Dear Mayor Combs and City Council Members:
It is truly irresponsible, on the part of the City Council, to require that
our downtown be devastated through the loss of it’s parking while
exacerbating the housing shortage issue with the pending SRI and USGS
proposals.
If the parking plazas were valued at their true value, the 4.8 acres at
$700 per square foot is $147,280,000. This gives some idea of what is being
offered as a giveaway to the low cost housing developers and beneficiaries.
The City should instead be considering the subsidization of Lane Partners
and the USGS developer up to the value of the damages to the downtown
businesses and the free land being offered via the parking plazas.
Since the City has such largess, why not offer it’s monetary equivalent to
developers at SRI and USGS instead since it wouldn’t cause the bankruptcies
of so many small businesses?
At the very minimum, the $35M - $50M cost of a structured parking lot
should be offered as a subsidy. It’s necessity, as a result of occupying
the parking plazas with high rise housing, is a forgone conclusion. When
this economic cost is mentioned at Council hearings, the response is
deadening silence. This parking replacement cost, at a point in the not so
distant future, will end up on the property tax bills of every Menlo Park
resident. The money doesn’t just magically appear.
Further, the loss of sales tax revenue and diminishment of property values
in the downtown will cause significant revenue losses to the City’s budget *on
a continuing basis* and, of course, will have to be back-filled through
property tax assessments as well. In 2021, District 4 (Central Business
District and Allied Arts) represented 23% of the City’s total sales tax and
property tax revenue and was $5.6M. It is far more today.
The Menlo Park community can only conclude that the Council has
decided that private
business losses, bankruptcies and the loss of livelihoods, borne by the
downtown operators and it’s employees, are better than having the courage
to recognize the public costs and subsidize or *propose alternative sites*
that benefit *all stakeholders* including the Menlo Park taxpayers.
Truly yours,
Richard A. Draeger
Draegers Super Markets, Inc.
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