EDITORIAL: Give Linfield housing a chance EDITORIAL: Give Linfield housing a chance (June 22, 2005)

With demand for high-quality housing at an all-time high in Menlo Park, it is no surprise to see the city approached with more and more proposals to convert old and empty commercial buildings into housing or other uses, as owners look for new options to turn a profit.

The residential projects on the table now would replace vacant office space in Linfield Oaks with 92 units of single-family housing in proposals by Olive Hill Development (58 units) and SummerHill Homes (34 units). Two other plans would convert large office buildings to medical office use in the same neighborhood.

As the City Council found at a meeting last week, the Linfield Oaks neighborhood is not happy about any of the projects, especially the housing. A petition signed by 197 residents argues that the area would be better off keeping its large commercial buildings intact to keep traffic impact low, reduce pressure on school enrollment and save heritage trees that would come down on the Olive Hill property.

Much more will be known about what might happen in the Linfield neighborhood when an environmental assessment of Olive Hill's proposal is released later this month. Certainly, the location of the projects near Middlefield Road away from the core of the Linfield Oaks neighborhood increases the likelihood of lower overall traffic impact, although nothing could match the current pattern, which benefits from the large vacant buildings at 110 and 175 Linfield Drive. And the area is already benefiting from a series of bumps on Alma Street and Willow Road that are designed to reduce the speed of traffic through the neighborhood.

While we can sympathize with the residents of Linfield Oaks who would prefer to draw the line and say "Not in my backyard," Menlo Park has an obligation to build housing, along with all the other cities in the Bay Area. With property values increasing at such a record pace, relatively dense housing projects are the only way to keep costs reasonable, even though some of the homes proposed will likely sell for more than $1 million.

With the right adjustments the Linfield area can absorb 58 homes, and perhaps the additional 34 proposed at 75 Willow Road by SummerHill. We can recall the doomsday predictions from Linfield Oaks residents prior to the approval of the Classic Communities residential project on Laurel Street. As far as we know, none of the predicted problems have materialized.

In September of 2002 we suggested in this space that the City Council should have zoned the Olive Hill site for even more units, and thus provide at least a modest number of more affordable homes for the hundreds of Menlo Park renters, including many from Linfield Oaks, who would like the opportunity to become homeowners. But after a series of neighborhood meetings, the Olive Hill group decided to abandon a high-density project and ultimately submitted the plan for 58 homes. The city needs the housing and we hope it can be approved.

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