REDWOOD CITY — Longtime Peninsula residents will bear in mind the hustle and bustle that was the Port of Redwood Metropolis within the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
After the legendary Pete Ucelli purchased the bayfront land in 1954 and began Pete’s Harbor — full with a marina and the 320-seat Harbor Home Restaurant — the port shortly grew to become a mainstay for former servicemen and attracted different companies and eating places equivalent to Clark’s by the Bay that former 49ers star receiver Dwight Clark opened up.
However the eating places closed, and for greater than a few many years the port went quiet once more, going about its enterprise of unloading development and panorama supplies from ships that navigate their method down San Francisco Bay’s southern reaches.
Because the begin of the pandemic, nonetheless, the port has been revitalized as a vacation spot for households and others who come to take pleasure in bay views, snort together with the Zoppe Italian Household Circus, watch drive-in motion pictures or purchase recent fish from the Pioneer fishing trawler.
Now the port is trying to money in on its newfound fame and is eyeing an enlargement that would embrace a brand new waterfront restaurant and maritime museum for the South Bay.
Port of Redwood Metropolis Government Director Kristine Zortman stated the port final yr started to check the financial potential of the realm for a brand new restaurant and a neighborhood heart with the aim of complementing the port-based Marine Science Institute.
“We’re throwing out broad concepts proper now,” Zortman stated. “We’ve been researching how we're capable of provide different kinds of makes use of right here on the port that basically brings our neighborhood right here and offers distinctive advantages.”
The port is on the point of search proposals from builders within the subsequent few months, Zortman stated, and officers have been speaking with the Marine Science Institute about its enlargement plans.
Zortman stated she’s assured the inhabitants and financial development of Silicon Valley might simply assist a restaurant by the water in Redwood Metropolis, a first-rate location for South Bay diners who don’t need to make the trek to Santa Cruz for fish and chips with ocean views.
And the potential for having recent fish delivered proper to a brand new restaurant’s door in partnership with Pioneer Seafoods is a chance that may’t be handed up, Zortman added.
“Within the 90s, I don’t assume Redwood Metropolis has the density and development that we’re seeing in the present day,” Zortman stated. “The entire new development and growth in Redwood Metropolis alone in addition to even a number of the campuses of main tech firms being so shut, we’re assured it may possibly work.”
Together with a restaurant, the port hopes to showcase its historical past and pure property to most people in a brand new state-of-the-art facility by the water the place folks can find out about San Francisco Bay.
Over the previous two years, the Marine Science Institute — simply throughout the road from the place the port needs to open a restaurant — has been learning an enlargement of its amenities to draw most people.
Government Director Marilou Seiff stated the institute contracted the San Francisco-based structure agency EHDD to provide you with ideas for a brand new museum that blends out of doors with indoor and would come with house for displays, an aquarium, docks and parkland for guests.
EHDD is identical agency that constructed the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
Based in 1978, the institute presently caters primarily to high school discipline journeys, taking college students into the bay in a vessel. College students can study concerning the bay’s natural world by way of hands-on actions, in addition to environmental issues and sustainability.
An enlargement would tremendously help the institute in spreading its message of conservation and schooling concerning the Baylands. But it surely might be difficult to tug off.
The Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories owns the land the place the institute is positioned after shopping for it from native house owners in 2000 with plans to redevelop the realm. For the previous 22 years, Seiff stated, Abbott Labs has left the institute in “limbo.”
“Kristine (Zortman) and I've been speaking lots about probably making a job power with the neighborhood to have a look at what the neighborhood can do to facilitate constructing this museum,” Seiff stated. “Abbott’s primary factor is that they don’t need to encumber the property by donating a portion of it till they resolve what they need to do. However we’re hoping the neighborhood can step in.”