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Editor,
As a former mayor of Menlo Park who has both denied and approved residential and office projects, I notice that the theme never changes. Traffic and noise continue to be the top concerns as our city grows. At the same time, we say we care about the high rents and minimal opportunities for current and new residents. We want to be the kind of people who look for fair and humane solutions for the city’s lack of affordable housing.
Parkline development on the SRI campus is definitely a traffic nightmare, but the bigger problem is that the project is fundamentally an office development and it adds to the city’s housing crunch. The number of office workers in the million square foot office component could range between 4,000 and 7,000 depending on who the tenants are. A law office with corner offices and plush conference rooms requires 250+ square feet per employee and a tech company with an open floor plan squeezes employees in at 150 square feet per employee? The developer says it doesn’t know who its tenant target is and needs flexibility. However, the city needs certainty to plan for traffic control, road design and fire protection for the office workers.
Years ago, Menlo Park attracted large tech companies with thousands of office workers. In 2011, Facebook predicted 20,000 employees and soon that number grew to 35,000. Even with the remote work practice, housing became scarce. Desperate for affordable housing are low-paid workers such as nannies, gardeners, dog walkers, housekeepers, janitors, restaurant workers, journalists, auto mechanics, retail clerks, food delivery drivers and teacher’s aides, all who enhance the lives of our well-paid residents. Demand for homes excites landlords who see a financial opportunity, to raise rents and serve eviction notices. Displacement is real.
This is a 1 million square foot office development that includes housing, but 800 units can’t meet the housing needed for 4,000 to 7,000 Parkline office workers in the five office buildings. The proposed 800 residential units could house 1,600 people, but where will the remaining Parkline office workers find homes? This deficit will increase our state housing requirement and the endless treadmill rolls on.
Does this housing project even meet the city’s targeted demographic? The market and below market units are pricey. If your annual income is $149,760 you will qualify for a $3,600 studio and if your annual income is $182,360, you can rent a one-bedroom unit for $4,400. The required annual income goes up for the two- and three-bedroom units with the 16 plush townhouse requiring an annual income of $415,000 to meet the $10,000 monthly rent. The low-income units will rent for not much less. These high rents eliminate the very people who have been squeezed out of housing opportunities since Menlo Park opened its doors to office developers.
The city could have begun the Parkline approval process by using the existing agreement that SRI signed many years ago limiting the number of employees on the campus to 3,308. This cap would assure a smaller office complex and less pressure on the housing demand. Why not use this long standing cap of employees; approve a smaller office park, increase the housing; make the project a jobs/housing neutral project?
Housing advocates and the City Council have worked tirelessly to meet the state’s housing requirement. The next step is up to the council to make Parkline a balanced development. The city should not approve any project that is ill defined. Reduce the office by half; make SRI commit to business, tech or lab office; identify and bring to the table the mixed-income housing developer; reconfirm the long-standing employee cap.
Times have changed. Housing is needed; office is not. One is good; the other bad. Get the state of California off our backs by creating more housing. We can be the people we want to be, but our council must use its authority and deny this project. Why settle for an office development when people need homes?
Steve Schmidt,
Former Mayor of Menlo Park
Well said Steve! The housing element is poorly conceived and disproportionately adds housing to neighborhoods that are already close to the highest density; why not build housing in the lowest density neighborhoods? As a reminder Menlo Park has a golf course and why housing is not being added there another than it being a preserved “open space”! City council please set an equitable standard for our community so we all take the burden.
Schmidt gets it.
Neither the region nor Menlo Park needs more office buildings. There are thousands of empty offices. Why on earth would the council approve more office space, especially when the recent environmental studies show that the project would worsen the current shortage of housing – even with 800 units?
Past city councils put strict limits on the number of workers allowed on SRI’s site. Those limits were lowered in the past when SRI land was used for other purposes. There should be no exception to this wise mechanism now. This city council needs to reduce the project’s amount of office space and to establish a new, lower limit on the number of workers allowed on site.
At this point no construction project should even be considered if it is not housing positive. By that I mean they need to be building more housing than they need to cover the employees in any included office space. It cannot even be a break even on housing versus Office Space because we are already in a housing deficit. Personally I would say that no more office space should be approved in Menlo Park until we have come into a positive housing situation but that may not be feasible. At the very least any new development has to have more housing than it has space for employees so that we don’t find ourselves in a worse situation.
At a state level the builders remedy law needs to be completely changed to only allow Builders remedy in cases that are 100% housing and at least 25% low income housing. If they intend on sneaking any office space into the development it should be strictly forbidden from using Builder’s remedy.
There is no end in sight. A project proposed under “builder’s remedy” for the former Sunset property proposes more offices and a huge hotel. We have yet to see what the developers plan for the former USGS building on Middlefield. Developers can not make their ambitious projects work without the returns from office buildings. I’d like to think we as a city are smart enough to figure out how to respond but state and federal laws might create obstacles to rational planning.