Sequoia station’s redevelopment in the modern era

From Redwood town to Redwood City

Sequoia Station’s redevelopment in the modern era

BY MATEO MANGOLINI

Staff Reporter

Image Credit to the RWC website

Sequoia Station, that sea of asphalt favor of walkable and bikeable paths and a and concrete, is seen by some as a relic of a new underground parking space. The removal bygone era, a monument to cold, calculating of the parking lots is notable, as it would urban planning that seeks only to maximize discourage cars from frequenting the area. profitability over enjoyability. Based on its “Part of our plan is to implement a corridor emphasis of wide open parking lots and big plan, which adds bike lanes, wider sidewalks, retail chains, it’s no surprise that Sequoia slows down traffic a bit and allows people to Station traces its roots back to the ‘90s, when have safe walking connections and safe biking such design principles were the norm when it connections across town, which is another big came to commercial zones. However, where benefit of a project like this,” Chammorro said. one may see a relic of the past, others see Both Chamorro and the city hope that potential. such an endeavor will connect both sides of

This was the basis for Alan Chamorro, the city, allowing those from across the tracks, one of the Senior Vice Presidents of Lowe especially from Sequoia High School, to have Real Estate, to an even easier time undertake a massive and unprecedented project on the Peninsula in conjunction with Eden Housing (a property developer “ [This project] is really about placemaking. reaching Redwood City’s downtown commercial areas on foot. This push for a more climateconscious city isn’t with a specific only relegated to emphasis on Alan Chamorro, Regional Senior Vice Chamorro and Lowe. affordable housing), Caltrain and the city President of Lowe Real Estate Caltrain, as part of a larger project itself : completely spanning much of renovating the the bay, has hopes of station from the ground up, in order to create a electrifying its railways by 2024. Electrification, space for socialization, leisure and recreation. a process that removes the local fuel source on

One look at the redevelopment plan’s a train in favor of a railway-wide conductor, outline reveals its gargantuan scale: the first would move Caltrain away from powering its thing that stands out is a removal of the trains on fossil fuels, in addition to allowing massive central parking lot in the station, in more train cars to be used at once.

“We’ll be running clean, green trains that are powered primarily by green power,” Dan Lieberman, a spokesperson for Caltrain, said. “They’re also faster to accelerate and decelerate, so we can also bump up the level of service.”

However, Caltrain’s ambitions for its rail network do not end there. Further down the timeline, through an additional two tracks and a grade separation project, the Bay Area’s premier railroad service hopes to turn Redwood City into the rail hub that, in some ways, it already is. According to Lieberman and Brian Fitzpatrick (another representative of Caltrain’s real estate wing), Redwood City is already their fifth busiest station. This comes as no surprise, considering Redwood City’s central location on the Peninsula, between San Francisco in the north and San Jose in the south.

“[Redwood City] has had the highest traffic of any station in San Mateo County so it has been growing pretty steadily for us,” Lieberman said.

There are also supposedly hopes of connecting Redwood City across the Bay to other East Bay rail networks through a project known as the “Dumbarton Line”, which would make Redwood City the primary stop for those from either side of the Bay wanting to cross over without a car. What is known for sure, however, is that the rail platform will be moved some 200 feet north, closer to the Peet’s Coffee than to the old rail platform site, in

Concept art for the station of the future. Art by sequoiacentervision.com

order to allow for grade separation and greater ease of travel.

A greener downtown isn’t the only thing on the developers’ minds. Lowe, in conjunction with Eden Housing, the city government and Caltrain, have also planned to add over 600 new apartments, 35 percent of which would be specifically for those living below the median income for Redwood City. Among the motivations cited for this portion of the project was a desire to stem the rising tide of homelessness and displacement. An unfortunate symptom of projects such as these is a tendency of lower income residents of newly renovated areas being forced to move to cheaper pastures, as the housing market becomes ever more unlivable. At times, those who are pushed out of their homes have nowhere to go, and so are relegated to homelessness in a city that they once called home. Through designated affordable housing, Redwood City residents would be able to remain in their community.

“We’re talking retail workers, childcare workers, janitors, people who work at in any kind of service industry, like fast food or any of those kinds of jobs,” Andrea Osgood, a representative of Eden Housing, said in reference to what kinds of people would be able to find housing at the station. “These are some of the people that are getting pushed out of the area because of the super high housing prices.”

Osgood has also expressed hopes at setting aside housing specifically for the homeless, members of our community who have unfortunately fallen victim to a problem plaguing much of California.

The plan also includes foggy details surrounding new retail and leisure areas, which will be constructed in phases so as not to completely disrupt life around the station. Parks, childcare centers and other businesses will make up the foundation for the plan as a whole.

“I kind of like the idea of them changing [the parking lot] into more of a mall since there’s no decent place to get a good amount of stuff in a small space,” John Carlo Calderon, a junior at Sequoia, said when asked about

This retail plan, combined with the station expansion and removal of the central parking lot, hopes to make Sequoia Station a “place” in the architectural sense. A place is something more than a mere commercial zone, where one visits merely to execute a task or purchase a product, and then leave due to a lack of an area to simply be, much like the plaza area in Redwood City’s downtown. Through this redevelopment plan, its architects hope to redefine not only what the station is, but what it means: a modernization project hoping to truly turn our city into what it could be: a conduit through which we achieve greater connection and inclusion. his thoughts on the redevelopment plan. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, roughly nine percent of Redwood City lives in poverty, while the median income is $117,000 a year