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Members of the Menlo Park City Council meet on March 12 with one thing on their minds: updating the city’s housing plan.
The city must finalize its housing element update by May as part of the settlement of a lawsuit brought by three nonprofits over Menlo Park’s lack of compliance with state housing law.
During this update cycle, the city needs to identify sites where zoning changes would allow a maximum of 900 new housing units to be built. Menlo Park held numerous community workshops and study sessions to whittle the initial list of 25 sites down to 14. Now staff is recommending the council approve five:
* A site at the Department of Veteran’s Affairs campus in the 700 block of Willow Road (60 housing units).
* Gateway Apartments at two locations: the 1200 block of Willow Road and in the 1300 block of Willow Road. Both sites are owned by the Mid-Peninsula Housing Coalition (78 units total).
* Hamilton Avenue East located in the 700 and 800 blocks of Hamilton Avenue (216 units).
* A site in the 3600 block of Haven Avenue (540 units).
Go to the city’s website to review the proposed changes and the update process. Tuesday’s meeting starts at 6 p.m. in council chambers at the Civic Center at 701 Laurel St.
I hope that there will be mitigation of traffic on Willow Road if these projects are ever constructed. Why not look to approving secondary dwelling units and relaxing some of the onerous parking requirements.
West Menlo dodges a bullet…but not for long. And McClure deserves the ax for his ineptitude in this case. The firm that sued us is boasting of our city’s lameness on its website.
West Menlo dodges what bullet? Is this a racist comment or just an elitist comment? That all the identified sites have been pushed over to the east side of the freeway ought to be the motivation for another law suit against the city. Where exactly is west menlo? Is that Sharon Heights, or west of el camino real or west of Middlefield or west of the freeway?
This town deserved that law suit and the council had no wiggle room. the city had dropped the ball way back when the Duboc/Jellins/Winkler ruled the council. This city wants the jobs but it’s fine letting people drive long distances back to Livermore. Better yet that the employees work for a business that feeds sales tax to the city so the precious children can take part in the city subsidized rec dept. classes. What an ugly city!
Shame, I’d love to hear you explain why Sacramento (and the big developers who have the ears/pockets of our politicians) should dictate what our community should look like. The free market has worked pretty well for a long time. It’s not perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than the alternatives. See the current threads on the BMR imbroglio if you need an example!
It’s not about racism or elitism. It’s about living in a city that was essentially finished sometime around 1960. It’s about people working and saving to buy homes with yards in a neighborhood of similar homes, and investing in the neighborhood. It’s about our wanting to keep our schools, which are at capacity, from becoming overcrowded to the point that they begin an irrevocable decline. And our “precious children” no longer get a good education.
Reality check: the only people who move every time they change jobs are no-strings-attached renters. The families who own in Livermore aren’t going to sell their 4 br/3 ba with pool for a 900-square-foot condo on the train tracks. You wouldn’t either. None of us want that life for our “precious children.”
If the free market prevails, more jobs will move to the Central Valley, which is as it should be. Centralized planning by a corrupt government should have vanished when the USSR collapsed.
Second units are the way to go, not huge ghetto-like projects. This is a huge mistake for our city.
Right, let’s cram more housing into the part of town that’s already over-crowed, and inconveniently far from just about everything. Makes much more sense than telling the state government to take a flying leap.