$1B High-Rise Residential Project Gains Approval

REDWOOD CITY, CA-Redwood City is going vertical. The city council here last week approved Marina Shores Village, a $1-billion mixed-use development along the city’s bay front. The largest proposed development in San Mateo County in more than a decade, it would include 1,930 residential units in 17 buildings rising as high as 240 feet (21 stories), 150,000-sf of commercial space and 25,000 sf of retail. The 46-acre project on Blair Island Road will be built east of the Whipple Avenue exit off Interstate 101 on two sites separated by The Villas at Blair Island, an existing 155-unit apartment complex that includes a 100-slip marina. The project includes an affordable housing component. The developer is a 50-50 joint venture of publicly traded Glenborough Realty Trust of San Mateo, CA and The Pauls Corp. of Aurora, CO. Paul Powers, president of The Pauls Corp., could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon. Approvals for the project are still needed from the Army Corps of Engineers and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. The project would be built out over a 10- to 20-year period. Construction is tentatively scheduled for 2005, with the first residents moving in in 2007.The demand for new housing in San Mateo County is expected to total 34,000 units by 2020, according to the Bay Area Council of Governments. To meet demand, other Peninsula cities also are seeing high rise residential developments. In South San Francisco, Myers Development Company is developing a 14-story condominium building on San Bruno Mountain. Completion of the $60-million project is expected next spring. The City of San Mateo, meanwhile, is poised to pass on the trend. Having already built some of the region’s tallest residential buildings, the City Council there is expected to place an initiative on the November that would extend by 15 years a law that restricts the height of new buildings to 50 feet in most cases.