2018 in review: Summing up a year of change in Menlo Park

The year 2018 has been one of change in Menlo Park, characterized by growing skepticism as the city has been forced to reckon with the negative impacts of rapid growth citywide.

Over the course of the past 12 months, Menlo Park has been subdivided into voting districts, and three of the city’s five City Council members are no longer in office. After an active election season, voters unseated two council incumbents running for re-election.

The Menlo Park City Council now has three newcomers and a total of three women and two African-Americans – groups historically underrepresented in governing bodies.

Second-term council member Ray Mueller was handed the mayor’s gavel during the council’s Dec. 11 council meeting, and has spelled out a number of priorities he wants to pursue during the coming year.

High school students and grown-ups alike marched to protest gun violence in March. La Entrada Middle School got flooded, twice, thanks to breaks in municipal water lines. Throughout the year, intense national and international scrutiny was critically directed at Menlo Park’s marquee business, Facebook.

Progress inched forward on the city’s “Transportation Master Plan” – though not quickly enough to prevent some deeply existential conversations among members of the Planning Commission about the city’s future. The council passed a master plan for its water system and an ordinance that will shape where charging infrastructure is installed for electric vehicles.

A group of local civic leaders working to solve key problems facing Menlo Park united to form Menlo Together.

In addition, following more than a year of intense citywide debate about whether the city should accept a generous but very expensive strings-attached offer by billionaire John Arrillaga to help build a new Menlo Park main library, the offer was rescinded in October. Meanwhile, the city completed a needs assessment for a new Belle Haven library, and is moving ahead with the next step, which is to complete a space needs assessment.

When it came to daily life, much stayed the same. It’s probably safe to assume nearly everyone spent more time than they would have liked sitting in traffic, and more money than they would have liked paying for shelter, whether in a fancy house or not.

People came together for gatherings like the downtown block party, the Menlo Summer Fest and the annual tree-lighting ceremony. Two hotels opened, and quickly became venues for community events – the annual Golden Acorn Awards was held at the Hotel Nia and the Mayor’s State of the City address occurred at the new Park James Hotel.

Menlo Park lost The Oasis, John Bentley’s, Yogurt Stop and Random Acts of Flowers. Other institutions transformed, or will transform: LB Steak became Camper and the Guild movie theater will become a nonprofit live music venue, thanks to the City Council’s rapid, enthusiastic approval of the project.

Hotel Nia, the Park James Hotel, art galleries A.Space and Marcela’s Village, and pop-up Etalon opened. Robinhood took over the former Sunset headquarters.

Facing the impacts

A majority of the change shaping Menlo Park over the past year has roots in two major plans: the El Camino Real/Downtown specific plan approved in 2012, and the “ConnectMenlo” general plan update, approved in November 2016.

Construction has begun on two major projects within the El Camino Real/Downtown plan zone: Station 1300 at 1300 El Camino Real and Stanford’s Middle Plaza project at 500 El Camino Real. The city has also begun to see smaller, mixed-use developments that will add some downtown housing units and additional retail and commercial space.

While construction hasn’t yet started on any buildings proposed under the new zoning in the ConnectMenlo plan, the projects proposed so far already account for the bulk of the new office space the plan permitted. Moving forward, city policymakers will have to grapple with what to do about the development caps set forth in these plans, because they’re going to be reached much faster than expected.

In the aftermath of the general plan update, and the major questions it raised about how the city could feasibly handle the amount of traffic the new development would bring, the city began to develop a Transportation Master Plan, which was seen by some as a panacea that would levy the proper “Transportation Impact Fee.” The fee program would require developers to pay to offset the transportation impacts that their projects have on local road infrastructure.

However, as of the most recent meeting of that plan’s oversight and outreach committee, held Dec. 6, there still remains no clear consensus on which projects – out of a list of more than 170 – should take priority, and how they should be ranked. Also, it’s not clear how many of those projects would have a major impact on traffic congestion, since that is absent from the expressed main goals of the master plan, which are to improve traffic safety, increase sustainability, and promote modes of transportation other than driving.

In November, voters barely passed the countywide Measure W, a half-cent sales tax that will generate about $80 million a year for transportation projects.

