Although a fire appeared to take down an affordable housing project in Redwood City, one half of it is still standing.
The $155 million project, dubbed Middlefield Junction, was meant to provide affordable housing units to the region. It was a project that’s been in development since 2015 through a partnership with San Mateo County and Mercy Housing, a national housing nonprofit organization.
Once fully constructed, the project was projected to be two large buildings with 179 units collectively. Units in the building were to range from one to three bedrooms, with the ability to house large families if needed.
The buildings would have housed a community center and affordable childcare center open to the public.
Of the 179 units, 20 were dedicated to helping people experiencing homelessness.
Officials told NBC Bay Area they are assessing the damage to see how to move forward.
Roberts-Obayashi Corp., the construction company involved in the Middlefield Junction affordable housing project released the following statement on Tuesday:
On June 3, 2024 at 10:13 am Roberts-Obayashi experienced the worst disaster in our companies 92 year history. We are a union builder that specializes in multifamily housing. Middlefield Junction is an affordable housing project being built for Mercy Housing near Redwood City. The project consisted of two buildings totaling 179 units. We are devastated that building B, 104 of the units, was destroyed by fire down to the podium slab. The fire started on the 5th floor and workers attempted to put the fire out with nearby fire extinguishers but it grew too quickly and within 3 hours the entire building was gone.
There were approximately 130 workers on site and we are relieved to report that our safety protocols worked perfectly and no one was injured due to this incident.
There was no hot work being performed on site and the cause of the fire remains under investigation.
We would like to express our deep gratitude to the firefighters and the emergency response teams for their diligent work to keep all community members safe, and protect building A and surrounding structures.
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Mercy Housing and Roberts – Obayashi remain fully committed to completing this development, which has been in construction for over a year and is the result of almost a decade of community planning. As soon as it is safe for our teams, and following a thorough investigation, we will return to work at the Middlefield Junction site to assess the damage and make a plan to move forward with construction.
We are working to absorb what happened and search for answers so at this time I have no further comments.
