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Very Important City Council Meeting on November 19th
Note: This is the second post in a series that focuses on the city planning for downtown affordable housing. The initial one can be viewed here.
It is already evident the City of Menlo Park (“City”) is feeling intense pressure to build at least 345 units of affordable housing in downtown by 2027, and this aggressive schedule is already causing the City to rush its planning efforts with no significant involvement of residents and local businesses. This is a crucial mistake, as residents, not a five-person city council, should ultimately decide the final design of this transformative project. And if the City plans are not acceptable to most residents, a ballot measure will be required.
In this post, I explain why I recommend the City initially provides developers a conservative “target” objective for the amount of parking that will be needed and then adjust this figure once a comprehensive parking study is completed. I also recommend three new planning policies, including one that places the highest priority on providing enough future public parking to support the future vitality of downtown, even if this means building fewer housing units than the City wants. I realize this will be controversial, but expect this will be essential to gaining resident support.
How Much Future Downtown Public Parking Will Our City Need?
The honest answer: At this point in time, it’s impossible to accurately estimate the total number of downtown public parking spaces that will be needed in the future, e.g. 2030 or 2035; however, the City should adopt the planning objective “to provide whatever number of convenient parking spaces that will best support an economically successful and appealing downtown”. To that end, the City should initially set an ambitious number of parking spaces as the target objective for developers to use to create alternative designs for the housing project.
So what would be a reasonable target objective? The City is planning to build new housing on Parking Plazas 1, 2 and 3, public land that currently provides a total of 556 parking spaces. This number can be used as a planning baseline. The City can then make reasonable assumptions about how parking capacity needs to grow over the next ten years. e.g., none, 5% or 10%, ( 556, 584, and 612 parking spaces). I recommend using the higher number as it would serve as a “stretch” target objective for developers and would reflect an optimistic but credible outlook for the future economic health of downtown.
What is the basis for this optimism? Menlo Park (and Atherton) residents are already demonstrating their desire for more fine dining restaurants in downtown, and FOUR upcoming business openings – Clark’s Seafood (2025), Loretta (2024), the Somm Wine Bar & Cafe (2025), and a Korean restaurant (TBD) – are strong evidence business owners recognize this opportunity. The City needs to recognize this trend and accept it will significantly increase the demand for public parking on both sides of Santa Cruz Avenue.
Current City Planning For Future Downtown Public Parking
Unfortunately, the City had not shown much concern about future public parking until city staff proposed a big change on November 14 . Before then, the City simply had a policy that would allow it to favor housing at the expense of public parking whenever a situation arose that requires such a trade-off.
“Downtown Vitality Policy: Development on the City-owned lots must balance the creation of affordable housing with maintaining adequate public parking to support downtown businesses and visitors.” (Source: Community Development Report, November 6, 2024 )
This City policy clearly would NOT protect the 556 public parking spaces that represent almost half of the 1185 total spaces in all eight downtown parking lots.
On November 14, city staff recommended that the affordable housing plan include a specific objective of 504 public parking spaces, and based this figure on a September audit of parking plaza occupancy rates. It claimed this amount would be sufficient in the future but did not explain the methodology it used to derive this figure, one that is 10% lower than existing parking.
“For the total (of existing) 556 spaces, these utilization patterns suggest a need to provide a minimum of 506 public parking spaces to serve existing peak demand across the three sites. The data is considered preliminary and might be refined as part of the downtown parking management study that will continue into 2025.”
The City Must Preserve At Least The Existing Amount of Downtown Public Parking (and likely must add even more).
I believe it would be both unreasonable and unfair to reduce the number of downtown public parking spaces, as so many people and businesses depend so heavily on them.
- Menlo Park residents expect and deserve a vibrant central business district.
. - Retail business owners would experience lower revenues, profits, and returns on their investments.
. - Downtown workers would lose income (reduced hours, lost jobs).
. - Building owners would experience more and longer vacancies which translate into lower property values and investment returns.
. - Reduced sales tax revenues would jeopardize city services and future investments in physical infrastructure, e.g., parks, streets, parking lots and residents likely would not agree to accept higher taxes that would fill the revenue gap.
Observations & Recommendations
- Observation #1: City Outreach To Businesses: In the morning of November 14, I attended an informational meeting where city staff presented its housing plans to more than thirty business and property owners. In its presentation city staff provided the City’s current policy for planning affordable housing that prioritizes housing over public parking. All business attendees predictably reacted with a mix of disbelief, anger and exasperation with both the City’s plans and its failure to not have already studied the future need for public parking. Attendees frequently interrupted the presenter who could not offer satisfying answers to most basic, common-sense questions. These individuals clearly believe the City is moving so fast to build affordable housing that it has neglected to fairly consider their concerns and needs. I encourage them to make comments at the November 19 council meeting.
