Sequoia Station Lost Its Bookstore. Redwood City's Book Life Moved Down Broadway.

In its final weeks, the Barnes & Noble at Sequoia Station looked busier than it had in years. Books, music and games were 40% off, magazines were 30% off, and assistant manager Val de Leon told Redwood City Pulse that "we're seeing more business than Christmas." The landlord had asked the store to leave 1091 El Camino Real by Sept. 16. Staff had believed the lease ran until January 2027, so the notice caught them off guard. The store had been there 33 years. It drew Caltrain commuters from the platform next door and Sequoia High School students who came by after class.

Barnes & Noble's store locator now lists the Redwood City store as closed and sends shoppers to San Mateo. The closing tells you a lot about where Sequoia Station is headed, and about why Redwood City's bookshelves now sit on Broadway.

A rent negotiation, then a new tenant

The bookstore didn't leave to make room for bulldozers. Curtis Leigh, a principal at Hunter Properties, which owns the center, told the San Mateo Daily Journal that the two sides had spent a long time trying to renew the lease at a rent closer to market rate. In the end, he said, both decided it was "time to move on from each other." He added that Hunter "would love to have had the bookstore stay."

The space already had a new tenant lined up. Party Teller, a party supply company that stocks seasonal goods for every holiday from Halloween to the Fourth of July, is taking it. The Daily Journal reported it would move in before the holiday season. Party Teller has long supplied other retailers, including the now-closed Party City, and Redwood City will be its first Northern California storefront. The company's own store list still shows only Gilroy, Brentwood and San Jose, so it's best to treat the Sequoia Station store as coming soon.

This deal fits the strategy Hunter laid out in July 2025. Leigh told Redwood City Pulse then that the company was renovating the center and filling empty spaces, and that most new tenants wanted 10-year leases. He said Redwood City could expect no major redevelopment at Sequoia Station for the next eight to 12 years. After that, he said, "we'll see what the market bears."

The first returning tenant was a familiar name. Yumi Yogurt had closed after 35 years in Redwood City, according to Redwood City Pulse, and reopened at 1019 El Camino Real inside Sequoia Station on Sept. 28, 2025, as Sequoia High's Raven Report noted. A frozen yogurt shop and a holiday party store are both errand stops. Neither is the kind of place you settle into for an hour.

How a plan for 631 homes turned into a long hold

The large mixed-use redevelopment many residents still picture comes from an earlier owner and an earlier plan. Here's the sequence:

1. October 2021. Lowe Enterprises and Eden Housing submitted revised plans for the 12-acre site. They called for 631 homes, 170,000 square feet of retail including new Safeway and CVS stores, and 53,000 square feet of plazas and open space, as Redwood City Pulse reported.
2. Nov. 28, 2022. The City Council approved Transit District amendments to the General Plan and Downtown Precise Plan, along with a supplemental environmental impact report. The city describes these changes as enabling redevelopment of the Transit Center and Sequoia Station.
3. December 2023. Hunter Properties bought the shopping center for $53 million.
4. July 2025. Hunter said it would focus on renovation and re-tenanting, with the breezeway and new outdoor seating outside the southwest wing as the next phase.
5. July 2026. Barnes & Noble got its notice to vacate, and Party Teller was named as the replacement.

The city's 2022 action made redevelopment possible under the plans. It didn't approve any specific project, and the owner who holds the site today has said it plans to lease it out for about a decade first. If the new vendors get the ten-year leases Hunter said most were seeking, the stores around the Caltrain station could stay largely as they are for years.

Where the chain shelves went instead

Barnes & Noble is still growing. The Daily Journal reported that the company planned 60 new stores nationwide this year, including Bay Area openings in Cupertino and Fremont. Neither is on the Peninsula. On the Peninsula itself, the chain has been shrinking. San Bruno closed in May. The Hillsdale Shopping Center store in San Mateo, the one Barnes & Noble's locator now suggests to Redwood City shoppers, is slated for eventual demolition under a proposed redevelopment. Burlingame, which opened in October 2023, is the other remaining store nearby.

The bookstore team told Redwood City Pulse it wanted to stay in town, ideally in a space of at least 5,000 square feet. De Leon named the former Rite Aid at 340 Woodside Plaza as her first choice. No new lease has been announced there.

Redwood City's bookshelves on Broadway

For now, buying a book in Redwood City means heading to Broadway, where three local, mostly small operations have taken on what one chain store used to cover.

Fireside Books & More comes closest to filling the gap. Its 2,104-square-foot shop sits on Broadway near the Caltrain station, in a space that used to house an electronics repair shop and a marketing agency, according to Redwood City Pulse. That puts it in the same train-station foot traffic the old Barnes & Noble relied on. Alongside the books it sells birdhouses from LeighLee's Garden in Half Moon Bay and prints and jewelry from Redwood City's Wandergrove. Johnson, who named the store after a bookshop in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, told the Pulse when it opened, "I want people to come down here, I want them to eat at one of our great restaurants, I want them to get a scoop of ice cream, and I want them to come to the bookstore."

Encore Books is a smaller, more occasional stop, and sources list its hours differently. The Daily Journal describes it as open once a week for five hours on Saturdays. A Peninsula visitor listing gives Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. A quick call to the museum before you go is a good idea. The Friends of the Redwood City Public Library keep their resale shelves in the Downtown Library lobby. Their larger special sales happen occasionally and are announced by email.

The book calendar into December

The bigger change is the programming. A national chain store hosts the occasional signing, while Fireside fills its calendar with recurring gatherings. October alone included a Silent Book Club, a launch party for Serentripity, a release party for the sixth book in the ACOTAR series, and a Creative Hour + Social. Those dates have passed, but the formats keep coming back, and November and December dates will appear on the shop's events page. The shop also lists author talks, poetry nights and book-club meetups as regular events.

The Redwood City Public Library's events calendar runs its own book clubs and children's reading-club sessions each month.

Two seasonal events add to the Broadway stretch. The 11th annual ART on the Square Holiday Show takes over the San Mateo County History Museum at 2200 Broadway on Saturday, Nov. 21, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It's free, and more than 25 artists are expected, per the city calendar. That's the same building as Encore Books, so the two fit in one visit. Then on Saturday, Dec. 12, the city's Hometown Holidays brings a parade, a tree lighting and vendors downtown, roughly 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The city notes that details are still tentative.

Between those two Saturdays, Party Teller is expected to be selling holiday decorations in the old Barnes & Noble space, and Fireside will be the bookstore closest to the Caltrain platform.

For homeowners near downtown, changes like these, from long-term tenants at Sequoia Station to the shops along Broadway, affect how buyers see the streets around the station. If you'd like to know how they apply to your property, Adela Gildo-Mazzon can walk you through it. Request a Confidential Home Valuation.