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Menlo Park Mayor Betsy Nash is still hoping state Attorney General Rob Bonta will visit the site of a controversial high-rise project. She extended a second invitation to visit 80 Willow Road, the former Sunset Magazine campus, and learn about the property and its proposed hotel, office and housing development.
Bonta was in the area for a Stanford University event last week, Nash said in the Oct. 16 letter, and spoke with a former Sunset Magazine sales manager and Menlo Park resident. He told Nash that Bonta “seemed to know little about Menlo Park’s builder’s remedy project at 80 Willow Road” and was unaware of her Aug. 25 letter inviting Bonta to visit the site.
“Please come to Menlo Park and see how this massive commercial development would dramatically worsen infrastructure challenges, jeopardize emergency services response times … and exacerbate our existing jobs/housing imbalance,’’ Nash wrote in the letter, addressed to Bonta and his staff members. “I would be happy to show you around.”
Located on the Palo Alto border, 80 Willow Road is a controversial development proposed for the corner of Willow and Middlefield Road that seeks to bypass local regulations as a builder’s remedy project. It calls for 530,000 square feet of commercial space, including a 130-room hotel, and 665 housing units, in buildings as high as 39 stories, or 458 feet tall.
In July, the attorney general’s office sent a letter alleging Menlo Park violated state housing law in its processing of the development application and warned that the city could face financial penalties, which could amount to fines of more than $6.6 million. In August, Nash sent Bonta her first letter, inviting him to tour the site and learn more about the project, and rejecting claims that the city had broken the law or was trying to avoid its obligations to build more housing in Menlo Park.
The project has also faced scrutiny from Rep. Sam Liccardo over the property’s reported Russian owner, Vitaly Yusufov, and Yusufov’s alleged ties to top Kremlin officials, including former Russian prime minister and president Dmitry Medvedev.
In recent weeks, Menlo Park officials refuted Bonta’s allegations that it violated state housing law in a 65-page response letter to Bonta, which Nash said Bonta’s office has yet to acknowledge. On Oct. 2, 80 Willow’s developer, N17, filed a lawsuit against the city that largely drew upon Bonta’s arguments.
The Palo Alto City Council also waded into the debate this week, voting unanimously in a closed session on Oct. 19 to file an amicus brief in support of Menlo Park.
In her recent letter, Nash characterized the development as “primarily a commercial project with luxury housing,” aside from 100 affordable housing units out of the 665. She also cited concerns about the development’s height and referenced Liccardo’s letter which urged an investigation of the property’s owners and financing.
N17 developer Oisín Heneghan did not respond to a request for comment.
Read Nash’s full letter below.
Don’t expect a response from Bonta. He’s in the pocket of the YIMBY’s. He’s on the ballot that you have just filled out or are going to fill out. If you vote for him you’re getting what you voted for.
Nash thinks the state cares because she wrote it a letter. That is the theory?
Bonta is not going to take a loss from a tiny rich town he has not even thought about, and he is certainly not going to show up here to do it. A visit to Willow Road would be a headline that says the Attorney General caved to Menlo Park. A loss here is a precedent everywhere else. The Stanford line was polite small talk, not a plan, and Nash turned it into another letter and another tour offer. I hope we have legal standing to face the AGs office, because appealing to emotions is not going to happen. He already has Menlo Park (received 78.1% of the votet he last time in 2022), even if he never heard of it or knows where it is on a map.
Bonta is on the ballot on November 3 and most of Menlo Park will probably vote for him again anyways.