Where You Can Walk in Downtown Redwood City Right Now, and Where You'll Wait Until 2027

When did you last try to drive Spring Street from Broadway through to Main? If it was before September 1, that route is gone. The block of Spring Street between Main and Walnut closed permanently that Tuesday. It is now behind the same construction fencing that surrounds the former Wells Fargo Bank building, and so is the small triangular parklet that sat between Spring, Marshall and Walnut.

Downtown Redwood City is giving up pieces of its street grid in exchange for plazas, park space and new sidewalks. These pieces are opening one fence at a time. The city's own sidewalk work runs through November. A new residential plaza on Broadway is opening in stages. A rebuilt park is due in January 2027. The new corner at Main and Marshall depends on an office building that is at least two years from completion. So the map residents use to cross downtown will keep changing from month to month.

The fall map at a glance

The block that closed, and the corner that won't exist for years

The Spring Street closure is making room for 1900 Broadway. The city lists it as an approved seven-story office and retail building of about 256,200 square feet, with two levels of underground parking, bicycle parking, a public plaza and a community space. The city page gives no construction start date or completion date.

The detour is already in place. Drivers coming up the remaining stub of Spring Street from Broadway now hit a dead end with right-turn arrows and a stop sign. They have to turn right onto Walnut, which runs one way north between Broadway and Marshall. At Marshall, Walnut traffic stops and Marshall traffic does not. The Walking Redwood City blog expects more drivers to stay on Marshall and use Maple or Chestnut to reach Broadway. The short stretch of Walnut that runs beside the old bank building is closed for the duration of construction. The same blog expects Walnut to become a two-way street once the project is finished.

By late September, crews were trenching across the old Spring Street leg at the former five-way intersection of Main and Marshall. The signal arm that once served both Spring and Marshall is being replaced with a new signal for Marshall alone, set closer to Marshall. The old crosswalk striping has been blacked out. New striping will guide pedestrians to the block's new corner. According to the October 2 Walking Redwood City post, that corner probably won't be fully built until 1900 Broadway is complete, at least two years from now, because sidewalks are among the last things built on a project like this.

The trees in the old parklet are expected to come out. The developer plans to plant new trees near the end of construction, and those will take years to reach the size of the ones being removed. This corner of downtown has lost a street, a pocket of green and a crosswalk pattern this fall, and the replacements are on a timeline measured in years.

The plaza that opened first, a few blocks east

On Broadway's eastern stretch, the trade runs the other way: a new public space is opening before it is finished. The final construction fences have started coming down at Broadway Village. Some of the public outdoor areas are now open, including the paver pathway that runs alongside The Colton's Building A on Broadway.

As of early October, several pieces were still fenced:

• The main lawn. The area beyond the fencing was still bare soil where the project rendering shows grass.
• The childcare center's outdoor play area. The center has a bright orange facade, but work on the play space had barely begun.
• The public dog park facing Bay Road. Fencing and gates were up and pavers were set inside the gates, but a trench still ran through the gravel where the turf will go.
• The Broadway-to-Bay walkway. A construction fence still blocked the full pedestrian route between the two streets.

The pool and resident amenities above the garage entrance are gated and private. The plaza, lawn, dog park and walkway are the parts meant for the public. Once the Broadway-to-Bay walkway opens, it gives pedestrians a mid-block cut between two streets that had none before.

The rest of the site will stay fenced for a while. A wooden fence divides the residential half from the commercial half, where three office buildings are planned. There was no meaningful construction activity on the commercial half as of early October. The Colton's ground floor along Broadway includes retail space that can be split among several tenants. No tenant had been named.

The city's own work is on the shortest schedule

Of all the downtown fences, the Broadway Pavement Overlay & Curb Ramp Project should come down first. The city's project page lists construction from July through November 2026. The work covers pavement overlay, ADA curb ramps, bikeway improvements, signs and striping, and pedestrian crossings.

The city's June 26 announcement lists the segments: Chestnut to Maple, Winslow to Marshall and Arguello, and Birch to Hopkins. It includes full sidewalk replacement from Birch to Duane. It also adds pedestrian-activated flashing beacons at Clinton Street and at the crossing by Fireside Bookstore. In early September, crews were rebuilding the north-side sidewalk between Birch and Duane and installing crosswalk lights on all four corners at Broadway and Clinton. On Vera Avenue, the roundabouts that used to be paint only are being built as raised, solid structures.

That makes November the first month this fall when the city expects a full set of downtown improvements to be finished. It is also the month when the holiday calendar starts.

Hoover Park is the January payoff

South of Woodside Road, the Spring Street that runs alongside Hoover Park is on its own schedule. The city broke ground on the park's renovation in early January 2026 and held a construction celebration on March 16. The city's announcement expects construction to wrap up in January 2027.

The planned list covers a lot for one park: a splash pad, a fitness court, pickleball courts, a turf volleyball court, several playgrounds, dog play areas, and improved gathering and accessibility spaces. Getting there on foot from downtown involves another of Spring Street's breaks, because Spring does not cross Woodside Road. Walkers cross Woodside at Bay Road instead. Drivers can turn onto Chestnut before Woodside, take Bay Road across, then turn right on Willow for the one block back to Spring.

Closer to the main library, another park is still in the planning stage. Library Lot A is slated for a future downtown public park. The neighboring Lot B is being studied for affordable housing and public parking. These are options under discussion, not a chosen design.

Downtown restaurants are on the same staggered schedule

Downtown restaurants are changing the same way. ELCO Yards has a stand-alone restaurant building with a generous outdoor area, and it still has no tenant. The project's original plan had expected a new Lutticken's restaurant there. Lutticken's announced it would close its West Menlo Park deli and restaurant, along with two satellite locations, at the end of September. In late September, the ELCO Yards office interiors were still being fitted out. The buildings were empty apart from a childcare center, the retail area facing El Camino was empty too, and the Main Street office building is slated for Biohub.

Two smaller changes have already happened:

1. CRU Wine Shop & Bar in the Box building closest to the Caltrain station has closed permanently. Its packaged specialty Italian foods are still sold at its sister restaurant, Donato Enoteca, on Middlefield across from the main library.
2. Gangsan, a contemporary Korean restaurant, took over the Middlefield Road space where Dasbierhauz closed on June 30, as Palo Alto Online reported in July. A Redwood City Pulse newsletter reported that Gangsan Korean Cuisine soft-opened on July 22.

So downtown's dining options are shifting by storefront while the bigger plazas and buildings around them are still being finished.

Plotting the holiday weeks around the fences

The downtown calendar for the rest of the year falls inside these construction windows. Every date below lands while at least one project on the map is still underway.

• October 27, 4 p.m.: Boo Bash at the Chan Zuckerberg Community Space, 801 Jefferson Ave., Suite 100.
• November 21, 10 a.m.: ART on the Square's 11th Annual Holiday Show, according to the city events calendar. This lands in the final month of the Broadway overlay schedule.
• Saturday, December 12, roughly 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.: Hometown Holidays downtown. The city's page says the full schedule is still to come.

If the city's dates hold, the new Broadway sidewalks and the Clinton and Fireside Bookstore beacons will be finished before Hometown Holidays. Spring Street between Main and Walnut will still be closed, and Hoover Park will be about a month from reopening.

If you're wondering how a permanently closed block, a new public plaza or a rebuilt park nearby affects your own street, Kelly Dippel follows these Redwood City projects closely and can show you how they factor into your home's value. Request a complimentary home valuation.