To: Menlo Park City Council, April 15, 2025
From: Michael C. DeMoss, Commercial Real Estate Attorney & Menlo Park Resident
Dear Mayor Combs, Please read aloud my comments at the meeting tonight:
Dear Council Members, (3 minutes reading time)
Thank you for prioritizing “Downtown Revitalization” at your workshop on March 12th.
However, Downtown Revitalization is NOT possible if you approve the plan to make the parking lots “SURPLUS LAND”, in order to build low cost housing. Vacancies will escalate until the downtown is destroyed.
After reading all seven developers proposals, I presume all are good developers, BUT . . . they have been given a task that mathematically will not work; physically and financially.
7 Reasons why housing will not work on Menlo Parks downtown parking lots:
This list is not in any order or meant to target a particular developer by name.
1) Estimates indicate the development will not be completed until: As late as 2032. Six or seven years disrupting parking for the downtown customers, merchants and professionals will lead to MORE vacancies.
2) Parking is “NOT INCLUDED”, or mentioned, in some proposals; other proposals are 400 parking spaces short of what is needed. Most people do not want to park on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th floor of a parking ramp, in order to go to a store or office. The existing parking lots are NOT SURPLUS LAND; Surface Parking is a “REVITALIZATION PRIORITY”.
3) One proposal states (honestly) there is not enough money for the parking ramp, and the taxpayers need to pay for building a parking ramp. ($50 Million from taxpayers?)
4) A Five to Eight story apartment building (or parking ramp) in downtown Menlo Park is aesthetically/architecturally inconsistent with the existing vision and layout of the city, casting a long dark shadow on the area.
5) Shared parking is proposed between apartment dwellers, their visitors, merchants, customers, delivery vans and others. This will eventually cause confrontations, bad will, and vacancies in the Apartments AND the Stores and Offices.
6) One proposal provides 100 of the 345 apartments are for “HOMELESS” and special needs. It is unlikely this will work. Homeless people need more than an apartment; most need professional help in a facility equipped to resolve their homeless problem.
7) "Modular Apartments” and/or “Modular Parking Ramps” are proposed by some developers. They are faster and cheaper, but they are out of place in downtown Menlo Park.
Finally:
It becomes increasingly difficult to change plans as you continue to move forward, but it is NOT TOO LATE to look elsewhere to build housing that the state has unilaterally demanded.
If you designate the parking lots as “Surplus Land”, and accept a bid from a developer, I predict that the voters will reject it, and there will be costly, time consuming litigation; that will interfere with:
Our goals: Revitalizing Downtown and Providing Additional Housing.
Thank you,
Mike
