Posted by Futurist, a resident of the Menlo Park: Downtown neighborhood, on Nov 23, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Build more housing downtown. Green house gases from local and long commutes are greatly reduced.

Our council, in it wisdom, is eliminating housing from the new downtown plan. They claim it will be too tall and diminish the 'village chracter'. We need people to show up at the council meetings and fight for more housing downtown, a fundamentally green feature.

Posted by SERF, a resident of another community, on Nov 25, 2011 at 8:25 am

This area lost it's "village" feeling before it began.

A truly good example of good planning was Westwood Village in West L.A. as designed by the Janss family who designated the property to UCLA and has kept the feeling of a place with culture and taste and near Bel Air and Holmby Hills....truly better designed with good taste and grand homes and strong police force.

The peninsula is a poor comparison unless one examines the design origins of Stanford University and where the monies and architecture originated.

Posted by height isn't the problem, a resident of the Menlo Park: Allied Arts/Stanford Park neighborhood, on Nov 25, 2011 at 10:57 am

The issue isn't height. The reason there won't be much housing is that the new plan allows a lot more office buildings than what can be built now. Those give developers more profits than housing or stores. The council could limit offices to current allowed levels but cares more for whatever developers want than for what keeps Menlo Park a residential community

Posted by Menlo Voter, a resident of the Menlo Park: other neighborhood, on Nov 25, 2011 at 12:11 pm

If office space made money the building at the corner of Watkins and El Camino wouldn't still be sitting empty and the same developer wouldn't have had the old Gaylord's property foreclosed on.

Posted by height isn't the problem, a resident of the Menlo Park: Allied Arts/Stanford Park neighborhood, on Nov 25, 2011 at 2:28 pm

MV - really? Since Stanford kicked out its medical tenants on Welch Rd, demand has been high for medical offices. Perhaps that developer wasn't managed well? Perhaps the building design isn't suitable? Perhaps the rent is too high?

My comment was about the long haul and the fact that to a developer office space is more profitable than housing or stores . Not much development is happening right now anywhere but that will pick up as the economy does and as credit loosens.