. - Observation #2 – City Public Parking Objective. While I welcome the recent addition of a specific public parking objective to the affordable housing plan, I believe using the current plaza occupancy rates for Parking Plazas 1, 2 and 3 to make a projection for future parking requirements is a BIG mistake. (Note: city staff has not provided a persuasive justification for selecting an objective of at least 506 parking spaces; therefore, this pivotal assumption should not simply be accepted.) Instead, the City needs to develop credible assumptions for the future demand for parking.
It’s also disturbing and disappointing that the planning staff has not provided more information about ALL downtown parking plazas during every weekday, as insufficient future parking north of Santa Cruz Avenue would have a spillover effect on the other side (Plazas, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8). For example, the occupancy rate table the city published in 2009 is much more useful. Why not publish this table for September 2024 – 15 years later!
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- Recommendation #1 – New Public Parking Objectives & Policies
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The City adopt an initial “target” parking objective that is 10% above the existing total capacity of Parking Plaza 1, 2 & 3 (556 spaces) i.e., at least 610 spaces
The City also needs to adopt new policies for this project.
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Policy #1: The total amount of public parking spaces will not be sacrificed for the amount of housing, even if that were to mean fewer housing units.
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Policy #2: Every downtown business will have a reasonable amount of adjacent parking spaces.
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Policy #3: A minimum amount of parking spaces will be lost during construction.
. - Issue #1 – Convenient Parking Structures: The City will need at least one downtown parking structure and these need to be built BEFORE any affordable housing. In December 2020, Palo Alto completed a 636-space parking structure (Sherman Avenue) that cost $50.2M. That cost was $79,000 per space. (Note: In 2017, Palo had originally estimated its construction cost to be $34.2M.) If Menlo Park had simply replace its existing parking during that time, the estimated “ballpark” cost would have been 556 spaces x $79,000 = $43.9M. This equals $127,000 per of additional cost (subsidy) for each unit of affordable housing. Construction costs are now much higher and will continue to rise faster than the consumer price index (CPI) until Menlo Park actually completes one. What would be the City of Menlo Park ‘s share?
.. - Issue #2 – Surplus Land: I do not understand how the City can declare public land is not needed for City purposes, i.e., is surplus, and subsequently require a developer to provide public parking. Is that legal?
. - Issue #3 – Property Rights: The affordable housing feasibility study published in August states City agreements were made with some business owners between 1945 and 1964 that transferred private parking spaces to the City in return for the City maintaining them in public parking lots. It appears the City is now claiming these agreements were terminated in the 1980’s. Is there a sound legal basis for this City to make this claim? If not, how can the City declare this land to be” surplus” and lease it to a developer?
. - Issue #4: City Outreach To Businesses: On November 14, I attended an informational meeting where city staff presented its housing plans to more than thirty business and property owners. Betsey Nash, the council member who represents the downtown business district, also attended. In its presentation city staff provided the City’s current policy for planning affordable housing that prioritizes housing over public parking. All business attendees predictably reacted with a mix of disbelief, anger and exasperation with both the City’s plans and its failure to not have already studied the future need for public parking. Attendees frequently interrupted the presenter who could not offer satisfying answers to most basic, common-sense questions. These individuals clearly believe the City is moving so fast to build affordable housing that it has neglected to fairly consider their concerns and needs. I encourage them to make comments at the November 19 council meeting.
. - Issue #5 – Private Parking: Affordable housing households will need one or more vehicles. When will the City provide estimates for the number of private parking spaces that will be needed? Where will these likely be located?
Conclusion
While I support the idea of building affordable housing in Downtown Menlo Park, I oppose any City plan that would risk materially damaging the future health and appeal of our central retail district. That means, when it comes to making a trade-off between the amounts of housing and public parking, the highest priority should be placed on building enough public parking for business and property owners, residents and visitors; and the plan parking objective should be set higher and be flexible enough to accommodate a positive economic outlook for Menlo Park. It also means, possibly accepting less affordable housing.
Comments
I hope your comments will be an important part of this blog. To keep the discussion productive, please adhere to these guidelines or your submitted comment may be edited or removed.
– Avoid disrespectful, disparaging, snide, angry, or ad hominem comments.
– Stay fact-based and refer to reputable sources.
– Stay on topic.
– In general, maintain this as a welcoming space for everyone who comments.
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Do NOT remove parking from downtown! Look at what San Carlos did, as they lost a major parking lot to a huge condo complex…now finding parking in the
town is almost impossible, especially at noon.
We will lose retail businesses if there is no place to park for patrons and workers. This is a very bad idea!
We already have a damaged downtown retail district. One only need drive down Santa Cruz Ave and see all of the vacant storefronts. We have a downtown that is dying and ANY reduction of parking will hasten its demise. Not to mention the parking figured for the low income housing needs to be realistic. The idea that none of these people will have a car and will rely on public transportation is totally ridiculous. Many of them will have cars and if experience is any predictor there could be more than one car per apartment as people double and triple up to save on rent, further impacting parking pressure. Not allowing for realistic parking space for the low income housing is foolish. I urge the council to not make the mistake of effectively reducing available parking as you may be putting the final nail in the coffin of downtown retailers.