Turning residential

Such is the case with the recently approved office — and some retail — project planned for the former site of Redwood City’s downtown Wells Fargo Bank at 1900 Broadway. Early in the planning process, Lane Partners included the required affordable housing on its project’s upper floors. At some point, however, it removed the on-site housing and acquired an option on a former mortuary site at 847 Woodside Road. Lane Partners then worked with Eden Housing to develop a plan — since approved by the city — for a five-story, 72-unit affordable housing project to be built on that site.

From the beginning, the six-story office project — with an integral teen center — intended for 901 El Camino Real was planned with the requisite affordable housing in a separate building nearby, but some time ago the location for the affordable housing was switched to 920 Shasta St. I visited the site this week to take pictures and get a feel for the area.

Today, 920 Shasta St. is home to a relatively small self-storage operation. The project site also includes a neighboring parcel containing a single-family home. The site is bordered on one side by Woodside Road, and on another by the off-ramp that ferries westbound Woodside Road traffic to Main Street and to El Camino Real. Along the other two sides are Buckeye Street and Shasta. Across Shasta are a couple of small commercial buildings, while across Buckeye there are a handful of single-family homes.

The proposed building would be five stories tall and would contain 100 apartments ranging in size from studios to three-bedroom units. Although it would be notably taller than the one- and two-story houses just across Buckeye, it would be slightly shorter than the W. L. Butler headquarters building just over the Woodside Road off-ramp.

Designwise, the planned building is an interesting one. It would be clad in a variety of materials, with its Shasta Street face covered primarily with “standing seam weathering steel.” This material is something like a residential metal roof, although the spacing between the vertically oriented seams would vary across the face of the building. That face would undulate and have triangular bump-outs here and there, making for an eye-catching look. As for the Buckeye facade, it would be more sedate. It would employ a variety of materials and would be broken up so as to appear to be a couple of closely spaced, separate buildings.

The building’s 99 affordable apartments would be divided across the upper four floors, with the manager’s unit located on the ground floor. The single-level internal garage would only have room for 74 vehicles, using mechanical “puzzle stackers.” The ground floor would also contain a bike room with capacity for roughly 112 bicycles, the lobby, offices, a residents’ lounge, a coworking space and a flex/meeting room. Dedicated outdoor recreation would come by way of a 3,340-square-foot courtyard in the center of the building on the second floor and a 593-square-foot “sky deck” on the top floor.

It’s a fairly easy walk from 920 Shasta to the Target shopping center and the adjacent Mi Rancho Supermarket, and Costco and Sigona’s Farmers Market are only a bit harder to reach on foot, thanks to a nearby pedestrian crossing over the railroad tracks. Getting to Redwood City’s transit center — and to downtown Redwood City — on foot would be a bit much for some, but SamTrans buses stop fairly near to this development. So here, car-free living is indeed possible.

At first glance, the area doesn’t seem ideal for housing. For instance, there is the nearby Woodside Road traffic. However, in that regard, this project would be no different from the large housing developments — some that are high-end — that either stand along El Camino Real or are up against the Caltrain tracks. As for the nearby commercial buildings, here they are small, and the ones across Shasta, at least, seem well-maintained and attractive.

Every proposed project is different. For some, integrating the needed residential units into the primary project makes sense. For others, it can be a fine idea to gift a piece of very expensive real estate to an outfit dedicated to building and managing affordable housing. For the developers of 901 El Camino Real, the latter approach seems a fine idea indeed.

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.