Dear council members,
I am writing to express concern about the loss of critical parking spaces in the plan to convert Parking Plazas 1, 2, and 3 to low income housing.
First, I am in full agreement on the importance of meeting our low income housing unit goals. However, I want to know why we cant redevelop these parking plazas with parking underneath and housing above? I know that parking structures are very expensive; however, parking is critical to the health of our downtown. On any given day, ALL of our parking plazas are heavily utilized.
We are already suffering with too many empty storefronts. They will never get filled if we eliminate 47% of the downtown parking spaces, and I fear we might chase existing businesses out of town.
I encourage further exploration of how we would work with a developer for the housing project and also find funding for parking that co-exists on these 3 parking plazas. This might require a major restructuring of our city budget or an effort to find county or state funding sources, but we simply need to find the resources to keep the parking while adding the housing above it.
Thank you,
Debbie Hall
1245 Hillview Drive, Menlo Park
