Menlo Park City Council:
The City Councils desire to focus only on three (3) downtown parking lots for high-density housing has drawn significant opposition from Menlo Park stakeholders for a variety of reasons. Thousands of petitioners oppose the Councils plans and cite several reasons for their opposition, including the Councils lack of any meaningful studies to measure this developments potential impact on the downtown economy, traffic, or infrastructure.
It is shocking that the Council has elected to proceed with an RFQ process before studying the potential risks or downside to replacing 556 public parking spaces with high-density housing. Even before the RFQs deadline of March 31st, we are now experiencing the very real consequences of the Councils flawed proposal with retailers that are leaving downtown in part due to the high-density housing plans and other retailers that are likely to follow suit.
James Littrell (ccd on this email) is the owner of Ruby Living Design, a successful retailer at 730 Santa Cruz Avenue who has been downtown for almost 15 years. James has made the difficult decision to shut down his Menlo Park store. As James stated, the City Councils decision to proceed with the downtown housing plan is not the only reason he is leaving Menlo Park but that Council housing plan was "the straw that broke the camels back". James experienced other frustrations with doing business in Menlo Park, such the City blocking off sections of Santa Cruz Avenue, but the downtown housing plan was the tipping point in his decision to leave - and it speaks to the high frustration level that the decision to shut down this location was made before even waiting to see how the RFQ process plays out.
Apparently, a narrative was making its way around that Ruby Living Design was leaving Menlo Park because James was retiring and the decision to shut down was not related to the downtown housing plan. That is 100% not true - someone from the City went into his store and spoke to a staff member and came away with the impression that the store was closing only because James was retiring. James is very much NOT retiring, instead he is leaving the frustration of Menlo Park behind in order to focus on his two remaining Bay Area locations.
Since Coffeebar opened in downtown Menlo Park in 2017, it has been a vital hub to the downtown community and certainly one of its most popular retailers. I co-own the Coffeebar building and and have enjoyed a solid relationship with its founder, Greg Buchheister (ccd on this email). Greg and I are open and candid with each other and, as business partners, we both want each other to have mutual success at his downtown location. Greg has recently expressed to me that Coffeebars future would very much be in doubt to remain in Menlo Park if the City proceeds with its downtown housing plans.
Greg has firsthand experience with retailers losing surface-level spaces and instead parking in multilevel garages - with disastrous results. In the Cherry Creek section of Denver, Greg was involved with a successful retailer that lost their adjacent parking. In its place, a parking structure was built only one (1) block away. Within only a year, their business fell precipitously and the store was forced to shutter. Customers perceive parking in a garage as a hassle, especially when it is blocks away and you have to park on the 5th level.
My plea to the City Council is this: the plight of these two retailers should be a harsh wake-up call to the City of Menlo Park. While you have completed no meaningful studies to measure the risks and downside of this potential development, we are now experiencing the real-life consequences of your flawed plan. Downtown businesses are leaving because of this plan and if a store as popular as Coffeebar leaves downtown because of this housing plan, you might as well ask the last tenant in town to turn off the lights because downtown will morph into a retail graveyard.
It is unfortunately too late to keep Ruby Living Design, but you can do the right thing for your remaining retailers and tenants - focus on better high-density housing alternatives such as the Civic Center and spare your downtown business community the economic collapse that would surely ensue.
Regards,
Kevin Cunningham
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