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An initiative to turn city parking lots into parks is moving forward, with one park set to begin construction around 2025.
Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, secured $4.45 million in state funds for the parking lot projects in 2022, which he presented to the Redwood City Council.
The money will go to three major projects approved by the council in 2018.
The three projects include the Downtown Library Park Lot A, Redwood Creek Loop, and the Main Street City Hall parking lot.
“I think you can kind of think of it as three phases,” Redwood City Interim Park Director Derek Wolfgram said. “They’re not necessarily one that has to be totally finished before we get to the other, but based on available time and based on available resources, we’re addressing the three projects in that order.”
The first phase to be completed is the lot adjacent to the Redwood City Public Library at 1012 Main St.
Wolfgram said the city has done extensive community outreach, including public meetings and online surveys, and has received contributions from the community.
“All of that has been integrated into what we’re calling the draft preferred plan for the park,” he said
Having completed this phase of construction, the next step is submitting the plan for the
California Environmental Quality Act, which informs the government about the potential environmental effects of the project. The city also has to go into the design development phase and then estimate the cost based on the park’s final construction drawings, Wolfgram said.
“The environmental review process will take several months,” Wolfgram said. “So most likely it’s going to be early 2025 before we’re going to be at a place to put the project out to bid for a contractor to actually build the park. And we do have a little bit of additional money that we need to secure to make that happen, but I am hopeful that sometime next year we will actually be building that park by the downtown library.”
The second phase to be moved forward is the Redwood Creek Loop trail project, for which the plan has yet to be finalized; however, there is a draft preferred plan.
“There is, again, a lot of environmental assessment that needs to be done with the creek and with the vegetation around there, but we’re just about done with that,” Wolfgram said. “As well as talking with police and fire about some potential impacts, working on a draft plan, and talking with all the different water agencies that are involved that we may need to work with on permitting.”
The final step for the project is to talk to the owners of the property along the creek where the trail would be located.
“We’re planning to do that in the next couple of months, to reach out and have some discussions with the property owners now that there is a plan to get their feedback about that and figure out our next steps from there.”
The third project, converting the City Hall parking lot on Main Street, has faced setbacks due to recent changes to the surrounding area.
“For example, the closure of that one block of Broadway to vehicle access to make it a more pedestrian-friendly street for all of the restaurants there, and so that changes some of the parameters,” Wolfgram said. “We’ll need to do a little bit of work to redesign what access to the space will look like. So we haven’t really gotten into the development of the specific plan or the design development for that.”
While Wolfgram is new to the position of interim parks director, he has been involved with the Redwood City Public Library plan for some time.
“I’ve only been in the parks department for two and a half months now,” Wolfgram said. “So I still have lots that I’m learning, but I’ve been involved with the downtown library park planning, because prior to being the interim parks director, I was the library director, so (I had) a lot of input on the project from that side.”
Love the idea of more green space, but this will be an extension of the homeless camp site in front of the library absent a renewed plan. Why not use it to turn Broadway between Jefferson & Main into a park?