City Council Members & City Staff –
Thank you for the discussion and review of the seven RFQ responses. In the review by City Staff it was noted that Eden Housing stated that Affordable Housing funds cannot be used for Public Parking. Specifically, their RFQ response said:
We recognize that the construction of a public parking garage is a critical asset to the Menlo Park business community. Unfortunately, the financial tools available to affordable housing developers do not allow us to build a non-housing component this large without direct subsidy so we did not include this garage in our proposal. However, we did work with our design team to study and set aside a portion of Parking Plaza 1 that will allow for a 5-story, 515-space garage that could be developed by the City or a development entity of their choosing.
-- Eden RFQ Response: Page 4
Please note that Related Companies / Alta said very much the same thing in their response:
Related and Alta have proposed a freestanding parking structure for the replacement parking. Affordable housing funding sources do not allow public parking as an eligible use of funds.
-- Related & Alta RFQ Response: Page 34
I do not know if either developer is correct about this, but it feels critically important to find out. As the Council discussed last night, this could be exactly the kind of thing that stops the Housing Project dead in it tracks. If the Council “discovers” this through the RFP responses (probably in Nov or Dec) then the Council will have wasted a year on a program that was destined to fail from day one.
Please ask Staff to investigate allowable sources of funding for public parking. A good first step would be to just ask Eden and Related why they thought there would be a problem.
Thank you,
Rob
___________________
Rob Foster
(650) 799-8164
robertefoster@gmail.com
