What could have been

Back in 2010 or so, a Menlo Park-based company purchased the five-sided, 1.3-acre parcel bounded by the railroad tracks, Main Street, Elm Street, Lathrop Street and Maple Street. The idea at that time was to construct a five-story, 114-bed skilled nursing facility on the site. Although a bit of work was done back then to bridge Redwood Creek (which divides the site), that building was never constructed. It wasn’t until another developer came along in late 2019 and began construction on the building that stands there today: the three-story, 109,000-square-foot office building that houses the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Those of you who have enjoyed Gourmet Haus Staudt’s beer garden at 2615 Broadway are likely familiar with the small parking lot behind the building. In 2014, Windy Hill Property Ventures approached the city with plans to construct a six-story, nearly 61,000-square-foot office building (with 26 parking spaces in a ground-floor garage) on the lot. A six-story building in a sea of two-story buildings would certainly have stood out. However, for whatever reason, the proposal never made it beyond the proposal stage. Thus, 30 California St. remains a surface parking lot today.

In the early 1900s, lumber tycoon Charles Hanson lived in a gorgeous, three-story mansion at the corner of Arguello Street and Brewster Avenue. In the 1920s and early 1930s, that mansion served as the convent for the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, California Province (who came to Redwood City in 1885 to establish Our Lady of Mount Carmel School). The mansion was torn down in 1949, and in 1965 a two-story office building was constructed at 801 Brewster Ave. Today that building contains a number of tenants plus some empty offices. But back in 2018, if Anton Development had gone ahead with its proposed project, that office building and its surrounding surface lot would have been replaced by a 250-unit apartment building with an integral two-level parking garage (one below ground). The building’s height would have varied from four to six stories, and it would have sported a rooftop deck overlooking Brewster Avenue. It would have contained a variety of apartment styles ranging from 576-square-foot studios to 1,187-square-foot two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartments, with 50 of those apartments — a full 20% — set aside for residents at the very low-income level.

Although the 801 Brewster Ave. project received final city approval in April 2017, the developer withdrew its application in July 2018. Since then, the medical office building has remained in use, albeit at times with a “For Sale” sign on the property (and these days the available offices are being advertised as “Downtown Redwood City Creative Tech Space”). Given the site’s location — convenient to downtown and close to the city’s transit center (which, if the transit center is moved one block north, as is the intention, it would be directly across Arguello Street from the site) — the site seems prime for redevelopment. Thus, I’m keeping a close eye on 801 Brewster Ave.

Finally, in late 2017, the owner of three parcels on the corner of El Camino Real and Whipple Avenue, where today there is a hard-to-miss smoke shop, proposed a mixed-use project to replace the small one-story buildings on those three parcels. Their plan was for a four-story building with 33 residential for-rent units on the upper two floors and 16,500 square feet of commercial tenant space on the lower two. An 88-space parking garage would have mostly been located below ground, with about a dozen spaces being within the building’s first floor. Sadly, the project was withdrawn just about a year after it had been proposed.

This is but a sampling of the many projects that were submitted to the city but either never survived the approval process or made it through but were never constructed. Although I regret that some of them were never built — 801 Brewster Ave. in particular — the projects that have been built, are currently being built and are likely to be built in the next handful of years should more than make up for the loss.

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.