Regarding big infrastructure projects that could have a major impact on Menlo Park, SamTrans announced in October that it has entered a partnership with Facebook and the Plenary Group, an infrastructure developer, to evaluate, with an environmental impact analysis, the feasibility of reinstating a transbay rail line from Redwood City to Newark.

Development

When it comes to new buildings, on the western side of town, comparatively modest building proposals at 840 Menlo Ave. and 40 Middlefield Road met with some opposition and a lot of concern before attaining approval.

The Menlo Park Planning Commission has held numerous discussions of proposed office, residential and life sciences buildings on the east side of U.S. 101, but nothing has been approved yet. But the much larger scale of what’s being proposed there has some commissioners asking what their role should be in approving buildings that technically comply with the new zoning but don’t make sense in terms of planning, given the gridlock in that part of town.

On the housing front, the council passed an ordinance requiring that new rental housing include 15 percent affordable housing, and an anti-discrimination ordinance stating that landlords may not rule out renting to potential tenants based on their source of income. The Housing Commission has hashed out a proposal for a mandatory rent relocation policy that the City Council will be expected to review in the coming months.

Another major source of local growth is Stanford: The university is undergoing a process to renew its general use permit and is seeking clearance from the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors to build up to 2.275 million square feet in academic space, 3,150 housing units, and 40,000 square feet of child care space and other supporting facilities between 2018 and 2035.

One recommendation then-Menlo Park mayor Peter Ohtaki made in a letter commenting on the proposal was to consider building satellite parking lots near Sand Hill, Alpine and Page Mill roads to connect commuters to campus with a shuttle, aerial tramway or gondola. In the final environmental impact report released Dec. 13, Santa Clara County officials more or less dismissed the idea by arguing that Stanford is trying to get people to not drive solo at all, rather than drive most of the way to campus and then leave their cars at a satellite site.

Goodbyes

A substantial number of city staffers also left for greener pastures – in other cities or in retirement. City Manager Alex McIntyre left for Ventura at the end of October, Assistant Public Works Director Nikki Nagaya left at the end of August for work at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, Housing and Economic Development Manager Jim Cogan left in April for Paso Robles, and Assistant City Manager Chip Taylor left in February for Sunnyvale. Library Director Susan Holmer retired in October, Community Services Director Cherise Brandell retired at the end of June, and Assistant Community Development Director Ron LaFrance left in Decemeber.

Internally, Dave Bertini moved up to take on the role of police chief from a commander position, and Deanna Chow became assistant community development director. The city hired Judi Herren as city clerk and Rich Struckman as police commander.

Former mayors Billy Ray White and Dee Tolles died, as did slow-growth advocate and civic activist Don Brawner, Ikie Kurose of the former Nak’s Oriental Market, and Lee Clements, a beloved Menlo-Atherton High School drama teacher.

Facebook

The city’s marquee business, Facebook, has been facing a much more serious reckoning with the public this year. The company faces national and international scrutiny for a series of privacy scandals, which began in March with the revelation that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, had used data from Facebook users without their consent during Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Most recently, on Dec. 18, the New York Times reported that Facebook had partnered with large tech companies to give them access to users’ personal data. The Times reported that there were more than 150 partnerships with companies, mostly tech firms, as recently as 2017, and that some existed this year as well. The user data access granted in these partnerships varied, but companies Netflix and Spotify were given the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages, the Times reported.

On the positive side, Facebook started a local hiring program and a program to train local youth without college degrees, and partnerships with local community colleges. On the negative side, it peeved many neighbors who were awakened multiple times in the middle of the night when the alarm system at the company’s new “MPK 21” building malfunctioned.

The more integrated Facebook becomes with Menlo Park, the more potential for conflict arises. For instance, The Almanac discovered that City Councilwoman Catherine Carlton had – inadvertently, by her reports – through her husband’s retirement account held Facebook stock during the time she voted to approve Facebook’s expansion proposal and the “ConnectMenlo” plan, which dramatically boosted what Facebook could build on the property it owns in eastern Menlo Park.

Newly elected councilman Drew Combs works for Facebook so will not be permitted to vote on any of the company’s projects and may have to recuse himself from decisions about other matters affecting areas near where the company owns land.

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