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Redwood City residents could soon start seeing construction work on Blomquist Street after the county and the city agreed on a much anticipated “land swap,” according to city officials.
After a decade of negotiations, officials with San Mateo County and Redwood City finalized an agreement on a property exchange, a crucial first step, they said, towards the county’s goal of effectively ending homelessness.
Per their agreement, Redwood City will exchange a 2.5-acre parcel at 1469 Maple Street for two acres of County-owned land at 1580 Maple Street, currently the site of a 145-bed homeless shelter and a decommissioned jail. The deal also protects 10 acres of City-owned waterfront property for future community uses.
“The proposed property exchange advances multiple city priorities,” said Assistant City Manager Alex Khojikian during the September 27 city council meeting.
Both parties voted unanimously (council member Espinoza-Garnica absent) to approve the historic land swap, which would free up waterfront land on Maple Street to construct a homeless navigation center and added green space for community recreation.
“I'm feeling ecstatic,” said San Mateo County Manager Michael Callagy, who’s been heavily involved in the negotiations for the last few years. “We wanted to achieve a win-win-win—the city of Redwood City would win, the county would win, and most importantly, those experiencing homelessness would win. And I think we've achieved that. This will be historic in what we do.”
With the newly acquired land, the city plans to move forward with a proposed Blomquist Street Extension, which will extend Blomquist Street from Maple Street to Bair Island Road. The city hopes this development will improve circulation for public safety officers and residents who want to access the recreational waterfront.
New housing for the homeless
Meanwhile, San Mateo County plans to relocate the homeless shelter from 1580 Maple and begin construction on the County’s first homeless navigation center. The center, which Evelyn Stivers called a “one-stop-shop for people to connect to services,” will add 240 single or double occupancy rooms for unhoused residents. Stivers, executive director of the Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County, said that the center would “help navigate people to whatever services they need,” including everything from employment assistance to counseling and substance abuse recovery services.
Callagy said he believes the center will be “revolutionary” in addressing the County’s homelessness goals.
“We want to be the first county in the Bay Area to say that we've achieved ‘functional zero,’” he said, adding that a shelter will be available for anyone who wants one. “And we hope to achieve that within the year or so.”
Housing in the new center will be non-congregate—every single person or couple will have a private room, many with their bathroom—which proponents hope will address the outsized impact of the pandemic on the unhoused populations.
According to a recent city staff report, the pandemic “has further imperiled those experiencing homelessness,” and the “associated medical, social, and economic impacts have exacerbated the housing crisis and strained existing shelter capacity, due to social distancing protocols.”
By an April 30 count, Redwood City, which has the largest homeless population in the County, has 111 unsheltered residents, not including people living in RVs or other vehicles. Of those surveyed, 38 became houseless during the pandemic, and 31 people reported being homeless for the first time.
City Councilmember Diana Reddy, a vocal advocate for affordable housing, is “completely supportive” of the agreement, which will provide up to five emergency “hold” rooms at the navigation center for Redwood City residents in immediate need.
“It's important for people to understand too that the face of homelessness, people who are housing insecure, is not what it was 10 or 15 years ago,” said Reddy. “This is a person who's generally working—many are working full-time jobs or two or three jobs—and just are simply not able to afford their rent.”
Plans for the navigation center have included input at the city and county level and regional housing advocates. In collaboration with experts from the Human Services Agency and local nonprofits, including WeHOPE, LifeMoves (which runs the current Maple Street Shelter) and Samaritan House, among others, Callagy convened focus groups to assess the needs better and wants of homeless residents.
“We also went to the homeless, and we asked them, ‘What were the amenities that you would look for? What do you need?’” Callagy said. Requests included plenty of room for storage, pet-friendly accommodations, an onsite library, and private and communal spaces.
Tomiquia Moss, founder and CEO of All Home, a Bay Area-wide nonprofit seeking solutions to the homelessness and housing crisis, calls the new navigation center an example of “interim housing that we wholeheartedly endorse.”
“You need to be able to not have the streets be the waiting room for people waiting on permanent housing,” Moss said. “We need to have people be safe and have access to services … Housing is the foundational part of a person being able to thrive in their community.”
Like Reddy, Moss believes that this new center will help fight preconceptions about the homeless situation and show a recognition of the City and County that it’s a “solvable” problem.
“We hear a lot of folks say, ‘We want folks housed but just not in our neighborhood,’” Moss said.
“It's going to be important for us to really combat that assertion that those people are going to cause problems in neighborhoods because it doesn't bear out in the data,” she added. “Once folks are housed, they are not public nuisances to the community. There's more risk to the community when people are unhoused.”
A long history of negotiations
Negotiations for the land swap and navigation center began ten years ago and have faced a number of challenges and delays along the way.
The County and City originally considered developing the existing Maple Street homeless shelter. However, according to Reddy, the high sea level rise mitigation cost made the location untenable for large-scale development. They also looked at 1402 Maple St., the current site of the City’s Safe RV Parking Program. Still, they faced some pushback from neighboring stakeholders, including the Graniterock construction company and the Bair Island Aquatic Center.
There were also internal delays between the primary negotiators. According to County Supervisor Warren Slocum, whose 4th District includes Redwood City, the city “felt like they needed more time to take it to the public to hear what the public had to say, which is understandable.”
Though he acknowledges some “low points” during negotiations, Slocum said “there was enough common ground between the players” that he never doubted they’d eventually reach an agreement, a sentiment shared by Reddy.
