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By Betsy Nash, Menlo Park mayor
On July 29, the California Attorney General’s Office sent Menlo Park a notice about the builder’s remedy development proposal at 80 Willow Rd, claiming the city has violated state law in processing the project.
I’m deeply frustrated that the Attorney General has put our community in this position. They instructed us to process a project that worsens our housing crisis and has no environmental mitigation, and threatened millions in financial penalties for Menlo Park.
On August 25, I sent the following letter to the Attorney General:
Dear Attorney General Bonta,
I am Menlo Park Mayor Betsy Nash and felt compelled to reach out to you after watching a news segment last night. You were featured fighting to preserve mail-in voting and halting negotiations over the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger after the acquiror inappropriately leaked information about settlement talks. I felt proud watching you speak on these issues. So it is regrettable that I also feel so disappointed with your team’s recent impact on our City’s efforts to promote affordable housing and to resist exploitation by a greedy commercial developer. These incongruous feelings compelled me to write to you today.
I refer to the builder’s remedy project at 80 Willow Road in Menlo Park. On July 31, 2026, Deputy Attorney General Matthew Struhar sent Menlo Park a letter stating that our city violated state housing law in processing this application. He implies that we are all NIMBYs who just don’t want housing. I believe our record shows quite the opposite.
First of all, we submitted our Housing Element on time but two resubmissions in response to agency comments opened the door to builder’s remedy projects. Much of the delay was caused by turnover in the state reviewer for our file. A new reviewer introduced new positions requiring new revisions. Slow response times by the state reviewer further delayed approval, despite our best efforts to comply. We were actually one of the earliest cities in San Mateo County to have our Housing Element approved.
Our City Council are housing advocates who have leaned into housing, especially affordable housing, in our community. We implemented SB 79 as written to encourage density and height of development within a quarter mile of our train station. We proposed affordable housing development on city-owned parking lots downtown and are united in opposition to a resident-sponsored ballot measure that would make that impossible. Also, Menlo Park has never been subjected to SB 35 restrictions.
As for the 80 Willow Road project specifically, I invite you to be my guest for a visit to Menlo Park, and to tour the site on the banks of the environmentally-sensitive and flood-prone San Francisquito Creek. The project includes three towers up to 39 stories and 461 feet tall – the tallest building between San Francisco and Los Angeles. This project only creates 665 housing units (only 100 affordable units) but includes over 530,000 sq. ft. of commercial space, a hotel and other uses that add so many jobs that the project actually worsens the existing jobs/housing imbalance in our community. Of course, it is so large a project that it would overwhelm local infrastructure.
Finally, your office instructed the City to process this project without any environmental review and threatened potentially catastrophic financial penalties for Menlo Park. I hope you will look into it and help us find a productive way forward. Please do come visit so I can show you in person.
Respectfully,
Betsy Nash
Nash provided The Almanac with a copy of the letter sent Aug. 25. It is being published with permission.
Menlo Park Mayor Betsy Nash was elected to the Menlo Park City Council to represent District 4 in 2018. She is not seeking reelection.
