Ground Broken for New San Mateo County Apartments
Work has started on the Lane on the Boulevard, a 141-unit apartment development in Redwood City, part of San Mateo County, which is not far from Palo Alto.
By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor
Redwood City, Calif.—Work has started on the Lane on the Boulevard, a 141-unit apartment development in Redwood City, part of San Mateo County, which is not far from Palo Alto, Calif. The developer is San Ramon, Calif.-based SummerHill Apartment Communities, which is a subsidiary of Marcus & Millichap Co., and formerly known as Urban Housing Group. KTGY Group Inc., Architecture + Planning designed the property.
The development is on the site of the former Mel’s, a bowling alley on El Camino Real, and will include a mix of one-bedroom and two-bedroom units ranging from 705 to 1,106 square feet. The property’s name is thus in homage to the site’s past.
The three- and four-story “wrap” style building’s common amenities include a clubroom, fitness studio, swimming pool with spa, outdoor kitchen and fireplace, bicycle storage and a pedestrian path surrounding the property. The units will be energy and water efficient, and will include stainless steel appliances and in-unit washers and dryers. The community will also offer alternative transportation amenities, such as bicycle storage facilities, electric vehicle charging stations and provisions for car-sharing vehicles.
Pre-leasing is expected to begin in early 2014, with the first units slated to open in summer 2014. The target market for the property, according to KTGY, is young professionals working in Redwood City and surrounding places, such as Palo Alto or Menlo Park, who want to live close to work but can’t afford the rents that come with those zip codes.
Greater San Francisco is one of the tightest apartment markets in the country, according to Marcus & Millichap, and demand is still strong in both the city and tech-corridor suburbs. The local economy created a net of 31,000 jobs last year, many of them in the well-paying tech sector, and is expected to create only slightly fewer (30,200) this year. Developers have responded: 2,700 units will come on line this year, compared with only 600 last year.
