A year to remember

Sadly, closed streets and street-side dining were not enough to save all of our dining establishments. Lovejoy’s Tea Room, on Main Street, closed in 2021. We also lost Summit Coffee (in Roosevelt Plaza), Casa Zamora (on El Camino Real, near Chestnut Street) and Rolled Up Creamery (on Broadway) — though new dining ventures sprang up in 2021 to replace those three. Finally, Redwood City gained several new restaurants outright, including Curry Pizza House (on Winslow, in the Box buildings), Supreme Crab (on Main Street, north of Veterans Boulevard), and La Fonda de Los Carnalitos (on Veterans Boulevard). The city also gained Sushi Shin, a Michelin-starred Japanese dining establishment on Broadway, and Warung Siska, an Indonesian restaurant that has also been listed in the Michelin Guide.

Development has been the topic of discussion around Redwood City for the past several years, and 2021 was no exception. Although construction activity halted briefly in 2020 as our government and the industry worked out whether and how it could safely proceed, the year 2021 saw a smooth continuation of Redwood City’s development boom. I observed countless remodeling projects going on throughout the city’s residential areas, and a not insignificant number of complete home tear-downs followed by all-new construction. On the commercial front, I count 19 noteworthy residential, office and infrastructure projects as having been completed in 2021, including the 350-unit Highwater apartment building on El Camino Real, the new office building at 610 Walnut St., the office and retail building at 855 Main St., the Link 33 townhome complex on El Camino Real at Hopkins Avenue, and the Highway 101 Pedestrian Undercrossing.

Those 19 notable projects completed in 2021 are just a sign of things to come: around 23 additional projects are currently underway, most of which will likely wrap up in 2022. The 109,000 square foot office building nearing completion at 1180 Main St. is one, as is Habit for Humanity’s 20-unit condominium project at 612 Jefferson Ave. The county complex’s newest office building got underway in 2021, as did the county’s new Navigation Center; barely was the ink dry on the land swap agreement that made that project possible when work began to raise the site as protection from sea level rise. Finally, throughout 2021, numerous Redwood City School District campuses saw construction, including the huge new building still being built on the Orion Alternative Elementary School campus.

In 2021, Redwood City approved five significant projects, the largest being the massive ELCO Yards office/residential/retail project slated to take the place of Towne Ford’s and Hopkins Acura’s current operations. The development pipeline continues to be stuffed, with an additional 17 projects having been formally submitted to the city for consideration in 2021. Among those 17 are a number of large projects that went through the city’s “Gatekeeper process.” Also submitted were the proposal to revamp the Sequoia Hotel, the large Redwood LIFE office project out in Redwood Shores, and the complete rethinking of the Sequoia Station property, which, if approved, will be done in conjunction with Caltrain’s efforts to update Redwood City’s transit center. Many of these proposed projects will be brought before the Planning Commission and/or the City Council in the upcoming year, which should make for an interesting 2022.

Not all are fans of the city’s many development projects, but hopefully we can all cheer the many art projects that were completed in 2021, including large murals on the Arroyo Green apartment building and the recently completed office space at 55 Perry St. Together with the handful of smaller art projects that were done in the Port of Redwood City this year, they add a special something to the look and feel of Redwood City.

Restaurants, development, art and so much more: The year 2021 was once again a transformative year for Redwood City. Certainly, I see it as a year to remember.

Greg Wilson is the creator of Walking Redwood City, a blog inspired by his walks throughout Redwood City and adjacent communities. He can be reached at greg@walkingRedwoodCity.com. Follow Greg on Twitter @walkingRWC.