As residents of Menlo Park for 45 years we have had the opportunity to see both good and bad decisions made by our City Council. Replacing downtown parking lots with housing is among the top three bad decisions the Council could make. Our downtown is slowly decaying evidenced by empty stores and lack of passersby. Perhaps the only thing downtown has that Stanford and Town & Country Malls and Palo Alto’s University Avenue and California Street lack is adequate parking. Depriving our downtown of sufficient parking will be a mortal blow to those businesses still hanging on or clawing to get a start. The weak ones will fold while the successful ones will move to more successful malls or downtowns. With inadequate parking drivers seeking rare unoccupied spaces will worsen the traffic snarls on Oak Grove and Menlo Avenue. What a disaster!
Either build parking garages or don’t add housing to our downtown Menlo Park.
Steven & Karen Machtinger
901 Cambridge Avenue
Menlo Park
(M) 650-796-3813
