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The Ravenswood City School District and Alliant Strategic Development, an affordable and workforce housing developer, are teaming up to try to build 88 apartments to house Ravenswood City School District educators and staff. The project was the center of controversy over affordable housing in Menlo Park, and was the catalyst for the citizen-sponsored Measure V in 2022, which, if it had passed, would have restricted the Menlo Park City Council’s ability to upzone lots in the city.
During the Aug. 7 Menlo Park Housing Commission meeting, many commenters expressed excitement over the possibility of educator housing.
“This is a very special project that helps us achieve our lower-income housing goals for the housing element,” said Karen Grove, a former housing commissioner and resident of Menlo Park. “It also helps a school district that is doing so much to help themselves, and this is going to be dramatically supportive of their teacher recruitment and retention.”
But some neighbors of the project expressed concerns over the safety of the project, as well as possible traffic impacts to the neighborhood, as the project plans show only one way in and out of the site.
The site for the proposed teacher housing is at 320 Sheridan Dr., adjacent to Flood Park and Highway 101. The 2.6-acre site, which housed the James Flood Magnet School until it closed in 2011, is owned by the Ravenswood district and was leased to Alliant in 2021.
The district explored several different options for the site. These included use as district office space, redevelopment as bus yards, redevelopment as life science laboratories and leasing to a private school, but ultimately the district landed on developing the land for affordable housing to help address regional housing crisis, and generate unrestricted revenue for the district, according to a presentation from Alliant.
The apartments will be rented to those who make 30%-80% of the area median income, or $41,150-$109,700 per year for an individual. According to the district and Alliant, 85% of teachers and staff at the district are income-eligible for below-market housing, and Ravenswood educators would receive first preference to rent these proposed apartments.
According to a May 2022 survey of staff members by the Ravenswood district, 43% of staff had considered leaving the district because of the cost of housing or the length of their commutes. Some 70% of staff surveyed indicated an interest in workforce housing from the district. The district estimated that 200 units of affordable housing would have to be constructed to meet the needs of interested staff.
Any units that are not claimed by Ravenswood teachers or staff would be available to income-eligible residents in the greater community. According to the presentation from the developer, this could help to house homeless students in the district.
Data from Ravenswood district shows that over 45% of the district’s students experienced homelessness during the 2022-23 school year.
Project details
Project plans show that the housing will be split among 42 one-bedroom units, 23 two-bedroom units and 23 three-bedroom units. The plans also show that the housing would be spread among three, three-story buildings on the site, rather than one large apartment building. There would also be a community center on the ground floor of the building, as well as bicycle and pedestrian access for residents to Flood Park.
Steven Spielberg, a representative from Alliant, said that the company will try to use federal and state low-income housing tax credits to finance the project. Additionally, the developers are requesting $2.9 million from the city of Menlo Park to help fund the project.
“It’s really critical for us to have a financial commitment in order to get to the next step,” said Spielberg. “No one generally likes to be the first (funding) source into an affordable housing project.”
San Mateo County requires that a project already have at least $1 million in city housing funding, city fee waivers or philanthropic funding committed in order to meet the threshold for additional county funding.
The developer submitted the application for the project under California’s State Density Bonus Law on February 28, 2024, according to Menlo Park’s website and the presentation from Alliant.
This permits exceptions to the city’s zoning ordinance requirements. Alliant has requested waivers from the city’s development standards to decrease the minimum front setback, increase the maximum floor area ratio, increase the maximum driveway and paving area, and increase the maximum height of the project.
Housing commissioners took no action on this potential development at the Aug. 7 meeting, as Alliant was solely making an informational presentation to the commissioners and public as a part of its application for development funding from the city of Menlo Park. The Menlo Park Planning Commission is slated to hold a public hearing on the project in September, and if the project is appealed, the City Council will hold an additional hearing in October.
Spielberg said that Alliant is aiming to start construction on the complex in fall/winter 2025, and is aiming to complete construction and begin leasing by fall 2027.
Neighbors react to housing plans
Many local housing advocates and residents commented positively on the project, citing the need for more affordable housing in the region and how educator-specific housing could help improve the quality of education in the Ravenswood district.
Commenters also mentioned the success that Daly City has seen with similar educator housing projects.
“It needs to be acknowledged that the demographics of where we live are changing rapidly, forcing us to not only rethink the types of housing we need … but to also come up with new and innovative solutions to address our housing needs,” said Ken Chan, a representative from the Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County. “Homes for teachers and staff can be one of those solutions.”
