|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The city of Menlo Park has determined that a controversial proposal to redevelop the historic Sunset Magazine campus at 80 Willow Road does not qualify for streamlined approval under AB 2011 and may also fall short of the requirements needed to invoke the state’s builder’s remedy.
In its decision, the city said the project cannot use AB 2011’s ministerial fast track process and must instead go through full discretionary review, which includes a California Environmental Quality Act study and public hearings. The city also said the project may not qualify as a builder’s remedy submission, which is a separate state pathway that developers can use when a city lacks a state certified housing element. Menlo Park did not have an approved housing plan during portions of the application period, raising the stakes of that determination.
Builder’s remedy allows a developer to propose significantly more height and density than local zoning permits as long as, among other things, the project meets the state definition of a housing development project. That definition requires that at least two-thirds of the floor area consist of housing and prohibits hotels in alternative qualifying categories. In its determination letter, the city found that only about 61 percent of the project’s square footage is residential and noted that the plan includes a 130 room hotel. Staff concluded that those factors prevent the project from meeting the statutory threshold needed to qualify for builder’s remedy.
The distinction is significant. If the project is not eligible for builder’s remedy, it must comply with all local zoning standards, including Menlo Park’s 40 foot height limit on the site and a 30 to 40 unit per acre density range. The proposal currently includes buildings up to 458 feet in height and a density of nearly 100 units per acre. If the city’s interpretation holds, the scale of the project could be reduced dramatically.
Mayor Drew Combs previously described the proposal as possibly “the most provocative” builder’s remedy project proposed in California, given its size, mixture of uses and high profile location along San Francisquito Creek.
The project, proposed by N17 Development, is one of the largest redevelopment plans ever filed in the city. It includes four towers between 301 and 458 feet, 665 housing units with 100 below market rate units, a hotel, 301,000 square feet of office space, retail, a preschool, a fitness and swim club and an outdoor common area.
The 80 Willow Road site was the longtime home of Sunset Magazine and was recently listed in the California Register of Historical Resources following a petition by the Menlo Park Historical Society. The building was constructed in 1951 and became a well known showcase of Western architecture and lifestyle design.
In addition to its builder’s remedy findings, the city ruled that the project does not meet several requirements of AB 2011. Staff said the C-1 zoning district does not allow office, retail or parking as principally permitted uses, which is a baseline requirement for AB 2011 eligibility. The city also said the project does not comply with AB 2011’s standards for the distribution and configuration of affordable units, noting that the proposal does not match bedroom and bathroom ratios between market rate and below market rate homes and places many affordable units on lower floors.
Other findings relate to height, density and site design. The city said no list of requested density bonus waivers was provided, preventing staff from determining whether the proposed height could qualify for an exception under state law. Staff also noted that buildings appear to be set back more than 10 feet from the sidewalk and that parking is located within 25 feet of the property line along Willow Road and Middlefield Road.
The determination means the 80 Willow Road project must move through the standard review process with no ministerial entitlements under AB 2011. Without builder’s remedy eligibility, the city retains full authority to enforce zoning, height limits and development standards unless future revisions or legal interpretations change the project’s status.
At the same time, the city ruled the project is not consistent with several standards in Menlo Park for the third time since the project was proposed two years ago.
The city approved a contract for CEQA review of the project at a cost of $900,000 but the developer has yet to pay the down payment to start the review process. The review is estimated to take 17 months.
Any finding which scuttles or outright kills this project as currently proposed is a good thing for the neighborhood, for the city of Menlo Park and for the surrounding area. I support housing on this site if it must be redeveloped but N17’s “vision” for the property is, as I’ve stated elsewhere, a Russian-funded clown car of a fool’s errand of a clown car, to paraphrase Woody Allen.
Yay, Menlo Park city government! Every so often they hit it out of the park!
Thank you city staff and elected officials! This project cannot be allowed to proceed. It would be a disaster for residents for miles surrounding the project, for traffic, and for the environment.
You know people who live in high rise buildings consume about half of the resources (electricity, gas, water, etc.) as those who live in single family homes.
Think about that next time you are driving to the gym instead of walking downstairs to the fitness facility in your development.
