Im a Menlo Park resident who often shops in downtown MP as well as downtown Palo Alto. My wife and I favor building higher density housing on the downtown lots with some reservation of paid parking for local business employees, new residents-to-be and minimized free parking for retail customers.
Employees, residents and longer term day visitors ought to pay for parking lots and structures that cost the city to maintain (is maintenance of current surface lots paid for by occupants?). I worked at Stanford Health Care and free parking was NOT given out to its 10K+ employees despite the islands of open space on campus (those who did park on campus, did so far away from nearer patient parking). Paying for long term, regularly scheduled parking incentivizes fewer cars from those who can plan their all day and all night parking needs. Santa Cruz Ave CalTrain station is nearby.
We should also learn from downtown Palo Altos example of overbuilt free parking. I lived there in the 1990s and since the Great Recession the city built a few new parking garages which I almost never use now. Their recent parking study showed less than 50% occupancy now, post-pandemic. The subsequent parking use and revenue shortfall has led to new proposals (e.g., only 1 hour free plus another 1 hour voucher)
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2023/12/01/housing-or-parking-palo-alto-considers-new-proposals-for-downtown-parking-lots/
Palo Alto has more high density housing in its downtown, so we should also learn from them how much of their retail business derives from local, walking residents (from my years living there, Id guess a whole LOT more than downtown Menlo Parks current walkers). We ought to consider this "parkless" boost to local business as well.
Did Menlo Parks recent parking study show a 50%+ occupancy drop off from midday to late afternoon (obviously few all day employees) and between midday vs early morning (few early morning shoppers as well)? If so, that large a drop off implies high hourly parking turnover largely driven by short term mid day retail. This can be accommodated in thoughtful ways without mandates that each and every pre-pandemic surface parking acre be preserved (Ill wager any pre-pandemic parking study of the same lots would have shown longer and higher occupancy of essentially the same city parking acreage).
- Paul Roberts