“We landed on this other piece [1469 Maple St.], and as soon as we started talking about the possibilities there, we all became much more enthusiastic,” said Reddy. Though she doesn’t usually advocate for building housing on the east side, which is farther from public transit, Reddy said, “it just came down to the best of both worlds.”
Despite widespread support from the local stakeholders and community, some members have voiced ongoing concerns about these new developments. At a recent city council meeting, Gita Dev worried about “the heavy industry at Graniterock” and that “the Blomquist Extension might become basically another lane of 101.” Other dissidents, such as long-term residents Jerry Pierce and Alison Madden, expressed dismay over what they felt was a lack of public involvement in the decision-making process.
Reddy said that the city included the public as much as possible, given time constraints.
“There were tight negotiations between the city and the county, so we weren't actually asking people's opinions about what they wanted to see,” she said. Instead, the city invited the public to respond to specific proposals, including during a study session in November 2020 and a July Council meeting with public comment.
“There wasn’t room for us to negotiate with each other and bring in other comments,” said Reddy.
That said, she’s looking forward to involving the public in deciding the future of the remaining 10 acres of bayfront property. She’s already heard ideas about extending the bay trail or adding a soccer field.
“I want it to be family-friendly, for sure,” Reddy said. “We have this amazing resource. Not every city is right on the bay like we are … And I want families to feel welcome.”
Next steps
The City and the County are trying to move as quickly as possible to break ground on these new projects.
According to Khojikian, Redwood City “will open up a 45-day escrow period here,” and then residents will “start seeing dirt moving to build that extension shortly.”
He added that a public engagement process will begin early next spring to decide what will happen with the remaining bayfront land. He estimated that the Extension and community recreation area will be completed in the next 12-15 months.
According to City Communications Manager Jennifer Yamaguma, the private equity firm Carlyle Group is leading the development of the nearby site at 1548 Maple Street and will take over the first phase of construction on the Blomquist Extension, which would have cost the city approximately $7.5 million. As part of the property exchange agreement, the County will pay up to $390,000 in development fees (including water and sewer system capital facilities fees), sewer facility fees and water and wastewater treatment capacity fees, Yamaguma wrote in an email. The County will also pay up to $175,000—or roughly a third of the total cost—to demolish the existing shelter at 1580 Maple Street and clear space for the development of the Blomquist Extension. Yamaguma added that the County will receive credit towards new development fees for their existing structures on Maple, including the current homeless shelter and decommissioned jail.
A Five-Year Capital Improvement Program published by the city has allocated an initial $50,000 to the planning and community feedback on the proposed Bayfront Park, which is estimated to cost between $3-5 million.
Meanwhile, Callagy said the County wants to “move immediately” on the navigation center, with plans to order the modulars or individual housing units and start the onsite ground preparation in the next couple of months.
They already have some money from the county and state, as well as from an anonymous private donor, for what Callagy estimated to be a $40-50 million project. In a revised spending plan for the 2021-2022 fiscal year, the county budgeted $20 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds and $5 million in capital funds for construction of the new navigation center and purchasing hotels for additional shelters. According to Callagy, they’re also applying for more federal funding through Project Homekey.
“Every day that goes by, I am worried about it because that's one more day people spend on the street,” he said. “We hope within a year, literally, to be occupying this.”
As for who will operate the new navigation center, interim housing nonprofit LifeMoves has thrown their hat in the ring.
“The county issued an RFP, a public request for proposals, and LifeMoves has applied to continue to operate the shelter at Maple Street,” said Brian Greenberg, Vice President of Programs & Services at LifeMoves. If granted, the contract will allow LifeMoves, which has been at Maple Street for over 20 years, to manage the new housing site as well.
Although Greenberg expects a final decision to be made in the next month or two, they’re already discussing everything from basic amenities to the security and safety of their residents. In addition to having “clinically trained staff on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,” they emphasize de-escalation techniques to prioritize the safety of their most vulnerable residents.
If they’re awarded the contract, Greenberg said he’s eyeing early 2023 to have the first people moving into the new center and working towards “functional zero” in San Mateo County.
“I'm hopeful that [the homeless population] can be a very small number, once this shelter is opened in one plus years,” he said.
Just the beginning
As the City and County gear up to break ground, All Home’s Moss urges housing advocates to continue pushing for other solutions.
“We need navigation centers, we need rental subsidies, we need interim housing sites that are transitional,” said Moss.
“For every person in the region who falls into homelessness, three more people become homeless at the same time. It's a dynamic number of folks that isn't stagnant,” she said, adding that the ultimate goal is transitioning people into permanent housing. “We can't just assume because you got this last 300 people into a navigation center that you’ve solved your homelessness crisis.”
This is a reality that housing advocates like Reddy seem well aware of.
“It is temporary,” she said. “And the county is talking, even on the agenda yesterday, they had several other hotels that they are using state federal funds to purchase.”
Still, negotiators are celebrating a victory many years in the making.
“It's been in the works, I understand, for 10 years,” said Slocum. “There were frustrating moments; there were hopeful moments,” he added. “Now I think it's a race to construct a beautiful facility that's really going to help people.”
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Leah Worthington is the lead reporter at the Redwood City Pulse, a local news site dedicated to providing accurate and timely news to the Redwood City community. Leah can be reached at lworthington@rwcpulse.com, on Twitter, and by phone at 650-888-3794. To read more stories about Redwood City, subscribe to our daily Express newsletter on rwcpulse.com.
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