No one is proposing single-family homes here. So the comparison is irrelevant in this case.
Thank you, Menlo Park! What doesn’t get discussed much is the proximity of San Francisquito Creek to the extraordinarily tall buildings (compare to Hoover Tower’s 285 feet). Wonder if the occasionally raging creek would affect the foundations…. And the traffic would be horrendous both for MP and PA.
If only there were geotechnical, hydrologist and structural engineers required to sign off on the project 😉
Menlo Park NIMBY hypocrisy is alive and well. “We absolutely want more housing—just not on this pathetic, weed‑choked lot with its 70‑year‑old corpse of a building, and certainly not on that sacred asphalt shrine we call a parking lot.” Any project that might pass their purity test would be commercially dead-on arrival. But that won’t stop them from moaning that top‑tier developers avoid Menlo Park, leaving only the young “foolish” ones. Cue the whining about the provenance of those who try.
Meanwhile, the state’s logic is apparently too advanced for local brains. Imagine passing a law that strips cities of permitting rights under Builder’s Remedy, only to let those same cities decide if projects qualify. Of course, they didn’t do that—the builder can appeal under the Housing Accountability Act (HAA). And since square footage math is a choose‑your‑own‑adventure (hallways, stairwells, lobbies, etc.), we’ll see how that objection shakes out.
Finally, hypocrisy in high office. Our Senator Josh Becker cheered on Builder’s Remedy, then turned around and floated a bill to carve out Menlo Park. The proposal was so laughably self‑serving it didn’t even make it to a vote.
Only a feckless, anonymous, self-evident N17 troll would characterize the Sunset campus as a “pathetic, weed‑choked lot with its 70‑year‑old corpse of a building,” while being completely ignorant of the fact that “top‑tier developers” will be moving ahead with large-scale residential and commercial redevelopments of the SRI and USGS campuses in the very near future. Builder’s Remedy is a sham, as is your seeming, confused defense of it.
I am not disagreeing with you about the Builder’s Remedy. To me it’s more the hypocrisy of our community and of Senator Josh Becker voting for it then wanting it to only apply only to other towns. I wish he would have stood up and voted against every housing element bill including the Builders Remedy.
I would say the jury is still out on SRI/Parkline and the USGS developments. Last I read over 30% of the profitable commercial space got axed from Parkline plan.
I have zero financial interest in any of these projects and have no ties other than paying property tax in Menlo Park. I do think that a dense walkable oasis of housing and recreation would make for a nice community experience where you don’t have to drive every day and you have more interaction with your neighbors. It is one way to reduce urban sprawl and the “we need another lane” road sprawl.
@Self Evident,
My take is a little different than yours. Senator Becker realized what a horribly negative poster child 80 Willow was for housing reform (3,000 jobs, only 665 housing units), more specifically SB330, and decided to try to clean it up. Very similar to how the CEQA-delayed new housing at UC Berkeley (students = noise pollution) has become a catalyst to mitigate the sweeping overreach of CEQA.
ps: I thought the negotiated 30% reduction in commercial space at Parkline/SRI, as well as the addition of more housing (eventually 31% affordable) was a reasonable compromise and model for what developers should be doing given the added people density of office space today (vs. the SRI labs from 50 years), the current office vacancy rates and the housing needs of the city.
Menlo Park’s approved Housing Element includes plans for sensible housing throughout the city. The problem occurred because the state changed the rules — without informing the cities — this last round. Instead of approving city’s submitted HEs, as it had in the past, it repeatedly rejected them on technicalities, leaving a window for greedy developers — who don’t live in or care about Menlo Park — to propose skyscrapers in modest single family home/commercial areas. You people are profit-driven, not community-driven.
I attended a state senate Housing Commission meeting in Sacramento, where the senators acknowledged that the Builders Remedy approach was seriously flawed, but also that they were beholden to the developers who fund their campaigns.
Who should decide what a city looks like? The people who live and work in it, or Sacramento politicians and non-local developers looking at their bank accounts? Let’s not pretend that this is about making housing affordable. People who meet the income levels for affordable housing cannot afford the rents in these expensive new buildings, even if those rents are discounted by 10%!