However, some neighbors were concerned that building housing on this site, which sits at the end of a cul-de-sac, could drastically increase traffic through the neighborhood, and cause issues with emergency vehicle access.
“I think if we could do something to distribute some of the traffic, that would go a long way toward quality of life for the neighbors and residents,” said a commenter named Victoria.
Commenters advocated not for blocking the project, but adding a second ingress and egress point on the east side of the property. The commenters proposed paving over a Caltrans right of way onto Van Buren Road, near the Haven Family House, a homeless family shelter run by LifeMoves.
“There’s no exit east, … and if there were a fire at the property, everyone would be coming out on the tiny cul-de-sac onto Sheridan (Drive),” said one commenter named Ann who did not give her last name. “They’d be blocking fire engines from entering on Sheridan. … for the safety of the project, I do think there should be other roads built.”
One resident named Carolyn said that adding a second access point to the project would just be moving the problem.
“I’ve been listening to Suburban Park neighbors wanting a second access for a very long time, but no one ever mentions where the second access ends up,” she said. “(Van Buren) is a very busy road, it has a pedestrian bridge that comes over (Highway) 101 and has children from many schools going across it.”
Spielberg said that there was a lot of misinformation about access to the site and emergency vehicle access to the neighborhood.
“We do have emergency vehicle access for fire,” he said.
The project plans show a proposed, emergency-only access point to the property from Haven Family House and Van Buren, which will be discussed alongside the rest of the plans as the project is reviewed by city staff.
Menlo Park Housing Manager Tim Wong assured commissioners and residents that safety and land use issues will be considered throughout the standard entitlement and review process for the project.
“The project will be going through the … planning commission and potentially to the City Council,” he said. “So when it comes to land use issues it will be thoroughly vetted.”
Measure V
The proposed affordable housing on this site was met with resistance among some neighbors when it was first publicized in 2021, and sparked a citizen-sponsored ballot measure, Measure V, to prevent the development.
The measure would have restricted the Menlo Park City Council’s ability to rezone “R1” single-family lots to higher density zoning designations. Any changes to zoning density would have instead had to have been voted on by Menlo Park residents at a regularly scheduled election.
The ballot measure was defeated by a large margin, with 61.8% of residents voting against it. The measure failed in almost all of the city’s precincts, including one directly adjacent to the Sheridan property.
The site was rezoned to “R3” apartment zoning by the city council in winter of 2023, according to a timeline of the project published by the developer.
“Measure V was important for the city,” said Menlo Park Housing Commissioner Nevada Merriman. “It was a really important moment where previously any kind of reputation that we had for not wanting affordable housing … I think this stands in contrast to that reputation.”
I wish Ms. Raab and other reporters were a little more diligent in their reporting. This isn’t housing for teachers. Teachers get first dibs on the rentals, but then the RCSD is free to rent to anyone who signs up. If the RCSD really wanted to help teachers they would have created rules that said they would only rent to teachers and district personnel. That was proposed and refused by the RCSD. It’s all on the record.
Measure V was proposed by and for the suburban park neighborhood in an attempt to stymie the affordable housing project proposed for the former Flood School site, which was accessed through Suburban Park.
When measure v was voted down, Suburban Park adopted a new strategy: They requested a second egress from the housing site into Flood Triangle at Van Buren to share distribution of half the traffic from the housing site. Sounds fair? The problem with this is three-fold. 1.the proposed second exit site requires removing a road block on Van Buren that protects the privacy of clients of the Haven House shelter which serves families and individuals in personal crisis. Haven House has been there, a good neighbor, for decades.
2. A cut-through at this spot on Van Buren moves traffic directly by the exit/entrance for the biking/walking bridge over 101 between Belle Haven and Flood Triangle. The bridge is heavily used daily by children and others walking or biking to and from school and work. There have already been accidents between vehicles and kids on bikes at this spot. Traffic congestion and speeding has long been an issue near this five road intersection where commuting traffic speeds down Van Buren attempting to avoid daily backups on Bay Rd. It’s a flashpoint between biking children and cars that will be exacerbated by creating a cut through on this spot.
3. There is currently no provision in the housing site design to split the traffic evenly between the two neighborhoods, safe or otherwise.
With the closing of Flood School, Suburban Park became a quiet, cul de sac. The new housing project will return them to open access status. an official at Ravenswood School District stated that the housing development would bring less traffic through Suburban Park than the former school brought.