Re: Willow Village
The housing treadmill created by office approvals on both the east and west sides of the city has to stop. The residents do not want to subsidize these office developers or the companies that fill the buildings. Nor do Menlo Park residents want their neighborhoods to absorb the housing densities set by RHNA.
Building office and facing RHNA requirements create a vicious circle that ignores the impacts to our community, starting with road infrastructure, schools, parks and playing fields.
Facebook did not honor its obligation to its employees or the residents of Menlo Park when it began its journey in our city in 2011. By 2016 the Menlo Park company employee count was 14,000, and by 2020 it had easily reached 20,000. These numbers left the Menlo Park’s jobs/housing imbalance out of whack, while we waited for Facebook to deliver on its housing promises.
The housing deficit hole gets deeper Facebook’s Willow Village does have 1,730 apartments, but sadly 1.2M sq ft of office is included. One foot forward; two steps back. The housing deficit of 813 units created by Willow Village office digs a deeper hole in our housing deficit. Based on the net total office already built by Facebook, Sobrato, Tarlton, Bohannon, Greenheart and Stanford, Menlo Park’s current housing deficit cannot be met.
The grave issue of inequity. Since the arrival of Facebook in 2011, tens of thousands of square feet of office space has been built in the Belle Haven neighborhood of Menlo Park. The approval of the flawed ConnectMenlo plan brought even more new office and bio-med companies, plus a rash of apartment projects that have exceeded 1,200 units. The Council has not corrected the callous zoning policy of allowing 100 housing units per acre in Belle Haven and allowing only 40 housing units per acre allowed west of 101.
Measure T in 2010, which was endorsed by 4 Council Members as a favor for David Bohannon was an office and hotel project that was supported by the voters because the project was “over there.” The residents west of 101 didn’t care what happened “over there” and voted to approve Measure T. This myopic view of Menlo Park residents west of 101 has changed, as can be seen by the vote against Measure V last week.
Menlo Park does care. Let’s stop the RHNA housing treadmill and let’s stop the dumping of office and dense housing in Belle Haven.
Day late; Dollar short Facebook had 12 years to make good on its housing obligation. Today the company’s timing is bad. It is suffering from financial problems. Over 1,500 employees at Facebook’s Menlo Park campus have been fired. Millions of dollars have been spent by the company to break leases on office sites in California and New York.
Do not approve this project or at minimum wait 6 months and see where this company in turmoil lands.
Steve Schmidt
Menlo Park
