|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Menlo Park voters will soon have the chance to vote on Measure P which, if passed, would require voter approval before the city could issue permits for building affordable housing on parking lots adjacent to the downtown area of the city. Like other affordable housing proposals in California, it has both proponents and opponents, and in this case is accompanied by an adjacent threat for a rather shady developer to build a monstrous high-rise development on the former Sunset Magazine headquarters at Middlefield and Willow roads. Almost all Menlo Park citizens seem to be against that.
Having lived in Menlo Park for about 30 years, I have come to love the community, while being impressed by some of its developments and deeply disappointed by others. One disappointment has been to see the gradual decline of the downtown area which now, in my view, seems overpopulated with empty storefronts, seedy and ill-repaired parking lots, and the rear entries of stores dotted with refuse and trash, garbage and recycling bins. New tenants come in to try their luck, and their retail or service businesses shut down in a couple of years. A few stalwarts survive, with brisk business and loyal following, but others, even those once long established, fail.
Oddly, parking can be tight downtown, but many spots are occupied by employees who need a space for the workday. Parking on the main drag, Santa Cruz Avenue, is available, but presents hazards for the hundreds of kids who bike that route on their way to school, not to mention those on e-bikes who simply don’t recognize the danger associated with speed in that corridor.
Missing from the upcoming election are those who live outside of Menlo Park but work in it or would love to live in it. Housing is a regional challenge, but only those already housed within Menlo Park get a say in it? This is exactly why the state recognized that giving municipalities the sole voice in where housing is built is flawed. With a regional voice, everyone can chime in. Sometimes that voice is spoken by our elected representatives in Sacramento, San Mateo County or the City of Menlo Park, all of whom have an obligation to both listen to their voters and to be leaders.
If downtown Menlo Park merchants want to thrive, not just survive, a new approach is needed. More of the same will lead to further decline. Putting hundreds more people in proximity to their stores will lead to increased sales from residents and their visitors. Putting hundreds more people in proximity to Caltrain will take commuters off the streets and into trains. And the city itself, with increased vibrancy, will long need parking structures to both support the downtown area retail and business locations, replace lots with safe, efficient parking structures, and make the area a destination rather than a strip mall for quick stops that offer the convenience of being closer than the alternatives, but little more.
Steve Taffee is a Menlo Park resident, former technology executive, educator, consultant, and volunteer emergency responder.
Most Popular
Guest opinion: For Menlo Park's Measure P or not for P, that is the questionOctober 4, 2026 11:02 am
This op-ed opens by invoking a “shady developer” and a “monstrous high-rise”, a project that has nothing to do with Measure P. That’s not an argument, it’s an attempt to borrow outrage from somewhere else because the case on its own terms is thin.
Empty storefronts are real. But the city’s own consultant valued this plan’s benefit to downtown merchants at roughly $2M a year (hardly worth trading away every downtown parking lot for), on a parking-replacement promise the council already softened once. Worker parking and bike safety on Santa Cruz Ave are legitimate problems with straightforward fixes (permits, time limits, paint) none of which require converting city-owned lots into housing.
And here’s a question worth sitting with: if this plan is really the thing that saves downtown businesses, why does nearly every storefront downtown have a “Yes on P” sign in the window? These are the people with the most direct financial stake in getting this right. They’re not voting with the piece’s optimism. Either the people running these businesses, who watch their own foot traffic and know their own numbers, are somehow not smart enough to see the upside everyone else claims is obvious, or they’ve looked at the same unfunded parking plan, the same softened requirements, and the same process that’s already gone sideways once, and concluded it’s a worse bet for their shops than a guaranteed public vote. Their windows are the answer.
