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Sunset Magazine site wrong for ‘megacomplex’
Menlo Park, a small bedroom community of some 30,000 people, prized by residents for its “village character,” is fast becoming an endangered species. Using the poison pill known as builders’ remedy designed by California’s feckless legislature, a Texas developer plans to erect multiple sky-high mega-complexes on the site of Sunset Magazine’s storied gardens and beautifully maintained headquarters.
Oisin Heneghan’s new real estate firm “N17”, plans to turn Menlo Park into Manhattan — and that’s only slightly hyperbolic. He actually hired the architect of the One World Trade Center in New York City, the seventh tallest building in the world, to design this gargantuan misfit for our suburb!
Sunset Magazine has only one-story buildings. Heneghan, along with the architect firm Skidmore, Ownings and Merrill — the World Trade Center guys — is proposing a 28-story 328-foot-high behemoth smack in the middle of Menlo Park, along with two others: a 22-story building, and a 15-story building housing labs doing “research” (one wonders exactly what this entails).
Did no one tell Mr. Heneghan that Menlo Park has nowhere near the infrastructure to support a 90,000 square-foot hotel and 280,000 square feet of office space, or that we already have too many offices, many of which are lying vacant? Or that this development would destroy the lovely Linfield Oaks neighborhood of single-family homes?
Texas is a big state, Mr. Heneghan. Surely you can find a suitable location there for your ambitious skyscraper project.
Cherie Zaslawsky
Oak Lane, Menlo Park
PG&E plan for solar panels fee raises questions
When I installed solar panels in 2001, the fixed charge to be connected to the grid was a little less than $5 per month. In 2015, PG&E decided that that wasn’t enough, and doubled it to a little less than $10 per month, where it stands today.
Now the utility is proposing to increase the fee to be connected to the grid to $15 for the poor, $30 for the lower middle class, $51 for the moderately wealthy and $92 for those families considered rich. These figures raise some questions. What is the true cost to be connected to the grid, and how is it calculated?
If the changes are intended to be revenue neutral to the utility, what will be the charge per kilowatt-hour, or is this just a scheme to increase PG&E’s revenue? How would these changes affect the payback for solar systems?
It seems possible that some customers would pay more in fixed fees than for consumption, like we do for our water bills. How does this encourage conservation?
Robert Cronin
Marmona Drive, Menlo Park
What is a home?
I read in the July 21 issue of The Almanac that state Sen. Scott Weiner is proposing to cover the coast’s Half Moon Bay area with housing (“How California’s housing crisis could weaken its coastal protections” by Ben Christopher).
Instead of covering California with MORE housing and adding to the disastrous effects of global warming and addressing the symptoms of the disease, why not heal/cure the disease? Get to the origin, the root, the foundation of the problem and destroy it once and for all?
Would it not be better to consciously and constantly be reminding ourselves and acknowledging what HOME spiritually represents? A short list would be: Peace, tranquility, harmony, beauty, gratitude, calmness, compassion, joy, happiness, safety, shelter, strength, vitality, encouragement, completeness, wholeness, purity, cleanliness, tidiness, perfection, health, integrity, honesty, gentleness. As we consciously hold these thoughts in our mind, we will experience them in our daily lives.
Jackie Leonard-Dimmick
Walnut Avenue, Atherton
Letters to the editor on topics of local interest must include the author’s name, street and city to be considered for publication. Send submissions to letters@almanacnews.com.
Letters to the editor on topics of local interest must include the author’s name, street and city to be considered for publication. Send submissions to letters@almanacnews.com.
Letters to the editor on topics of local interest must include the author’s name, street and city to be considered for publication. Send submissions to letters@almanacnews.com.
