Over the years, Menlo Park has tried to come up with a plan to revamp properties along El Camino Real, and for the most part, those plans have failed.
City-sponsored projects such as the “Center City Design Plan” of the mid 1990s, the trendy “Smart Growth” studies of the late 1990s, and the downtown design charrette of 2005 have come and gone, but the city doesn’t have much to show for its efforts.
Current City Council members hope history won’t repeat itself when they kick-off a campaign on Oct. 24 to create a new plan for properties along El Camino Real.
The council is asking residents to attend a presentation by the city and an urban planning consultant to tackle two big questions:
• What’s gone wrong in Menlo Park’s previous efforts to revamp El Camino Real?
• What do residents like about downtown areas of other Bay Area cities, and what can Menlo Park learn?
The meeting is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., and is expected to last about 45 minutes. Additional time will be allotted for a question and answer period with representatives from Dyett and Bhatia, the urban consultant hired by the city.
The meeting will be in the council chambers at the Civic Center, between Laurel and Alma streets.
Getting it right
Associate Planner Thomas Rogers said previous efforts to revamp El Camino have failed in part because they have been either too difficult for the public to understand, or too focused on engaging the public rather than creating a concrete plan.
Mr. Rogers, the rest of the planning staff, and the council say the Oct. 24 meeting strikes a balance between the two strategies.
“Some past planning efforts weren’t designed to lead to anything, and they didn’t,” Mr. Rogers said. “The goal here is to tell the story of El Camino Real. … Part of that is talking about the strengths and weaknesses of previous planning efforts, and part of it is looking at what other communities are doing to plan their downtown areas.”
Among the other communities that will be studied at the meeting are Mountain View, San Carlos and the East Bay city of Albany. All of the cities have gone through similar efforts to revamp their downtown areas.
“We’re studying cities that have been in similar situations to Menlo Park not because their answers will be our answers, but we can learn something from the processes they used,” said Councilman John Boyle, who has been working with Councilman Richard Cline to lead the council’s El Camino efforts.
“This is a good starting point,” Mr. Cline said. “But it’s only as good as the people that attend. We have to get the public involved from the beginning if we’re going to come up with a plan that works.”