And maybe downtown would be in better shape if the city had ever actually invested in it, in anything. People love to cite nearby towns as the model to chase, but visit them and use your eyes to look down: wide, clean sidewalks, maintained paving, basic upkeep. Menlo Park’s downtown has broken, dirty brick sidewalks that haven’t seen real investment in years. That’s not a housing problem. That’s a maintenance budget and a city that’s let the basics slide while telling residents the fix is giving up the parking lots. If the city can’t keep its own sidewalks in one piece, there’s no reason to take its word that they can negotiate with developers and find money $19+ Million.
Then there’s the “regional voice” argument: people who don’t live here yet deserve a say, and since that council is elected by district, with each member accountable to a fifth of the city, not all of it. You can’t use “outsiders deserve input” to attack a citywide vote while ignoring that the body deciding this without one has an even narrower mandate.
The real tell is the game theory now being said out loud: Schmidt expects the next RHNA cycle to demand just as much or more, with every site back in play regardless of what happens here. Nash is already flagging the parks as next. That’s not a case for this failed plan, it’s an admission the city has no line it won’t eventually cross. Today the parking lots, tomorrow the parks, same shrug each time.
What this piece leaves out entirely: full parking replacement was a requirement until the council quietly reduced it to a non-binding “priority” mid-meeting, after the agenda had already been posted, with no advance notice to the public. Qualified developers took one look at funding that gap and walked away. None of the three finalists who did submit reportedly met the city’s own terms.
If this plan is as strong as the piece claims, it doesn’t need to avoid a vote to prove it.
I hear many commercial landlords (many of which are proponents of Measure P) are forcing the business owners to put the signs up. Why do you think so many of those Yes on P signs have gone up, and then gone down, and then gone back up again in the same storefronts over the last few months, even after the new sign design was created?
The business owners and landlords are fighting over the measure. But, guess who has a say over the windowfront? The empty storefronts with the YES signs (Left Bank storefront, anyone?) shows you that all of the “business owner” support is fake and no business owner is going to risk their business’s survival by speaking out against their landlords. The landlords know that no one is taking their side, so they’re using the business storefronts to help their reputation. Business in downtown Menlo Park is hard enough – we don’t need to make it harder for the actual business owners by voting yes on P. We should vote no on P.
I’m always leary of people who are afraid to put their full name on their comments. I’m not sure how you came to this conclusion. I have zero relationship with my landlord other then my husband/business partner sending them a check for rent so I would have no way of knowing their stance on Measure P. I’ve owned a business on Santa Cruz Avenue for 18 years (Alys Grace, women’s clothing store) and I wholeheartedly support Measure P. I also have 3 other locations in the San Francisco Bay Area. The proposed parking lot developments will harm businesses because no matter how loyal the clientele is, convenience is a huge reason people shop at local businesses. We already have to contend with the ease and convenience of online shopping taking away business from brick and mortar shops (I see this with our own online business growth). The years of construction and the decrease in available parking will kill many businesses. It’s already REALLY HARD to be a small business owner. Let’s not make it harder for us to survive.
By the way, my name is Tiger Bachler and I own Alys Grace along with my husband.
“I hear” followed by zero names, zero sources, and a theory to explain any sign in any window as proof of the same conspiracy. Sign’s up? Coerced. Sign comes down and goes back up? Landlords “fighting.” Empty storefront has one? Fake. There’s no outcome that disproves this, which means it isn’t an argument. Why are there “Yes on P” signs all over Menlo Park in addition to downtown (are the property owners coercing themselves and if renting, fighting with their renters)?
And Left Bank’s empty window actually wrecks the point. A property owner putting a sign in their own vacant space isn’t “fake,” it’s a stakeholder with real money on the line having an opinion. Deciding their voice doesn’t count because the register isn’t currently ringing is just rigging who’s allowed to talk.
“No business owner would dare speak against their landlord” is a guess about hundreds of strangers’ private fears, offered with nothing behind it is convenient, since if one did speak up, he’d just say they’re secretly lying too. That’s not a counterargument, that’s a theory built to never lose.
If this is the best case against Measure P, guessing about who told whom what to tape to a window, it’s not much of a case.