City Council,
Amazing to me to see how it took years to get sidewalks planned, approved, and built but we are ready to jam down our throats an initiative that will declare much needed parking lots as surplus land and then build housing on them. Where will people park? How will small business survive not only your rules and regulations but also the lack of parking. Past councils created this problem of housing and lack of viable businesses downtown with rules that prevented business coming to downtown. Having seen what a well planned Burlingame Ave has done for all the towns around it and what a disaster our downtown was even before covid hit i think all need to take a step back here and determine what is actually good for the Santa Cruz corridor and Menlo Park.
IMHO we need a vibrant downtown with a great mix of retail local and national, restaurants, hardware stores and something other than banks and rug stores. Just imagine if we had figured out a way to get the Oasis to move downtown after they were dumped. We could actually get a reasonably priced pizza, burger or wings and a beer and not have it break the bank.
Declaring much needed parking [ which gets more crowded everyday as people start returning to work in an office ] as surplus will not help build downtown. We have plenty of people to support a Santa Cruz corridor. We should be helping businesses locate here and not run away to RWC or PA. Specifically you take those 3 parking lots away and i am moving my office some place else where i dont need to hear construction for the next 3 plus years and battle for parking spots. I am sure i am not alone based on the few conversations i have had the past couple days
Lastly, have you experienced traffic downtown lately? As much as some want cars to go away. They are not leaving us anytime soon. There are times during the day it’s impossible to move on a timely basis. Add housing to those parking spots and nobody is moving and eventually with no parking there will be no business.
NO on declaring parking lots surplus and NO on building housing on those lots.
PMJ
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