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Menlo Park will have to revise its state-approved housing plan if voters pass Measure P on Nov. 3 and may need to find alternative sites for affordable housing now planned on downtown parking lots, state housing officials warned in an Oct. 30 letter.
Measure P would require voter approval for major changes to eight downtown parking lots. Three of those lots are targeted for below-market-rate housing and replacement parking to meet Menlo Park’s housing plan.
Save Downtown Menlo, a group of businesses and residents concerned about the housing proposal, coordinated the citizens’ initiative that put the measure on the ballot.
The California Department of Housing and Community Development, known as HCD, said in its letter that the city must amend its plan to analyze whether Measure P would constrain housing development and whether the parking lots would remain suitable housing sites. The lots were to be converted into at least 345 affordable units.
Depending on the analysis, Menlo Park may need to identify alternative sites to meet its affordable housing requirements.
The letter also warns that failing to act could jeopardize the city’s housing certification and expose it to penalties or the builder’s remedy, which allows qualifying housing developments to bypass certain local rules. When Menlo Park previously did not have a certified housing element, a skyscraper was proposed at 80 Willow Road, the former location of Sunset magazine’s headquarters, using builder’s remedy. The developer behind the skyscraper project is now suing the city for delays.
The “No on P” campaign argues that the letter shows why it is important for the city to continue with the downtown parking lot development.
“HCD is paying attention to us for sure,” Karen Grove, who is part of the anti-Measure P campaign, said in an interview. “This should be scary to everyone.”
Save Downtown Menlo said instead that the letter showed the city can amend its housing element to allocate the units somewhere else.
“The HCD letter undermines the ‘No on P’ scare tactics. The letter makes it clear that if Measure P passes, the city goes through a standard process of updating its housing element,” Measure P proponent Alex Beltramo said in a statement.
It has supported an alternative plan proposed by District 4 City Council candidate Laura Melahn. Melahn’s plan would have the city subsidize increased affordability at developments slated for the former campuses of SRI International and the U.S. Geological Survey.
The No on P campaign, and Melahn’s opponent, Charlotte Reed, have criticized the plan as infeasible. Grove added that the current housing element took several years to create and HCD required repeated revisions before certification.
While the letter did not specify a timeframe for Menlo Park to amend its housing element, Grove said she believes HCD would require Menlo Park to act fast.
“HCD is saying we have to do it quickly or they will decertify us and impose fines. We’re not going to be able to do it quickly,” Grove said.
“It was only certified the third time when we made a firm commitment to build affordable homes on the downtown parking lots. There’s a reason for that. It’s not going to be easy at all to update our plan,” Grove added.
Melahn previously said that the reason HCD required additional commitments to the parking lot project was because it doubted the feasibility.
The parking lot project has already gone awry.
While Menlo Park initially hoped it could secure 345 below-market-rate units, parking for residents and full replacement of existing public parking by leasing the land to developers for $1 a year for 55 years, developers said they would require further subsidies. The three proposals the city received would require additional funding ranging from $19 million to $45 million. The City Council is mulling its options to provide that funding if it continues with the parking lot development.
Beltramo said that the funding gap shows that the city should amend the housing element regardless of whether Measure P passes.
“Each proposal for housing on the downtown plazas is an unfunded house of cards that no one should be relying on,” Beltramo said. “The sooner we update our plan, the better.”
If HCD’s letter sways voters, it is not too late to affect the election’s outcome. According to data from the San Mateo County Elections Office obtained by The Almanac, only 28% of registered voters in Menlo Park had cast a ballot as of Oct. 30. Turnout in gubernatorial elections in Menlo Park typically surpasses 60%.
Voters can vote in person at county vote centers until 8 p.m. on Nov. 3. Vote-by-mail ballots must be postmarked by Election Day and arrive no later than seven days after the election. The county recommends returning ballots in a ballot drop box or, if using the post office, asking for a hand postmark because some mail is not postmarked the day it is sent.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated to better reflect the meaning of a quote.
The Laura Melahn plan cited in this article assumes that USGS and SRI would shift the mix of market rate to affordable units for just $90K/unit. USGS quoted $500K/unit to the Planning Commission to convert market rate to affordable units. So that’s $170M for the same 345 units in the state approved housing plan for downtown. Hmmm, which is less, $19M or $170M? Don’t forget about the lawsuit fees that taxpayers would have to pay if P passes and the State sues the city under AB101 and SB330. Oh and the up to $600K/month that the state can sue the city for noncompliance. Yes so many lower cost options.
The State has just given Menlo Park the green light to amend its housing plan. No need to crouch with your tail between your legs, City Council. Let’s get this done irrespective of the ballot measure. You cannot put all your eggs in one broken basket. You have a flawed plan to begin with. Do the right thing! Accept the invitation to fix this mess you have created.
Brian Kissel, you still have your numbers mixed up. I’m happy to go through the plan line by line with you. Market rate to low income is a more expensive shift than low income to very low income, and the latter is the shift we need to drive most critically. If you were looking for another reason to vote for Laura Melahn for City Council in District 4, this is a really good one. I’m the only candidate with a plan for how to do this, and a complete draft we can begin working on collaboratively tomorrow. With huge unfunded gaps in each Downtown proposal, we will need to do this whichever way the Measure P vote goes, which I have said for a long time.
