'Deadwood City' no more, thanks to new code

Rendering of new Box Inc. headquarters

With the help of a form-based code (FBC), Redwood City, California, has become the new Silicon Valley hot spot—a few years ago the city of 76,000 wasn't even on the radar screen of tech companies. Box Inc., a cloud storage company, has to relocate to Redwood City and will fill an entire 334,000 square foot new office building. 

The code has opened the floodgates to downtown residential and commercial development, most of which will contribute to a sense of place because new projects must adhere to a code that focuses on placemaking.

Within days of Box Inc. signing its lease in September, a bundle of new office projects were announced. Most recently, Google is eyeing a site in Redwood City. The city's downtown vacancy rate is 2-3 percent, compared to the regional figure of 8-10 percent, reported. The city has so many new office projects coming forward that the numbers exceed the maximums proposed in a plan adopted three years ago.

This is a good problem for Redwood City, which had very little downtown development from the 1960s through the first decade of this millennium. Since the 1980s, almost all new projects downtown had been publicly assisted by the redevelopment agency. This decade, the development is all private. "Since the downtown precise plan was adopted, nine developments have been approved totaling more than 1,200 housing units and 300,000 square feet of office space that have either been built or are under construction," according to the . Now six more projects are proposed—one residential and five with office space. Many of the projects have first-floor retail. Although Google is not looking to occupy a downtown site, its interest reflects Redwood City's new status as a tech hub with easy rail access to San Francisco and the talented workforce that resides there.

Here's how Redwood City went from also-ran to Silicon Valley tech center. Before adopted a FBC in 2011, the city's entitlement process was much like other cities in the valley—expensive and time-consuming. With the new code, based on a community vision, all that is changing. “Redwood City promises quick approval, no hassle, if they meet the code,” says Dan Zack, who recently left his position as Downtown Development Coordinator for a job with the City of Fresno. “It’s a tough code, but the developers would much rather have that certainty. Once a couple of projects went through and the code lived up to its promise, the flood gates opened up.” 

Redwood City followed a three-step process:

• Create great public spaces and bring "activity generators" to enliven the downtown—an effort punctuated by the construction of a fantastic new courthouse square in the last decade.

• Reform the zoning to make the entitlement process more transparent, ensuring that whatever is built takes an urban form based on a community vision.

• Let the private development move forward, which is what is currently happening. 

Zack notes the city previously was ridiculed as "Deadwood City," for its lackluster downtown. Those days are over.

Robert Steuteville is editor and executive director of Better Cities & Towns.