.
Honorable Council Members,
I wanted to thank you for assisting our local restaurant owners by allowing them to expand out onto Santa Cruz Avenue. I find the current design to be quite workable in terms of driving downtown and love the expansion of the restaurants out into the street. If we could ever build parking structures, I think it would make great sense to close all of Santa Cruz and make it a promenade. But, the parking structures would have to come first. And, Menlo and Oak Grove should have parking off those streets to make them safer for drivers and cyclists. Again, parking structures would have to come first.
On another topic, thank you for staying committed to installing sidewalks along Santa Cruz Avenue into the residential end of town. I was on the Safe Routes to School committee when this was suggested. This may have been as far back as 2002-2004. It is quite sad that it takes this long to install sidewalks on such a busy street where school children walked and biked unsafely for several decades. I am not blaming anyone, but it just makes one wonder why it takes so long to accomplish something like this.
On another note, is there any work being done to fix the very unsafe, very uneven paving in the existing parking lots behind Left Bank and Trader Joes? I think many residents will agree that these lots are accidents waiting to happen.
In relation to the TJ parking lot, and the traffic jams that often occur at the Trader Joes driveways on Menlo Avenue, I would also like to suggest the following:
First TJ’s driveway closest to Curtis on Menlo only allows entrance from Southwest bound cars coming from El Camino. No left turns into either of the TJ’s driveways going Northeast towards ECR on Menlo. Once inside the parking lot from this first driveway closest to Curtis, the cars can park only from this direction. Cars can continue to go left into the larger lot and park there except for handicap drivers who could park on the section of lot in front of the store entrance and that driveway to Menlo is an exit where cars can only turn RIGHT (Southwest) onto Menlo. NO LEFT turns out of that lot onto Menlo Avenue.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Mary
[A person with collar shirt Description automatically generated]
It is not within the scope of my work as a real estate agent to investigate or verify any of the information that is supplied by sellers and third parties.
California Real Estate License #01789710
