sell. Developers seized the moment. And the rest is history.  If the city had thrown on the brakes, developers might have gone elsewhere, and “we would have lost the momentum that we waited for for so many years,” Howard said.

For a City Council trying to find a balance when it comes to density and growth, charting the way forward will be even more complicated for two reasons.  2018 is an election year with three council seats up for grabs. Howard is running for re-election. Seybert says he hasn’t carved out the time to come to a decision, and Councilmember Jeff Gee did not respond to an inquiry.  Asked about a possible candidacy, Johnson declined to answer but speculates that if there is an open seat, it will be an expensive race.

Development is by no means confined to downtown.  The first phase of construction of Stanford University’s 35-acre Redwood City campus is taking place on the one-time headquarters of Ampex.  That phase will include four office buildings, a child care center and a fitness center, a park and other amenities for the 2,700 employees. Not too far away, at Broadway and Woodside Road, there’s a proposed mixed-use project, Broadway Plaza, on a former shopping area which would include some affordable housing.

There are also proposals for large projects east of U.S. 101 that are in various stages of discussion or review, according to the city’s website.

Jay Paul Company, the original developer of Pacific Shores, has proposed an office campus on the industiral lands of the former Malibu Grand Prix, Strada Investment Group has proposed a waterfront townhouse development at 1548 Maple St, consisting of 131 townhomes, and SyRes Properties LLC also proposes to redevelop the former cinema site with a project that combines housing and a sport club.

“I think the November 2018 election is going to be a vote about where our city is headed right now,” Johnson said. “You’re likely to see more residentialist candidates.”

Other complex issues confront city leaders too. The council is set to consider regulations of short-term housing rentals, like Airbnb units, and early in the year will take up adoption of a new citywide transportation plan. Paradoxically, amid boom times, the city is facing the need to both raise revenue and cut expenses. A major reason is because of rising city contributions for retiree pension and medical costs as a result of the California Public Employees Retirement System’s assumptions and lower-than-expected investment earnings.

“Even though the economy is doing really well,” Bain explained, “we’re actually in a position where we have to make cuts, which is always difficult and challenging but it’s even harder for the community to understand because they are saying, ‘Companies are hiring like crazy. So why isn’t city government in the same position?’”

Adding to the cognitive dissonance, a number of capital improvement projects will be under way or completed in 2018. But fees collected for a specific purpose or capital grant funding can’t be redirected to the general fund. The city has limited ways to raise additional revenue, and an increase in the transient occupancy tax on hotel stays (now 12 percent) is one of them that may end up on the ballot, he said.

A Magical Bridge Playground, an innovative concept first seen in Palo Alto, may open late this year at Red Morton Park, depending on construction variables. Designed to be socially inclusive for children and adults of varying physical and cognitive abilities, the accessible playground is the result of a partnership between the Magical Bridge Foundation and the city, which is contributing $1.5 million in capital funds previously set aside for renovation of the park toward the cost.

The city has collected a considerable amount of money from park impact fees, in fact, and will begin an assessment of possible sites for creation of a downtown park and other green space.

Work is continuing on the master plan for a new Veterans Memorial Senior Center and a new YMCA fitness and aquatics facility, also a partnership – with the YMCA of Silicon Valley. A community outreach process will get under way in 2018.

It’s hoped by the end of the year, a sculpture called “The Pirate Ship” by artists Emilia and Ilya Kabakov will be installed next to a bayside trail outside the Redwood Shores Library in a new playground area. Purchased with $400,000 in developer fees set aside for art and parks, the ship is big enough that kids will be able to play on the interactive sculpture.

Construction will proceed on a number of transportation improvements in the city.  Pedestrian crossing work at Middlefield and Woodside Roads will be completed in the summer, providing a safer, more protected way to cross the busy intersection.  The project includes an upgraded traffic signal system, new sidewalks and curb ramps, pedestrian signals and lighting. The city’s capital fund is providing $1.3 million of the $1.6 million cost, with the remaining $340,000 coming from federal funds. The design is coordinated with the future plans to underground utilities on Middlefield Road as far as Costco.

“All of those crisscrossing utility lines will be put underground,” Bain said. “Trees will be added. Middlefield will go from being one of the most blighted areas to one of the most beautiful streets in Redwood City.”

Caltrain, meanwhile, will begin work along the railroad corridor in Redwood City in preparation for the coming electrification project. Look for foundation work and for poles and catenary wiring going up. Grade crossing improvements at Whipple Avenue, Broadway and Main Street will be going on as well.

Schools in the city are in the expansion mode too.

Oracle Design Tech High School welcomes its first students Jan. 9 after three years in Burlingame. The    64,000-square-foot building on vacant parcel next to the Oracle campus is a partnership with the Oracle Education Foundation.  Some 550 students in grades nine to 12 are enrolled for the first year at Redwood Shores.

Sandpiper School at the Shores is opening up newly built space for sixth graders and science classes on Jan. 9. The school will be expanding to grades 6 to 8 in phases to keep up with the growing district population.

Cañada College is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2018 and is highlighting it at events nearly every month. The college is asking for photos and personal stories for a special webpage (www.canadacollege.edu/50).

Construction was kicked off in December on a $66 million Kinesiology and Wellness Building that will replace the old gymnasium. The two-story, 83,000-square-foot learning structure will include not just a gym and fitness rooms but a running track, sport courts, yoga area, exercise equipment and modern classrooms for instructional and wellness courses. The exterior deck will feature a competitive pool and an instructional pool. What’s more, the public will have access to the state-of-the-art sports facility.

If Redwood City’s “new normal” can seem at times a moving target, Councilmember Seybert notes that this growth spurt isn’t a first. He attended the December premiere at the Fox Theatre of a 150th anniversary documentary, which took the city from the 1850s to the present and showed the spread of subdivisions as the population quadrupled.

“What’s fascinating to me is we’re not talking about that kind of growth (today). We’re talking about a few percentage points of growth,” Seybert said. “I think over time we will get used to that. That doesn’t mean it’s not hard.  I think it’s more important that we learn to manage through things as a community rather than think all growth is bad. There are always challenges that come with growth, but I trust that about Redwood City because we’ve always gone through times of growth.”

 

1 … 19 20 21 22
Go to Top