To the City Council,
Your proposal to re-open Santa Cruz Ave. is a bad idea. Restaurants bring people to downtown Menlo Park. The Bon Marche market is a good gathering place for people. Our downtown is dead. Rug stores and furniture stores do not bring people into the area. I have lived in Menlo Park since 1975. I have watched our downtown change from a place that has stores that people might want to shop in to a destination for decorators and people redoing their houses.
The restaurants along Santa Cruz Ave. Including Galata Bistro, Campers and Roma’s in addition to Bistro Vida and Left Bank, have spent a lot of money building parklets so that those of us who wish to eat outside have a nice place to dine. Rather than charging them for using the parking spaces, you should be thanking them and you should be doing all that you can to help them operate profitably.
Having the parklets allows us to eat in downtown Menlo Park rather than going to California Avenue in Palo Alto or to Laurel St. in San Carlos which have thriving restaurants with outdoor seating. Therefore, the city gets the tax revenue from the restaurants.
I urge you to reconsider the proposal to re-open Santa Cruz Ave.
Janet Robbins
Sent from my iPhone
