Menlo Park Watch: City plans 'green' parking lot Menlo Park Watch: City plans 'green' parking lot (July 06, 2005)

By Rebecca Wallace

Almanac Staff Writer

A parking plaza in downtown Menlo Park will double as a showcase for an environmentally friendly type of concrete.

Plaza 5, bounded by Evelyn and Crane streets and Santa Cruz and Menlo avenues, suffers from cracks and potholes and is already scheduled for a facelift. Now, the city has accepted an offer to work with Acterra, a nonprofit environmental group in Palo Alto, on the project.

As part of an agreement signed off on by the City Council on June 28, Acterra will pay up to $80,000 to incorporate pervious concrete into the plaza project. This material is expected to absorb more water and other materials that would otherwise run off into storm drains, supervising engineer Yaw Owusu wrote in a staff report.

In addition, the material is lighter in color and thus will be cooler, he wrote. The plan will not affect the design of the project, which is still expected to add 13 more parking spaces for a total of 163.

The Acterra funding will come from a grant from the State Water Resources Control Board and will be used to reimburse the city for installing the pervious concrete, Mr. Owusu wrote. The material will replace about 5,980 square feet of conventional asphalt concrete, roughly 20 percent of the plaza's surface.

For the staff report, go to menlopark.org, click on "City Council" and go to the June 28 meeting agenda.
Menlo council cancels meetings

The Menlo Park City Council is taking a summer break the first two weeks in July and is not scheduled to meet again until Tuesday, July 19.

The meetings are held in the council chambers at 701 Laurel St. For agenda information, call the City Clerk's office at 330-6620 or go to menlopark.org.

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