TheRegistrySF.com
From the article:
As Bay Area towns such as Redwood City and Fremont create plans for growth, city leaders and developers are taking into account suburban development trends.
“Suburbs are changing,” said Ed McMahon, a Washington, D.C-based senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute. “Aspects of urban life are moving to the suburbs.”
For example, suburbs are becoming less car oriented.
“Suburbs are building in more compact ways. The successful suburbs of the future are going to be the mixed-use suburbs that have a walkable center,” he said, and suburbs that are “drive-everywhere-for-everything suburbs” are going to become less competitive. McMahon moderated a panel of industry experts who spoke at a ULI event about suburban growth and density held in May in Oakland.
In Redwood City, redevelopment fund dollars helped transform the city’s downtown courthouse square into a central community gathering place, said Sean Brooks, economic development manager for Redwood City. The square now draws more than 150,000 visitors per year for events such as movies and concerts.
The city also pegged its downtown as a key area for growth and in 2011 adopted a Downtown Precise Plan that outlines rules for and encourages development in the district. Guidelines and codes in the plan simplify and speed up the entitlement process for developers, Brooks said, while expansion is limited with annual housing and office space caps.
Results have been positive as projects that started under the precise plan, including 116 apartments at 201 Marshall St. by Raintree Partners and 132 condominiums at 333 Main St. developed by Sares Regis Group of Northern California, are fully or close to fully leased, Brooks said. Additionally, a 334,000-square-foot speculative office development by Kilroy Realty Corp. and Hunter Storm was leased to cloud content management provider Box, Inc.