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The Almanac received an influx of letters to the editor ahead of the Menlo Park City Council’s Tuesday, Jan. 14, meeting. During the meeting, the council will vote on whether or not to declare downtown Parking Plazas 1, 2 and 3 as exempt surplus land and provide feedback and authorize staff to release a request for qualifications for development, including affordable housing and parking, on Parking Plazas 1, 2 and 3.
More information on the meeting can be found here.
Letters to the editor should be 300 words or fewer and can be sent to editor@almanacnews.com.
Pro letters
Yes I want apartments downtown!
As a homeowner on College Ave with kids at Oak Knoll and Hillview who has lived in Menlo Park for over 10 years, I say YES to affordable apartments downtown.
I have heard a lot of arguments against this plan from friends and neighbors; the same arguments were made in the Measure V debate a couple year ago, and the Measure M debate way back in 2014. I’ve also noticed there is a lot of confusion about what we’re actually discussing here.
Here’s why I support the city’s plan:
1. The people who teach and care for our kids, police our streets and fight our fires, serve our food and work our stores, often live an hour away or more. We are telling them they can’t be a part of our community, and our kids will never meet their kids. That’s not the world I want for my kids.
2. Our downtown needs people! Santa Cruz Avenue is dead after 7 p.m. My wife and I lived in downtown Palo Alto for almost a decade; we walked to get dinner or a drink, biked to Whole Foods. I want that for us in Menlo Park, and that only happens if we let people *live* downtown.
3. Density downtown is good for business. I know there are concerns about the parking but it the existing lots are decrepit and deeply inefficient and can be easily replaced with parking structures like in other nearby towns.
Note: there is still *plenty* of time to work out the details. Nothing is being approved — we don’t even have proposals yet! All we’re doing is deciding to classify the land as available and put out an RFQ for developers to propose projects that include affordable housing.
So yes, I want apartments downtown! I urge the council to move forward with the planned reclassification and RFQ.
Michael Levinson
College Avenue, Menlo Park
Wholehearted support for housing on lots
As a family with four young children, we wholeheartedly support city plans to build affordable housing on the three city-owned downtown parking lots on Oak Grove Avenue. You shouldn’t have to make a six-figure salary to afford living in Menlo Park. We know so many family and friends who cannot afford the over $3,000 average monthly rent in Menlo Park — much less the $5,100 average rent for 3+ bedroom housing. Either these folks accept a longer daily commute to work and school, adding to local traffic woes — or they throw up their hands and decide it’s time to leave.
We’ve said goodbye to a number of loved ones who chose the latter.
Our family is lucky that we can afford to stay here as renters. We love our parish, our school, our library, our parks, and our coffee shops. Menlo Park has been a wonderful place to raise our children, and we hope we can stay here in the long term. But who knows? One day, we could be priced out ourselves — just one more family in the Bay Area exodus.
Menlo Park has an opportunity now to help fix this housing crisis. With land values at astronomical highs, using city-owned land is the only way to build affordable housing. It isn’t financially feasible otherwise. Moreover, moving forward with a Request for Qualifications — which is the action before the city council on Jan. 14 — simply starts the conversation for what the project will look like. Nothing is being set in stone. With an RFQ, Menlo Park residents and landowners will have more say over what the projects will entail — including parking.
If we don’t act now, we risk seeing more “builder’s remedy” projects — like the proposed towers at the Sunset Magazine site — projects that residents have less influence over.
Let’s do the right thing. Let’s keep the ball rolling for downtown affordable housing. Frankly, we can’t afford not to.
Hannah Gilbert,
Ravenswood Avenue, Menlo Park
Support for affordable homes downtown
As a resident of Menlo Park, I’m writing to encourage the city council to issue a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) at their Jan. 14 meeting and move forward with the process building affordable homes downtown.
Our community needs more housing, plain and simple. Median rents in Menlo Park have more than doubled in the last 15 years to more over $3,000 per month. Our schools struggle to hire teachers; our local businesses struggle to find employees; our own police officers and fire fighters and other essential public servants cannot afford to live here.
More housing downtown will help many Menlo Park residents. Older residents living in large homes can downsize, creating more housing for new families and allowing the elderly to live in a more walkable, disability-accessible location. The project can include necessary replacement parking and other amenities to meet the overall needs of our community.
The RFQ is just a first step toward building new homes. Community members will have many opportunities over future steps to provide input on what the final project looks like. But we can’t move forward with much-needed housing unless the city council takes the first step.
Lesley Feldman,
Oakland Avenue, Menlo Park
Con letters
Don’t repeat failures of ‘urban renewal’ in 1950’s and 1960’s
Council Members,
I encourage you to think about how to solve the problem of creating new housing without destroying our already challenged downtown. The elimination of parking will undoubtedly deter people from coming to downtown Menlo Park and accelerate the decline that we have witnessed for the past 25 years.
Clearly, there is a group of loud, passionate supporters of the legally dubious scheme of declaring the parking lots “surplus” and then handing it over to developers who, thanks to the overreach of our state government, will repeat the failures of “urban renewal” from the 1950’s and 1960’s which were spectacular in their unintended consequences that contributed to failing schools, crime and urban decay.
It is this supportive group that “threatens” the council with legal action should you balk at ushering this ill-conceived “plan” into action. Please be aware that there is an even larger group of citizens who have become energized by the lack of any competent process who will oppose the imposition of a progressive agenda with such a clear disregard for their interests.
The irony is that the incompetence and casualness displayed by public officials both at the state and local levels in the ongoing conflagration in L.A. will be firmly in mind as the council meets on Tuesday. The fires will still be burning and the public trust will be at low ebb.
Mark Gilles,
Menlo Park
Speak up now
The Menlo Park City Council’s plan to eradicate half of our downtown parking lots to squeeze seven-story apartment complexes into our packed downtown is a terrible idea for many reasons, but it isn’t just about housing. It’s an attack on our suburban quality of life. And it’s being pushed by design.
The plan is to create “15-minute cities” where your workplace, stores and restaurants are all within a 15-minute walk from your high-rise apartment. Presto! No need for cars or parking lots — you’ll just walk or ride a bike.
Bizarre as it sounds, this paradigm is part of an international planning program promoted by the World Economic Forum and spelled out in the U.N.’s Agenda 2030.
If it sounds good to you, so be it. To most of us, it sounds like prison.
Our cars give us our mobility — a big part of our freedom. They make it possible for us to live and shop where we choose, and to travel for both business and pleasure.
Contrary to the city planners’ claim that low-income housing projects will create “vibrancy,” they’ll destroy it. Vibrancy comes from retail — the cornucopia of small businesses that provide our amenities and draw visitors to our town. Customers drive to these stores and restaurants, park nearby, and magically transform into pedestrians. That’s the formula for a vibrant city.
Those who oppose the council’s parking lot housing plan — whether Menlo residents or not — should write to the City Council and attend the meeting on Jan. 14 in the Council Chambers. Best to speak up now, as there’s a plan in the works to put housing in ALL of our downtown parking lots!
Cherie Zaslawsky
Oak Lane, Menlo Park
