About

Creating Space

Stanford is excited to join the vibrant Redwood City community with its first significant location beyond the university’s  main campus. The on-campus Cardinal Café offers convenient dining featuring regionally and globally inspired cuisine. Staff can enjoy a 28,000-square-foot recreation and wellness center, along with a childcare center.

Campus Design

Stanford Redwood City campus design is rooted in these guiding principles:

• Embodies our ethos of commitment to excellence and innovation: As a community, we will set workplace norms that enable the contribution of ideas to enhance our workplace
• Encourages health and wellness as well as sustainable design and management
• Builds community: Provide opportunity to link people within and across the Stanford community, and engage our local neighborhoods

Stanford purchased the land in 2005, shortly after Stanford Health Care purchased four buildings on Broadway that are now outpatient clinics. Over the next 11 years, the university developed plans, conducted extensive public outreach, sought community feedback and worked with the planning commission and city council in the approval process. Construction began in 2017.

Today, the new campus includes four modern office buildings, a café and outdoor promenade  and plazas, a child care center, parking garage and employee wellness center.

The structures and spaces were designed to operate cohesively as a campus and to ensure flexibility for future academic, office, research and medical uses. The covered arcades, French limestone exteriors, terra cotta design elements and open, well-lighted interiors echo elements of newer buildings on Stanford’s main campus.

The campus provides workspace for about 1,800 employees (including three of the university’s eight vice presidents) working in critical areas such as the School of Medicine administration, libraries and archives, business affairs, human resources, development and Land, Buildings & Real Estate. Stanford will be the city’s third-largest employer in Redwood City.

The new state-of-the-art campus enables the university to keep academic activities concentrated in one location and to bring together a number of organizations – formerly scattered in various locations on and off campus – in a center of excellence and a vibrant workplace.

Supporting the Local Community

In developing plans for Redwood City, Stanford made a point to integrate the campus into the neighboring community through building design, street improvements and landscaping. Barron and Warrington avenues have been extended through the site, creating better circulation for pedestrians and vehicles.

The project significantly increased the site’s landscape areas, including 2.4 acres of open space near Spinas Park available to employees and neighbors alike. All told, Stanford is providing more than $15 million in community benefits ranging from stormwater management, bus shelters and bicycle lane improvements to Graduate School of Business programs, recreation and wellness, and arts and music programs. Shuttles, which are  free and open to the public to use along with Stanford commuters will run to and from the Redwood City Caltrain station. Stanford employees will also be able to take advantage of the other transportation alternatives and benefits offered in the Commute Club and aim to help reduce single-occupancy car trips in surrounding communities.

Staying Connected

Although “touchdown” workspace is available for employees when they need to be on a different campus, the university has enhanced tele-conferencing and other tools to help them work together and stay connected regardless of physical location.

Commitment to Sustainability

Drawing from a rich history of sustainability programs, Stanford is incorporating sustainability across all aspects of the Redwood City campus. The new campus leverages known best practices in energy management, building design, landscape design, waste management, and café management, while also serving as a test-bed for innovation in infrastructure and cultural engagement. Campus operations prioritize sustainability and advance progress toward targets that the university has laid out to become 80 percent carbon-free by 2025 and zero waste by 2030.

A significant feature of the Redwood City campus is the Central Energy Facility, a smaller version of the cutting-edge Stanford Energy System Innovations, which provides heating/cooling for the main campus and is on a path to providing 100 percent renewable energy by the end of 2021.