Let’s hope measure P does not pass. The time to fight the state on housing passed a long time ago and every city that’s tried to sue the state has lost. At this point. It’s a question of where the housing’s going to go and I personally prefer the housing to go in the parking lots than in our city parks. Burgess and Sharon Park have been in the discussion as alternate sites and that would be tragic to lose those resources. Let’s defeat prop P and avoid the whole nightmare of redoing the housing element and potentially losing some of our park space.
Laura has a plan and the “No No No” lobby appears scared to review it with her.
Boo, and right on cue.
Four days before the election, with 28 percent of Menlo Park ballots already cast as of Oct 30, an HCD letter drops out of the dark, and who is already standing in the doorway in costume with a scary story? Karen Grove, again.
Grove’s haunted house: “This should be scary to everyone.” “We have to do it quickly or they will decertify us and impose fines. We are not going to be able to do it quickly.”
But the article itself says the letter did not specify a timeframe. No Halloween candy for you. Trick, not treat.
And I am tired of this “firm commitment” ghost story too. Menlo Park committed to zone for housing, not build housing. A commitment to zone for homes on the lots is not a promise that the city itself will build them, and it is certainly not a reason to keep a plan that needs $19 million to $45 million in extra subsidies, on top of a $1 a year lease, with no committed funding. That is not a plan. That is a monster under the bed, and it will eat taxpayer dollars.
Beltramo is right: that is an unfunded house of cards, and the city should update its plan regardless of how Measure P goes. A haunted garage is still a garage bill.
So yes, Grove again, right before the election, rattling her chains one more time. The trick is pretending an amendment is a catastrophe. The treat would be a plan that actually pencils, with homes the city can fund instead of a ghost bill it cannot.
“Depending on the analysis, Menlo Park may need to identify alternative sites to meet its affordable housing requirements.” That doesn’t sound like an urgent threat to me.
More important, the city will probably never be able to justify the parking plaza housing, as it is (and was always going to be) UNFUNDED to relocate our retail parking. As another writer called it, a house of cards. The city needs to start working on an amendment, whatever the scary “threat” of P allowing residents to vote on the hapless parking lots.
The real sin on All Hallows Eve is that heiress Karen Grove spent all this time ginning up hope for affordable housing on quicksand, distracting a gullible council from Alma St, Middlefield Rd, Bohannon and Willow Rd projects that don’t have a community parking commitments to stress over.
I suggest, time to pivot Ms. Grove.
I’m still mad at Alex Beltramo for foreclosing on The Oasis all those years ago. We haven’t had a real neighborhood hotspot since then.
Ever been to the Dutch Goose?
If you’ve been to both, you know they’re not the same.
Thank you to Richard Stevens and Henry Riggs for invoking the name of Intel heiress Karen Grove, major funder, treasurer and head of the No on P campaign, who seems desperate to preserve her pet project of eradicating our parking lots and downtown small businesses for her dreamed of low-income high-density housing compound and to discourage the use of cars altogether. The pipe dream is that people who’d be living in that housing would work in the downtown so they wouldn’t need cars–as if people did nothing else that would require driving. Of course they’d need cars for sure, because the businesses they might have worked for would have closed during the first year of construction, if not before. Time for the City Council to face reality. The City Attorney informed them months ago that all they need to do is to open a dialogue with HCD and amend the Housing Element, which is not carved in granite. Things change. Meta’s Willow Village disappeared. And the Council finally learned that no developer is going to shell out $45 million or more for a multilevel parking structure replete with its own issues. The Council should amend the Housing Element regardless of the passage of Measure P. Should have been done months ago.
The further tragedy in all of this is how Karen Grove and her special interest group, Menlo Together, have systematically worked to take over our City Council.
First came Menlo Together co-founder and Mayor Betsy Nash, quietly advancing this disastrous plan. Then Menlo Together backed Jeff Schmidt and Jen Wise who ran unopposed while the community had no idea what was brewing. With majority control, the Council decided to share their plans to build towers on our downtown parking lots with the community for the first time. The result? Two years of resistance from local businesses and residents fighting to protect our downtown and an essential ballot measure to stop an unrepresentative council.
Now Menlo Together has put forward three more candidates, with the goal of taking control of every seat remaining on our City Council. Through their association with Menlo Together, these candidates benefit from the endorsements Karen Grove has spent years cultivating, backed by her inherited wealth, irrespective of the fact that these candidates lack the experience and qualifications needed to serve effectively.
The objective is clear: gain control of all five council seats and push this plan through, regardless of what residents and business owners want. That isn’t representative government. It’s a takeover of our local government by a special interest group.
Laura Melahn and Drew are the ONLY two candidates who have demonstrated independence from this political machine. Vote thoughtfully. We cannot afford to let one special interest group control our entire City Council. That’s exactly why we need this ballot measure to pass. We cannot trust this council to listen even when the state has raised warnings.
I’ve lived here long enough to remember when Karen Grove donated to Drew’s successful campaign in 2018. I also have lived here long enough to remember Peter Ohtaki getting endorsed by the powerful San Mateo County Central Labor Council in his 2022 election. Either Karen Grove’s influence is vastly overstated or she’s doing a pretty bad job at using the influence she does have.
Separately,
it doesn’t look like any of the candidates this year are having trouble fundraising.