Cinema Streetscape, Redwood City

The Project

The Cinema Streetscape project involved the reconstruction of five street blocks in downtown Redwood City in conjunction with the completion of the new 20-theatre cinema and retail complex. The complex itself occupies a full city block and serves as a critical component in the City's redevelopment and revitalization of its Downtown area. The project replaced old and deteriorating city sidewalks and surrounding streetscape with a new urban look and more pedestrian-friendly design.

MTCo was responsible for the design of all roadway and sidewalk elements that incorporated the vision developed by Freedman Tung & Bottomley, a premier award-winning urban planning and design firm. The major focal point of this streetscape project is Theatre Way, a side street adjacent to the cinema/retail complex which was reconstructed as an urban plaza with outdoor restaurant seating, a terraced promenade, decorative planters, signature lighting columns, and a row of palm trees integrated with one-way traffic and diagonal parking.

Services provided by MTCo include the preparation of full PS&E documents for bidding and construction; coordination of multiple specialty design consultants; design of a relocated 16" water line, a new 10" sanitary sewer, and new storm drain systems; design of street grading and drainage; and design of the plaza sub-grade over the underground parking garage.

The Challenges

Design of the street plaza was complicated by the fact that the new underground parking garage extended under half of the plaza with very little clearance to the street surface. Furthermore, the garage was coated with a sophisticated, multi-layer, water seal and protection system which couldn't be damaged by the plaza construction.

The Results

To address the challenges with the parking garage, MTCo engineers developed an innovative, sub-grade concrete “shelf” that acts as a hinge to distribute differential settlement across a wide area of the tiled plaza as well as a “hidden” drainage system below the steps to carry water off the garage and out to the storm drain system. All work was successfully completed under an extremely tight design schedule.