Centennial

Centennial is probably one of the least expensive places to live in the Peninsula—at least if we only consider the southern reaches of the Peninsula. The average home here is around $500 K as far as I can tell.

Centennial looks very much like a middle-class neighborhood. The homes here are a little bit on the worn side, having mostly been built in the 1940s and 1950’s as far as I can tell. This is a pick-up truck and mini-van neighborhood with lots of families and hardworking folks. It is the kind of area where you see kids play things, play areas and bicycles in front yards and where you see small groups of children playing. (Sometimes without the parents immediately visible on the day that I visited this neighborhood.)

The nicest area of this neighborhood is north of Whipple. The homes here are quieter and generally more well-kept than in on the southern end of Centennial.

The southern end of the neighborhood does have a really good park however. Mezes Park has really nice tennis courts, a good basketball court and great play area for small kids. This is definitely a plus for those with kids or who want to stay in shape without paying gym membership fees.

Centennial is also fairly centrally located with the Downtown area just to the south and the Redwood City Caltrain station within walking distance of the southern part of the neighborhood and biking distance of the northern end.

I’m not sure which school actually serves this neighborhood. There are some in the area that I hear are really great but then there are others which are pretty middle of the road overall. That would make a big difference in terms of deciding to live here with kids, especially if we were thinking of moving here for the long term.

One thing I do know is the high school—Redwood High School—is pretty awful with an API of 2 out of 10. I did a bit of research and found out that Redwood High School is also consistently missing its growth targets year after year—so it looks like a pretty bad situation.

That makes it a real drawback to live in this neighborhood.

Lying within the outskirts of downtown Redwood City, Centennial is an exclusively residential and yet stringently lower middle-class community with little to no appeal. It only offers mild neighborhood aesthetics and a housing community not worth bragging about. Geographically speaking, the neighborhood is bounded by El Camino, Brewster Avenue, Veterans Boulevard and G Street to which spans about 0.6 square miles of residential terrain. Within it is a community that is densely populated, consisting of about 3,000 residents in its small space. Of those, 45% are white and 40% are hispanic (15% are mixed raced), making for a somewhat diverse community.

If you want to live cheaply and within walking distance to downtown Redwood City, this might be the neighborhood for you. But I suggest against it. Homes are rather old, bland and tightly clustered along residential blocks. They are largely one-story eyesores with shallow and/or thin driveways and pathetic front yards. Moreover, house fronts are dull at best and sometimes have little front porches for people watching (if people are actually walking by) or small white picket fences encircling the property. For perspective residents, the bulk of homes are priced between $500,000 to $750,000, while median household incomes circle around $50,000/year (10K below the city’s average). And if you’re looking to rent, there are some unattractive duplexes and two-story apartment buildings located closer to Brewster Avenue. These rents can range from $900 to $1,100/month, but aren’t worth the price tag.

The community’s only good attribute is its proximity to downtown Redwood City. For commuters, Broadway Caltrain skirts the southern edge of the community and provides a great public transit option for those traveling up and down the San Francisco peninsula. If you keep traveling east, you’ll come across the lengthy slough system that makes up an uninhabited marshland. It is also officially considered part of the larger Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge and provides acres of preserved natural hiking terrain (if you’re into that sort of thing).