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After 54 years in business, the Mid-Peninsula Animal Hospital is making plans to depart Menlo Park for North Fair Oaks, leaving the site to be redeveloped.
Scout’s House, an animal rehabilitation center adjacent to the animal hospital, will also relocate to the new site.
A preliminary application to redevelop the site at 1125 Merrill St. and its neighboring building at 506-558 Santa Cruz Avenue with commercial, retail, offices and housing has been submitted to the city of Menlo Park.
According to city documents and staff, the developer proposes to build a four-story, mixed-use building on the animal hospital site that would have parking on the ground floor, 4,326 square feet of offices and two residential units on the upper floors adding up to 4,327 square feet.
At 506-558 Santa Cruz Ave., the developer proposes to build two buildings, one three-story and the other four-story, totaling 23,000 square feet. The lower floors will have commercial or retail uses and the upper floors will have multifamily housing units.
Hospital’s future?
An owner of the animal hospital, Carol Schumacher, said that she and her co-owners sold the building to Palo Alto-based developer Roxy Rapp about two years ago and have been leasing the animal hospital back since then.
The animal hospital’s owners are in the process of redeveloping their own site for a new, expanded animal hospital in North Fair Oaks. Ms. Schumacher didn’t give the exact address, but said it is just on the other side of Atherton along El Camino Real, near Target. Plans are for the new animal hospital to be 8,000 square feet, up from the current 6,000 square feet.
She said the animal hospital owners tried diligently to find a new site in Menlo Park, but were unsuccessful.
“We would have had to increase our prices to stay in business, but nobody would have been able to pay,” she said. The new location, she says, is a “pretty quick drive. We hope we will be convenient for our clients.”
She attributed the difficulty of relocating within Menlo Park to not just the high costs, but also cited features of Menlo Park’s El Camino Real/downtown specific plan, which asks that housing be put on top of new or redeveloped commercial buildings.
“We couldn’t find a builder willing to put apartments over an animal hospital,” she said, noting concerns about the noise and mess associated with animals on the premises.
The plan is to relocate the animal hospital before the redevelopment work begins at the Santa Cruz Avenue and Merrill Street sites, she said.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story identified the developer as Rapp Development. A reader informed us the developer is Prince Street Partners, LLC.
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It’s great to see new things in Menlo Park.
I do think the goal of putting housing in the downtown is the right one, although I think we could maintain a mix between housing and offices without having to put them on top of each other in every new building. It works out fine for large parcels like the Stanford and Greenheart project, but for small buildings like this it just leads to a few giant condos when we could have a lot of smaller, much more affordable apartments.
It’s unfortunate that the animal shelter couldn’t find a place in Menlo Park, but North Fair Oaks is very close by and gives them the opportunity to expand. (And since the owners sold their building to the developer, it sounds like they did just fine.)
What about parking for the two buildings on Santa Cruz?
Menlo Park loses another basic service. A continuation of the present trend, which is the result of defects in the downtown plan, will force the next generation to travel either to Redwood City or possibly Palo Alto for all basic household services and supplies.
Looking Forward, Mid-Peninsula Animal Hospital isn’t a shelter; it’s a veterinary hospital. As a longtime client who owes MPAH an enormous debt of gratitude for saving the life of not one, but two, of our dogs, and caring for all of our pets extremely well over the years, I’m very sad to see that they’re being forced to relocate.
As James Madison said, losing a centrally-located vet to yet another mixed-use development is absolutely a shame. Will the residents of Menlo Park benefit from whatever the developers decide to build in the way they’ve benefitted from having a veterinary hospital downtown for many years? We’ll see.
And for the big picture:
Corner of Oak Grove & El Camino: large mixed-use development
El Camino between the Stanford Park & Big 5: large mixed-use development in the works
Alma Street: probable large mixed-use development
Santa Cruz Avenue: 3-story mixed-use building in the works
Sunset building: tbd, but most likely another large mixed-use development
Most of this space will be turned over to offices. Is this the direction the residents of Menlo Park want our city to move in? Hopefully so, beause we’re headed there at an unstoppable pace.
Another great vet place bites the dust. First the Animal Doctors was forced to move out ages ago to page mill road and now this. How many more long term businesses are we going to lose in Menlo Park. Hey why don’t we run all the local businesses out and put up housing and offices. Then the rest of us can starve to death as we will have no place else to buy the things we need to survive. What sad is its Money that makes the world go round. it also makes the world ground to a halt without people supporting businesses to keep the world going.
Get used to forcing out family, long term small businesses and any other special business that gave Menlo Park its character. Roger Reynolds, Sunset Magazine, Mid Pen Vet hospital and Fosters. I’m sure there are others also. Our city council wants it this way. These are all businesses that were pushed out for various reasons to make room for office/ mix development, More traffic on already clogged roads doesn’t matter to all those council members who live in their little world east of el Camino. Traffic on el Camino will be worse then it is now and Marsh and Willow rd will have congestion until 9:00pm. Thanks council for all you have done to make a mess of transportation in this city. Thanks for caring about the residents east of El Camino that have to put up with the consequences of your flawed and poor decisions time and again
I don’t understand why so much new development has to be ugly housing in which the ground floor is mainly garage space supporting small townhouses with windows that overlook one another. There is no reason why the ground floor space – perfect for tax revenue generating local businesses that residents need – should be used to park cars when it is valuable potential real estate for small local business. The new development on College and El Camino is an example of this.
You can get similar density by building ground floor retail space with apartments (or offices) above. I know we have 1-2 stories on top of some of the most central buildings in Menlo Park but there is room for a lot more. With decent architecture, 3 to 4 stories doesn’t have to look oppressive and with the price of land, it should be a no-brainer to put parking below ground. I know that Californians have an aversion to living above retail but there is no reason this kind of housing can’t be nice. Where I grew up on the east coast, apartments in retail zones are coveted for their convenience and proximity to public transit. Putting housing right on top of the retail helps the businesses too because customers are always nearby. And retail buildings with apartments (and/or) offices above don’t have to sacrifice small town charm (see Northampton, MA linked below)
https://www.visitnorthampton.net/images/downtown-northampton-t.jpg
Why can’t we have more like this?
Wow, the “no birds” are really outdoing themselves here, arguing that a beat-up building full of sick animals is the best use across from a major transit stop. Putting more homes and jobs here in modern structures sounds OK to me! Then again, I’m not one of the 1% who own multi-million dollar homes they paid peanuts for…
It seems the the City Council has 3 primary interests — more upscale businesses, more housing and special interests groups.
More housing equals more traffic — the #1 complaint in the Bay Area, and the City Council just did away with parking on parts of Oak Grove. I’m sure the local merchants appreciated that. So let’s bring in more upscale businesses and housing but do away with parking and put more cars on the streets. What has the City done to address these problems?
Sounds logical to me!
I’ll be taking my business to places that are easier to get to (including online shopping), and I’ll be more people will too.
So much for the “charm” of Menlo Park.