Hi. My name is Shasank Chavan and I live in the felton gables neighborhood. I just wanted to voice my concern about the housing proposal in downtown MP that is being considered. My concerns are largely around the availability of parking to help accommodate us current menlo park residents as well as the new residents that would move into the high-rise buildings. Im also concerned about how downtown MP will fare during and after construction of these high-rise apartments. My sense is that downtown will be become even less desirably to walk around and shop in, just because of the reduced parking and the increase number of people. I also personally will not like to visually see giant 10-story buildings in downtown - it really takes away from the draw of coming to downtown MP - but I also understand that we have to solve this problem of population. I would just very much prefer if the location was somewhere else, and not impact downtown MP itself.
As it is, I go to PA downtown more now because Im also seeing a lot of homelessness around downtown MP. About 6 months ago my family and i were walking around downtown MP after dinner and a homeless guy (or just someone with mental health issues) kept following us and yelling out racist comments about us. We were with kids and had to explain to just keep walking and ignore. Anyways, its not exactly what my family expected when we moved closer to downtown MP several years ago.
Thanks for taking in my comments and concerns.
Shasank.
