Dear MP Council Members,
Concerning this upcoming council meeting to vote on declaring current downtown parking lots as surplus property and requesting developer proposals for housing: Once you start to go down this road it will be extremely difficult for you (or more likely, future council members) to reverse course. You will have started the proverbial rock on its downhill course. You should not get started on this. Why?
1. Practically every existing store owner or tenant downtown is strongly opposed to this. Simply, their customers will lose their convenient parking and they will be forced to close. Walk around downtown and look at all the signs opposing this project that are in just about every store front.
2. There is a petition now out with over 2,340 signatures (and counting) from Menlo Park residents who oppose this development. More will follow as more people become aware of this.
3. Menlo’s downtown currently has a large number of vacancies. Someone said there are 22 vacant storefronts with “for lease” signs. Who, in his right mind, would want to sign a new lease, pay for tenant improvements, and open up a retail store if they thought that the existing parking lots would be going away?
4. There are currently two new redevelopments ongoing (for two restaurants which will replace Ann’s Coffee Shop and LeBoulangerie). If you vote to approve making these parking lots surplus and request developer RFP’s, will the owners of these two restaurants back off these needed projects?
Most residents of Menlo Park want an attractive and commercially viable downtown. However, this proposal will kill off any possibility of that happening.
I am not opposed to new housing in Menlo Park. Most other residents aren’t against new housing either. But there are other and much better locations for this. Let’s kill this poorly conceived idea and put your (and city staff’s) energies into defining more suitable locations.
Bruce Ochieano
1795 Stanford Avenue
Menlo Park, CA
Sent from my iPhone
