Stepping through the ornate doorway into the rotunda of the Hotel Sequoia in downtown Redwood City is like walking into a time capsule from two distinct ages, where decorative fixtures from an elegant first act 100 years ago co-exist with fittings that have a more recent, institutional vibe. But what’s most attention-grabbing in the space doesn’t belong to either of those eras: perched atop the molding along the walls, the window frames and the fireplace mantel are several hundred small, abstract figurines in a rainbow of bright hues. The little figures offer a striking contrast, not only with the room’s curved white walls, but also with the building’s past, as they hint at its colorful future.

The abstract figurines were made by a local artist, Gadget, and during a tour of the building last month, their cheerful presence served as one of the first signs of the artistic community that’s budding here: The Center for Creativity, a local effort to build a regional hub for the arts, which will have a temporary home at the Hotel Sequoia. 

Hotel Sequoia opened in 1912 as luxury lodgings, a purpose to which it’s slated to return in 2027, but for the next two years, the hotel will offer a temporary home for the Center for Creativity in Redwood City’s downtown. The hotel anchors the busy intersection of Main Street and Broadway, home to numerous restaurants and bars.

The Center for Creativity will open on May 3, kicking off three weeks of events that coincide with Silicon Valley Open Studios. Seven local artists will show at the center each weekend as part of open studios, and the center also will host a live printing event on May 3, sewing circles on May 4, 17-18, and an artist’s talk on May 10.

“This is pure grassroots community efforts to try to bring a visual and performing arts center to San Mateo County,” Jill Asher, a member of the Center for Creativity’s steering committee, said of the center.

The Center for Creativity grew out of work by Arts RWC, a group of artists, art advocates, art organizations and civic leaders. To provide a variety of programming, the center is partnering with community arts groups, including Art Bias, ART on the Square, BraveMaker, Casa Circulo Cultural, the Redwood City Arts Commission and other city agencies and San Mateo County Office of Arts & Culture. 

Showing what’s possible

In early April, Asher and fellow steering committee members Ian Bain and Dani Gasparini gave this publication a sneak peek at the Center for Creativity and shared their plans for an effort that will unfold over the next couple of years. Gasparini, a former Redwood City mayor, is also one of the hotel’s owners.

“We’ve been talking about doing something for a long time. We’ve been talking to developers about getting space within a new project. So we’ve had a lot of conversations about where to go,” said Bain, a former Redwood City mayor who’s also an artist. “When Dani Gasparini offered this as a space, a temporary space, that we could use to do a proof of concept, we said, “Yes, Sign us up.’ So that’s why we’re here. But the goal, of course, is to get a bigger, permanent home.”

Hotel Sequoia became a single-resident occupancy dwelling – or a rooming house – in the 1950s and remained so until Gasparini and her partners in Sequoia Main Street LLC purchased the building in 2010. They plan to extensively renovate and reopen the space as a boutique hotel, but those plans have been paused by various economic factors, including increased building costs. In the meantime, the center will use the space — and curious members of the public also can get a peek at a long off-limits landmark, Gasparini noted, which is listed on the federal historic register.

The Center for Creativity’s tenure at the hotel aims to demonstrate its viability. Through the group’s partnerships with local arts groups and artists, the public can take classes, see works from local artists and take part in community events, while the center continues fundraising for a permanent county hub for the arts. 

The price tag for a permanent space will be steep — in the range of $30 million to $80 million — but the center’s offerings aim to be comprehensive. 

The vision for the center takes some inspiration from other Peninsula arts facilities, Asher said, such as the Palo Alto Art Center, where people can take art classes and see curated exhibitions  (Asher serves on Palo Alto Art Center Community Foundation) and the Mountain View Performing Arts Center, which has dedicated performance spaces where the public can catch live theater, dance and music. 

For the moment, the center is focusing most heavily on visual arts in its temporary home, but some performance-related programming is in the planning stages.

Rooms for improvement

Hotel Sequoia’s rotunda room is not only the center’s entrance, but will serve as a space for art classes. In fact, it has already played host to several art-making workshops to raise funds for the center.

From the rotunda, a small lobby area leads into a room that was part of the hotel’s ballroom and will now be the center’s other main space for art classes. It’s a large, bright room filled with long tables and shelves full of art supplies. 

A large safe —a holdover from the hotel’s previous incarnations — sits near the room’s entrance. It’s too heavy to be moved, but this room has seen many other changes in preparation for the center’s opening. Some areas of the hotel were in disrepair, but the work of committee members and volunteers have made the space more welcoming.

“This was six rooms, like a month and a half ago,” Asher said, gesturing around the partial ballroom, which had been divided up during the hotel’s time as a rooming house. “We opened up the walls and we painted. We boarded up some areas that were open, including some openings in the floors. We got some furniture from the county, and from Meta.”

A large wall still divides the former ballroom in half — Bain noted that one historical photo showed several hundred people dining in the ballroom during the hotel’s heyday — but the room still feels spacious.

In another upgrade, Gadget gave the facility’s bathroom a whimsical makeover, affixing his signature laser-cut wooden sculptures, as well as found objects, to the walls.

In the small lobby area, a wooden staircase zigzags up to the floors of what had been guest rooms. While there’s a possibility these could be renovated at some point into artists’ studios, there are costly upgrades required for fire safety, Gasparini said. 

The center will operate in the ground-floor rooms for now. The rotunda and ballroom remain the focus, but rooms beyond those offer possibilities, including the other half of the ballroom and a large space with storefronts that face Broadway.

Looking ahead

Asher said that the center also plans to hold an occasional concert series on the street just outside the hotel. The building sits at one end of a block of Broadway that’s closed off for outdoor dining, and the barricaded end of the street creates an area suited for a stage. The center is pursuing grants to fund the concert series, she said.

The Center for Creativity will rely on a program manager to determine how best to accommodate programming from its many partner organizations.

“Maybe they’re offering classes certain times each week, or they come in for a one-time event, or they use it more frequently, but it is going to be shared space, so we’re going to try to have places for them to put their materials, but the different groups are going to be using it for different things, and we’re just starting to find out how they want to use it,” Asher said.

It will take around $300,000 to operate the temporary Center for Creativity over its time in the Hotel Sequoia, Asher said. At the start of April, the center had raised over $40,000 of that amount, thanks to a number of small donations and a series of art-making workshops that were fundraisers. Those classes have been well-attended, Asher noted.

“As the owners of the hotel, we do hope that the economic times will change such that in a couple of years, we can begin construction on a new hotel concept. But until then, we want the lights on and we want people to be inside and enjoying this building, activating it and loving it as much as we do. I wish people could see the before and after, because it’s a Renaissance, and all done with volunteer work. It’s amazing what a small group of really passionate people can accomplish,” Gasparini said.

The Center for Creativity, located at 800 Main St., Redwood City, opens May 3, 11 a.m.. For a full schedule of events, visit rwccfc.org/events.

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