Hi City Council Members,
I want to support your efforts to deal with N17’s proposed high rise office towers at the former site of Sunset Magazine. If this project goes through as designed, it will change the eastern portion of Menlo Park for decades to come if not forever.
The project will make an already bad traffic situation much worse making it virtually impossible for fire trucks, the police and ambulances to get through during commute hours when traffic is backed up all the way to Middlefield on Willow as well as into Palo Alto and north into Menlo Park.
With only 1,400 proposed parking spaces, where will those who work one of the 3,000 jobs park? Will streets for blocks around 80 Willow Road be lined with their cars? (Weekdays portions of Willow Road west of Middlefield already have significant numbers of parked commuters’ cars on the street.)
If the state is trying to increase the housing/work place balance in California communities, what do they say about how this project will increase the shortfall of housing compared to jobs? With several very attractive commercial buildings along Middlefield in Menlo Park empty for years, will the commercial space in these towers actually get used?
Menlo Park needs more housing especially for city employees. (We had a Menlo Park inspector for our solar panel/going all electric project tell us he and his wife would love to live in Menlo Park.) This is not how to go about helping this need. The planned housing projects at the former USGS and current SRI sites are much more appropriate and I think something similar would be welcomed at 80 Willow Road. The city’s proposal to develop housing in three parking lot areas north of Santa Cruz Ave is also a step in the right direction.
Please do everything legally in your power to either prevent this from happening or get it scaled way back with much less or no commercial space. This is super scary for all of us. This N17 developer will build these towers, sell them off at a nice profit, pocket the money and leave those of us who live here to deal with the ongoing mess.
Sincerely,
Nancy Rankin
ng.rankin@gmail.com
