Foster City: Once Awful, now Admirable

View of the houses across the lagoon from our neighborhood

Foster City gets some love from Peter Hartlaub, the Chronicle's culture critic:

The Bay Area, a land where natural beauty confronts us on nearly every hill and bend in the road, had a condescending reaction to the Peninsula’s first planned community...But I recently returned at reader request — exploring by bike, foot and personal watercraft — and discovered a small town filled with appeal and outdoor fun...

As we weave around a bit drunkenly [on a kayak] through the lagoons, Foster City’s appeal emerges. The backs of homes face the water with beautiful succulent gardens, colorful play structures and easy access to launch a paddleboard, kayak or small electric boat. We see scores of small watercraft at every turn...

I cruise by [on a bicycle] Foster City’s suburban Eichler homes — there are more than 200 of the low-slung modernist residences created by famed developer Joseph Eichler (far from Temko’s “crass and anarchic” corporate construction) — and find Brewer Island Elementary, with its endearing New England architecture and a kid-size widow’s walk. We keep running into the city’s 24 parks. Erckenbrack Park with its small playground and beach, far east of Leo J. Ryan Park and well inside the labyrinth, is a great picnic spot.

But the best detour is Foster City’s new nearly 2-mile seawall that my colleague John King wrote about, which now frames the city with an elevated bike and pedestrian path.

Its new $90 million seawall and goose-poop problem have made the news, but it's nice that our town of 33,000 is being appreciated for the simple pleasures of living here.