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While the opinion piece by Mr. Beltramo hit on some important aspects of our downtown situation (Nov. 28), I’m afraid that his passion to stop the conversion of our parking lots into housing has caused him to obfuscate the real issues.
When visitors come to see me in my offices in downtown Menlo Park, they often remark that they’re surprised to see how rundown Santa Cruz Avenue has become. I’m not. For a generation, the city council has occupied itself with national and internation events but never with its own backyard. It’s a pity.
I love Menlo Park. I’ve had a home and an office here for 35 years, and I’ve watched what has taken — or rather — not taken place. While almost every downtown area around us — Burlingame to Los Altos — has been updated and beautified, Menlo Park’s downtown has languished. Pitiful attempts to spruce it up — remember the pop-up park? — have done little and now the city and shop owners are now paying the price of ineptitude and indifference.
Downtown is unkempt, the infrastructure is old and failing, the sidewalks are broken and filthy, the town is a growing magnet for transients and homeless, news boxes are dirty and broken, the plantings are amateurish and trite, “temporary” plastic store signs have become the norm. All in all, it’s a mess.
The disinterest in the care of our downtown creates a cycle: As the quality of the area falls, fewer people come to downtown. As fewer people come downtown, more stores fail, and as more stores fail and are replaced by empty storefronts, even fewer people want to make the trip downtown. I’m worried that we are headed for oblivion.
That there are now a frightening and growing number of empty storefronts should therefore not be a surprise. While other downtowns are bustling, ours is failing.
Menlo Park city councils are famous for studying things to death and then making the wrong decision. Recently, it spent over $165,000 for one more survey to tell them what is wrong with downtown. I could have told them, for no charge whatsoever, what is wrong: our city council.
Sloane Citron
Menlo Park
Spot on.
We should learn from the cities around us. A visit to Castro Street in Mountain View should be instructive.
Thank you for your article and for voicing an opinion that most are afraid to state. The state of our downtown clearly reflects our council’s lack of leadership and care for our overall community. The continuous payments to the same company the M-Group, for studies are also questionable. The Menlo Park council should be representing the residents, not the special-interest non-profit promoting housing in the downtown parking lots.
Contributing Opinion Writer is right that parking lots are not the problem, nor are they the solution to downtown Menlo Park. Saving parking lots to ‘save downtown’ is a waste of energy. Downtown desperately needs renovation – which housing can be part of.
Housing is not a ‘special interest’; it’s something Menlo Park has to provide in order to avoid our land being grabbed and overbuilt by foreign oligarchs (see ’80 Willow’). If we want control over our land use, we can’t leave it open to the ‘Builder’s Remedy’. What we can do is redesign and rebuild a functional, attractive downtown including housing (and excluding M-Group!).
Sure, housing can be a part of it, but not low and very low income housing. The people living in very low income housing don’t have the disposable income to support our downtown.
Thank you for starting this conversation, Sloane. It is important to say this, and we can discuss it without taking sides on the parking lot/housing issue. The analysis paralysis by the city council is painful to watch, as they dither away time and money needed to act. The Guild is helping make Menlo Park an evening destination, and many great restaurants are trying to make it work here. But the overall experience after stepping out of a car (your own, or a shared ride), is not pleasant. In addition to the reasons Sloane cites, the streets and parking lots surrounding Santa Cruz are dark, there are offset stop signs and crosswalks, and there is nothing attracting people to stroll the street. We need more lighting and more unifying experiences to get people out in the daytime and at night.
Sloane is absolutely correct. I have lived in MP for over 31 years and watched as the downtown has slowly decayed. In large part due to absentee landlords that have no interest in what happens to the downtown. They have a ridiculously low tax base, so they can sit on the vacant properties asking insane rents for a long time. They don’t care. There’s virtually no down side for them. They pay low taxes and the land and buildings continue to appreciate in value. What needs to happen is the owners need to be made to care. I’m not sure how that happens. Maybe start fining the owners for the appearance of their properties or create some kind of tax for leaving a property vacant for too long.
If the property owners had some actual skin in the game they might start caring that their buildings look like crap.
In addition to doing something to make the property owners care, the city needs to start taking better care of the downtown. Sidewalks need to be power washed regularly. Damaged sidewalks need to be repaired. Lighting needs to be improved, especially in the parking lots. The dated appearance of city structures need to be updated so at least part of the downtown doesn’t look like its stuck in the 70’s.
Lastly, the parking lots need to be repaved. They are all in terrible shape.
If the council(s) would pay more attention to what is happening HERE instead of trying to “save the world” (hint: nothing they do saves the world), the downtown might start looking better.