Dreaming up a downtown for Menlo Park Dreaming up a downtown for Menlo Park (June 08, 2005)

By Rebecca Wallace

Almanac Staff Writer

The Menlo Park City Council chambers will fill with visions on June 7: a wooded park, an art center, and buildings mingling retail and homes.

Redesigning a chunk of Menlo Park's downtown would be a major production. But when you're still in the imagination stage, dreams abound.

June 7's council meeting will be a study session on the plans from the city's April 9 design charrette. That's when four teams of architects held 12-hour brainstorming sessions on how best to enliven the area around the train station and the Santa Cruz Avenue/El Camino Real intersection.

While the area is centrally located, it's cut off from the Santa Cruz shopping area by El Camino and could use an injection of vitality.

That's not the only challenge for the area, which is bounded by and includes the street frontages of El Camino, Oak Grove and Ravenswood avenues, and Alma Street. The train tracks also create uncertainty, because it isn't yet known whether grade separations -- structures separating the roadway grade from the rail grade -- will be built.

Each charrette team was asked to consider a different configuration for Menlo Park's rail crossings, such as raising or lowering the tracks.

Mayor Mickie Winkler said the charrette designs will be a valuable, visual tool during grade-separation discussions.

"You can see what the opportunities and the impediments are," she said, adding that she expects city and Caltrain officials to meet this fall on grade separations.

The council won't take formal action June 7, but the public can comment and view the plans. Council members may also talk about what to do next, such as further tapping public opinion or consolidating consistent design elements from different proposals.

The teams' site plans are pictured on the Almanac's opinion page.
An inviting El Camino

Team Green, led by Redwood City architects Susan Eschwiler and Tom Gilman, was asked to create a design with an elevated track and a lowered road.

In its report, the team proposes "wide access areas under the tracks that could continue park-like landscaping, bicycle paths and pedestrian walkways from Alma through to Merrill (Street)."

The team also seeks to make El Camino more inviting for pedestrians, with wider sidewalks, reconfigured crosswalks and landscaping.

Like other charrette plans, this design has a "mixed-use" building. Team Green's is a crescent-shaped building at the corner of El Camino and Santa Cruz, across from Menlo Center, with ground-floor retail and residential or office space upstairs.
Continental Menlo

The blue team, led by Burlingame architect Dale Meyer, was asked to assume that no grade separation would be built.

Its plan closes off Santa Cruz east of El Camino and creates a "European" pedestrian plaza, with a combined movie theater-art center, and an area that slopes down to create a small amphitheater. There's a fountain at the bottom of the slope, but "you could turn off the fountain and put wood over it and make it like a little stage," Mr. Meyer told the Almanac.

On the east side of Alma, the plan has mixed-use buildings with retail on the first floor, offices on the second and residences on the third.
A sense of arrival

Team Yellow, led by South San Francisco architects Wayne Gehrke and David Schnee, was asked to envision the area with the railroad tracks dropped below the road. The plan includes plazas and pedestrian walkways crossing over the depressed tracks.

"Santa Cruz Plaza" is a densely built-up block on Santa Cruz east of El Camino, including shops, restaurants, offices and housing, as well as an urban park and underground car parking.

This plan also strives to create a "gateway" feel to the El Camino intersections with Menlo and Oak Grove avenues, to "create a sense of arrival" in the city. Gateway features include small towers, decorative paving and unique signs.
Raising the tracks

Led by San Mateo architect Torin Knorr, the orange team was asked to create a design with tracks elevated above the road grade. It features a pedestrian path under the tracks leading east from Santa Cruz. The weekend farmers' market could go in niches along the elevated track walls.

Orange team members also favored mixed-use development, with ground-floor retail and residential or "live-work" spaces above.

Other features include a pair of two-story parking structures and a wooded park connecting the Civic Center to the Santa Cruz downtown.

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