I’ve always thought of Foster City as a great town to walk in. First of all it’s flat (kind of important!) and it has lots a wonderful parks to walk in, around and through. It also has that terrific Bay Trail with those amazing views too! Well this week I stumbled upon a pretty interesting new website that gives a “walk score” for every community and for any address in that community. It’s called WalkScore.com

WalkScore.com defines walkable as:

Interestingly, most of Foster City doesn’t fare too well within their criteria. The best places to live, according to them are at CityHomes townhomes because of it’s proximity to shops and parks. OK, I like City Homes…I like most of the other neighborhoods too. I think that enjoying a good walk is pretty subjective, but this is still kind of a fun site and I thought I should pass it along.

That was the question last night when the City Council voted overwhelmingly in favor of a plan to allow more senior housing in the new project that will be built in what’s now being called Parkview Plaza. The developer has argued that because of economic conditions the plan as it was orginally drafted had become financially unsound and an increase of 25% was needed to build this project and have it make sense. There’s now going to be 420 units instead of the 331 that the original plan advanced. Exactly how this additional space will be configured is yet to be determined. With the councils approval, the planning commission now gets to study the nuts and bolts. Naturally, there were some dissenting opinions from some folks who have been opposed to this plan all along.

It’s been no big secret that I’m of the opinion that the creation of a downtown area for Foster City would be an enormous boost to this community and from all I’ve seen, Parkview Plaza looks pretty wonderful…plus it’ll be a great source of revenue for the City. It’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out design wise, but I think it’s perfectly understandable for the developer to have a plan that allows them to make money with this project. Here’s a link to today’s San Mateo Daily News and their story on this topic:

BiggerParkviewPlazaLink

It seems like everywhere I turn any more in Foster City I keep running into the local public access television station, FCTV. I see it in the Foster City Islander and I see it on-line and I saw their cameras out at the Arts & Wine Festival so I thought I’d comment on it. Turns out Foster City Television has been around since 1981 when it covered live council and planning commission meetings. In the 90’s it had become your typical local public access channel with pre recorded programs, bulletin boards and plenty of council meetings. In 2000 FCTV produced it’s first original production, about the FC fire department, and was met with many compliments.

FCTV also hit the web in 2000 and we now have the ability to see council meetings and several other locally produced programs via streaming video on-line. Other than San Bruno (which runs it’s own cable system) there’s no other city in San Mateo County that has a full production staff for it’s local government access channel other than FCTV. Foster City has been a leader in the county for developing programing directly relevant to those in the community. Every week FCTV produces a local newsbrief that sort of wraps up events here and can be seen both on-line or on channel 27 if your a Comcast subscriber. I’m sort of hooked on watching these newsbriefs because the host, Leah Edwards, changes her hair style for every broadcast…and I’m always anxious to see what she looks like next! They also have some pretty interesting programing on other local issues called City Snapshots plus a little talk show format about local individuals called FC Cafe. If you would like to check it out, here’s a link:

www.fostercitytelevision.com

This weekend is one of Foster City’s big annual events, the 37th Arts & Wine Festival located at Leo Ryan Park and on Shell Blvd next to it, as well as a big carnival in the large vacant lot across the street from the park (the future Parkview Plaza). It’s always been a really fun event and usually draws quite a crowd. There will be food, lots of artists displaying their work, lots of events for kids and families including rides, live music…and of course plenty of wine. The carnival part starts tomorrow at 5:00PM and the rest of the festival begins on Saturday morning. The whole event wraps up on Sunday at 5:00PM. I’m going to be at the Re/Max Today booth on Saturday from 10-1 and again on Sunday from 3-5. If you happen to be around the festival please stop by and say hello! I’d love to meet you! I have no idea yet where that booth will be, but I bought a big “fostercityblog”  banner that, hopefully, you’ll see. I’m sure it’ll be a fun weekend…hope to see you there!

Last week the City of Foster City had a groundbreaking ceremony for it’s impressive new teen center at 670 Shell. It’s appropriately called “The Vibe”. The teen center has been around for awhile but it’s been in those temporary buildings south of the rec center, but this new concept is really quite remarkable. The building will be 9566 square feet of fun and will include a skate park in addition to TV’s, computers, video games, art rooms, homework rooms,a kitchen and outdoor basketball courts. All this plus a good sized stage for bands plus a dance floor…all for about $6 million dollars. The current Vibe has been a popular destination for kids for quite some time and it’s not uncommon to see a couple of hundred kids over there on weekends…just imagine what it’ll be when it’s done! The concept of a teen center is really kind of foriegn to me. When I was a teen we certainly didn’t have anything even close to this…we just got somebody older than us to buy us beer and we hung out in the park., of course we were morons too!  I somehow suspect that “The Vibe” is a whole lot better environment than the one I had! Here’s a link to an Examiner story about the new Vibe:

TheVibeLink