Gearing up

The drop in project starts hasn’t been all that noticeable, though, thanks to a couple of large projects that were either already underway or started soon after. For one, the Broadway Plaza project — which should see its three apartment buildings containing a total of more than 500 apartments wrapped up and open for tenants sometime next year — broke ground prior to our lockdowns. In mid-2021, work began on the city’s new Veterans Memorial Building/Senior Center and on the now-completed office building that stands at the corner of Woodside Road and Massachusetts Avenue. The year 2022 saw only one major project start, but it was a doozy: the ELCO Yards project. Its four office buildings and one small restaurant building are rapidly nearing completion, after which I expect that work on the project’s two apartment buildings will get underway.

In 2023, things picked up somewhat. That year saw the start of the 91-room hotel project at the corner of Veterans Boulevard and Brewster Avenue, the five-unit townhouse project at 239 Vera Ave. and the large Redwood Shores office building at 200 Twin Dolphin Drive. But in 2024 the number of major project starts fell back to one. Again, though, the project was a big one: the mixed-use (apartments and large fitness club) project to replace the old Century Park 12 Theatres along East Bayshore Road.

So far, Redwood City has seen two notable project starts this year, with Stanford Medical’s nine-story medical building (and associated parking garage) getting underway in February and, just a week or so ago, the start of demolition on the Vera Avenue parcel where a seven-story affordable apartment building is soon to rise.

One need only drive around the city to see that Redwood City is continuing to transform and grow, however, unless you really paid attention over the past decade, it isn’t as clear that the pace of that transformation and growth in total has slowed. Thanks to the many price increases that came about as a side effect of COVID-19, building materials cost more. And now, thanks to our less-than-ideal economic climate — both higher interest rates and the uncertainty introduced by on-again, off-again tariffs — predicting both building costs and the developer’s potential return is much harder than in the past, thereby causing hesitancy on the part of developers to begin work on some planned projects.

The math may be harder, but some developers seem to be figuring things out. The seven-story, 178-unit affordable housing project at 112 Vera Ave. where the existing buildings were recently demolished is one sign of that. And there are indications that some other large projects may get underway in the next year or two. For instance, the recent signing of a future tenant for 1900 Broadway (the large office building aiming to replace the former Wells Fargo Bank building at Broadway and Main Street) is a strong indicator that the project will actually get built. The office-and-teen-center project planned for 901 El Camino Real also appears to be gearing up if the recent closure of the standalone AutoZone building and the erection of construction fencing is any indication. Recent activity around the needed lot split for the six-unit townhouse project that will front onto Linden Street tells me that that project may soon get underway. And after observing some soil drilling recently at the former “Bethlehem A.D.” parcel (1304 Middlefield Road), I have to think that the 94-unit affordable housing project planned for that site will be going ahead in the relatively near future.

The number of larger projects under active construction in Redwood City has slowed in recent years, although the size and prominent locations of a few masks that fact. But soon — as early as 2026 or 2027, perhaps — development activity in Redwood City seems likely to once again shift into a higher gear.