Summer on Broadway
You can't call Redwood City "Deadwood" any longer
By Sam Whiting
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
July 22, 2001
Broadway in Redwood City is made for walking. That's why they put a bend in the road to divert auto traffic, and wide sidewalks with big planter boxes and benches.
 But the walkers never came. Hence the nickname "Deadwood," which has stuck for about 25 years. But this summer a downtown booster and developer named John Anagnostou set out to turn Deadwood into Livewood.
"Redwood City has been a sleeping giant for many, many years," he says, while walking the empty street, "and the sleeping giant is now finally awakening. This town is about to explode."
What lit the explosion, in Anagnostou's plan, was the grand reopening last month of the Fox Theatre, a Broadway centerpiece that Anagnostou and partners restored to its 1928 splendor. It debuted with a sellout performance by Tom Jones, which Anagnostou called "the busiest night on Broadway in probably 40 years." Fifteen hundred people were on the street but there were still two free downtown parking spots for every ticket. Next weekend the Fox will host the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Jazzman Dave Brubeck is coming in September.
This is a long way from the 50-cent horror flicks that used to pack the balcony of the Fox with Sequoia and Woodside High School students on a Friday night in the early 1970s. All of downtown Redwood City is suddenly a long way from the 1970s too. New restaurants are showing up and even staying open for dinner.
Anybody who hasn't visited in five years will find it completely changed, with a new City Hall, new downtown housing, a new park at the Caltrain station and a new parking garage. Within another five years it will completely change again. Anagnostou plans to knock down the 1939 courthouse building across the street from the Fox to expose the dome of the 1910 courthouse building behind it.
"The most incredible building, in my opinion, in San Mateo County," says Anagnostou. The old green courthouse has already been restored as a county museum with a spectacular California state seal mosaic on the floor beneath stained glass that is touted to be the largest in a public building on the West Coast.
One block east of the Fox, he's planning to level an entire block to build a movie megaplex with 20 screens.
Before the wrecking balls come, summer is the time to visit Broadway, crossed at both ends by old-time arches that proclaim "Climate Best by Government Test."
Anagnostou did his own test by moving south, city by city, from San Francisco - where his family ran a grocery store in the Tenderloin - to Daly City, San Mateo and San Carlos before landing in Redwood City 20 years ago.
Now 44, he lost 24 years along the way and to make it up he walks the strip fast, dipping in and out of all the new restaurants that will service his Fox customers.
"I try to frequent everybody," says Anagnostou, who in one stroll also manages to frequent the mayor, the city manager, the city planner and about every merchant on Broadway.
He starts at a big globe-like marquee announcing "Broadway" on the corner of El Camino Real.
Broadway snakes on a southeast diagonal to its surrounding streets, just as it does on Broadway, New York City. There the comparison stops. The charm on Broadway, Redwood City, is how small-town it feels for the main street of the seat of a major county in California.
First stop is the RC Art Gallery, which will put walkers in mind of RC Cola,
the only drink for Deadwood natives born at Sequoia Hospital up the hill.
The gallery leads to a huge retail space broken into a warren of 30 or 35 artist's studios. Each little room has a display window and people can walk the long hall, looking in to see the artists at work, stopping to visit.
On the block between El Camino and the train tracks are two brew pubs and a skate shop sprinkled among the old-time retailers - a uniform store and a sporting goods store. Up and down Broadway are storefronts, with no store behind, that sit vacant.
Also vacant are the counter stools and many of the booths at Bob's Court House Coffee Shop across Middlefield. Once called the Courthouse Cafe, it was a downtown staple for the homey lunch specials and banana cream pie. The old clientele apparently did not follow the forced move across the street. When a single diner is brazen enough to ask for a window booth at 1 p.m. the hostess responds, "We're still in the lunch rush, hon." But the place is maybe half full and gets less full fast.
Across the street is Ailana Hawaiian Fabrics and Design. Owner Bonnye "Lehua" Rubi has big rolls of palm frond-and-hibiscus prints for custom-sewing in a store that smells like flowers.
Closer to Redwood City's heritage is B&D Tack & Western near the corner of Main Street. "We got boots, we got hats, we got vests," sings owner Donna Tozi as Anagnostou walks in. As he leaves she's still listing things. "We got sports coats and knickknacks. Cowboy knickknacks. Don't forget knickknacks."
Around the corner on Main Street is the old Alhambra Theatre and Ballroom, another historic venue that the Anagnostou family was planning to renovate when it was gutted by fire last month. A plaque by the door describes it as "the finest playhouse between San Francisco and San Jose," and he promises to make it that again.
He'd like to do the same with the Sequoia Hotel, built in 1912 as the cornerstone of Main and Broadway. But the Anagnostous don't own it, not yet anyway. "It's one of the most remarkable historical buildings still standing in San Mateo County," he says, "but it needs restoring."
Attached to the Sequoia is the Sports Club bar, which serves hotel residents. That's one place Anagnostou won't peek in. The Sports Club is deep Deadwood, even for a kid who grew up working at a market in the Tenderloin of San Francisco.
"There wasn't anything I hadn't seen by the time I was 13," he says, not wanting to see it again and turning back up Broadway.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Developer John Anagnostou walks on Broadway. Here are some of his stops:
Redwood City (RC) Art Center: 2625 Broadway; (650) 366-6178.
Fox Theatre: 2215 Broadway; (650) 369-4119.
Bob's Court House Coffee Shop: 2198 Broadway; (650) 368-6833.
Ailana Hawaiian Fabrics and Design: 2117 Broadway; (650) 568-3277.
B&D Tack & Western Wear: 2021 Broadway; (650) 368-9191.
San Mateo County Historical Museum: 777 Hamilton St.; (650) 299-0104.
E-mail Sam Whiting at swhiting@sfchronicle.com . |
