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A group of Menlo Park residents has formed a new nonprofit to breathe life into the city’s downtown. The Downtown Menlo Fund aims to raise money for beautification projects, support local businesses and help bring back the sense of community that once defined Santa Cruz Avenue.
The fund — created by Laura Melahn, Marnie Foody, Ben Eiref and Paul Charrette — hopes to make downtown more welcoming through simple but visible improvements like new planters, street banners and coordinated events. Their vision is to turn the corridor between El Camino Real and University Drive into a lively gathering place where neighbors meet, shop and spend time together.
The idea gained momentum earlier this year when the Menlo Park City Council made downtown revitalization as one of its top priorities.
“I think it’s been an evolution. Our team kind of came together, came together over time. But I think that the big turning point was when the city put downtown vibrancy as a priority goal for the year. I think that was really the city putting a flag in the ground that we care about downtown and we want to do this,” said Melahn. “Residents want downtown to be vibrant and fun. We’re trying to be a little bit of an organizing function, like a boat that everyone can jump on.”
Melahn moved to Menlo Park’s Allied Arts neighborhood in 2020. She said she found strong neighborhood connections but felt something missing at the city level.
“On the very micro level, we have the most amazing community I’ve ever experienced, where we have block parties every Friday, and it’s a super engaged community,” she said. “At the intermediate level of downtowns, local governments, and cities, there’s a little bit of a gap of ways for people to engage. … you get to this question of I want my town to feel good and connected, and there’s not really a way for people to just kind of sign up and be like, ‘I love Menlo Park and let’s do it together.’ So that’s kind of the space we’re trying to create.”
The Downtown Menlo Fund is a tax-deductible foundation under the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The founders see the nonprofit as a way to fund simple, high-impact projects to create a welcoming downtown for the city.
Foody, another founding member, said the idea grew out of conversations among residents who saw potential in Menlo Park’s central district but wanted to make that potential visible.
“I retired in May of 2024 and I’ve been living in Menlo Park for about 28 or 30 years, and I always felt our downtown had great potential, but it was unfulfilled,” said Foody, whose background is in architecture and development. “Our focus, our mission, is to revitalize downtown. We see three major buckets. The first being beautification, how to make it more attractive than what it is … then eventually into the streetscape. The second is building out strong businesses, and the third is that people don’t go downtown to buy Kleenex or school supplies. They go downtown to engage with other people.”
The group is starting small with what Melahn called “high-visibility, low-cost” projects.
“We’re looking to one, put flags up and down the street; two, banners on the big street pillars,” Foody said. “This will start to create a branding, an identification, an awareness that Menlo Park is there, and an awareness of our group. And then we’re going to replant all the planters. We’re starting in block one, which is El Camino to Doyle Street, and as we get more money, we can work our way down the block.”
Foody said other Peninsula cities already have community funds that help fill gaps between what city budgets can provide and what residents want to see.
“Most of the towns up and down the Peninsula now have a community fund of some sort,” she said. “The cost of operations for cities has risen faster than the revenue. So that’s where these community funds have been stepping in to provide the nice things, not necessarily the necessities, but the nice things that might be missing.”
The Downtown Menlo Fund has begun fundraising under the Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s umbrella, which contributed a starter amount. Foody’s son also contributed, in addition to unsolicited donations from other sources.
The group is also helping local merchants form a new Business Association to strengthen coordination between shops and restaurants downtown.
“There is no business association currently, which is a gaping hole,” Foody said.
While Menlo Park already has the smaller Menlo Park Design District, the two groups plan to collaborate. “We hope to build with them so we’re stronger together, and so we’re one downtown,” Foody said.
Menlo Park had a chamber of commerce but it dissolved in 2023 due to financial issues caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Melahn said the association will help businesses align on marketing, communication, and events. “A structure like a business association aligns people just by the nature of existing,” she said. “It’s a really interesting time to be a local business owner in the world … coming together as a group and having shared resources and thoughts on those sorts of things could be one example of something they do.”
The Downtown Menlo Fund has looked to the Los Altos Village Association as a model. That group, founded in 1970, supports two full-time staff and a full calendar of community events.
“They beautify, they help with keeping things clean, and they are a singular voice to work with the city,” Foody said. “Things like permitting can be really hard for small businesses, take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and if you’ve never gone through it before, it’s a really big learning curve. So that’s something where our group can lend expertise and help new businesses through that process.”
The founders see their work as complementary to the city’s own efforts and neutral on political issues. Over the past year, discussion of downtown Menlo Park has been dominated by controversy over affordable housing planned in Menlo Park’s housing element for the downtown parking lots.
“We are neutral on the housing element,” Foody said. “We want to work with everybody. Whatever the outcome is, we’ll work with whoever that may be. But we are just focused on a revitalization of Santa Cruz Avenue and tying into El Camino.”
In the long term, the nonprofit could help fund or coordinate projects with the city, such as public art or plaza improvements. “There are ideas for projects, and it comes from the community, the city, the business,” Foody said. “It might be let’s build out public art projects, and then we would go out and fundraise and help to bring forward the funds needed.”
The group’s defined area follows the city’s central business district — El Camino Real between Valparaiso and Middle Avenue, including Springline and Middle Plaza, and Santa Cruz Avenue down to University Drive.
Melahn said residents will likely start seeing visible signs of the group’s work soon. “We’re working on a holiday campaign that might come together for the first banners and planters work,” she said. “We have our website up and are open to engaging with people already.”
Beyond beautification and coordination, the founders hope the effort helps rekindle a sense of togetherness after years of pandemic isolation.
“I think that from the business perspective, you see that in the economics of downtowns, but it really has changed the way people operate in the world too,” Melahn said. “Doing what we can to help change habits, to make the default thought not be, ‘I’m going to stay in my house because it’s easy,’ but, ‘There’s always something cool going on downtown.’”
Foody said other cities’ experiences show how community events can strengthen civic life.
“Speaking to my friends who live in Los Altos, they said the number of community engagement events has materially changed the feeling in the town,” she said. “It feels more neighborly, and it’s increased home values. It’s increased the businesses. They do not have a vacancy problem.”
Melahn said she hopes residents feel inspired to join in.
“I want people to take away a sense of, ‘Oh, yay, I was wanting downtown Menlo Park to feel good in these ways,’” she said. “How can I contribute? That’s been the takeaway.”
I love the idea of projects to improve Downtown Menlo Park and would love more community engagement downtown! It is peculiar, however, to see the group claim it is neutral on the housing element when Ms. Foody is talking about these projects as designed for “increased home values” and certain merchandise on the fund’s website has the exact same graphic design pattern as the anti-housing “Save Downtown Menlo” group. Is this about engaging the community or shutting certain people out of Menlo Park?