Good evening Mayor and Council members,
After reviewing the proposals, one thing is clear: although the developers
use different language, all of them shift risk onto the City while asking
you to sacrifice downtown parking, merchant certainty, infrastructure
stability, and public trust.
First, affordability.
One proposal openly admits it cannot deliver very-low or extremely-low
income housing and rebrands 80 to 120 percent AMI as “affordable,” even
though that is essentially market rate. Another relies on speculative,
multi-year tax credit stacks and vouchers that are not guaranteed, while
still inserting market-rate units to make the deal pencil. A third defers
affordability certainty altogether.
Public land should not be used unless it delivers the housing categories
Menlo Park actually lacks — with certainty.
Second, infrastructure and safety.
None of these proposals proves that downtown can handle the sewer, water,
electrical, fire, or evacuation demands they would create. Fire access,
water pressure, hydrants, and emergency staging are repeatedly deferred to
“future coordination.”
That is not planning. That is gambling with public safety.
Third, parking and downtown survival.
Every proposal depends on demolishing the City’s primary surface parking
supply and promises to “replace it later” with a garage. All of them
acknowledge — directly or indirectly — that there will be years of parking
loss during excavation and construction.
Downtown businesses do not survive on promises. They survive on access,
turnover, and visibility — none of which exist behind construction fencing
for five, six, or seven years.
Fourth, construction timelines.
These projects push full completion into the early 2030s. That is nearly a
decade of disruption in the heart of the City. No enforceable staging
plans. No economic loss protections. Just marketing strategies to convince
customers that businesses still exist behind barricades.
If a project requires PR campaigns to explain why downtown looks closed,
it’s the wrong project in the wrong place.
Fifth, financial risk.
The City is being asked to contribute land, accept long-term ground leases,
defer fees, issue bonds, or rely on residual-receipts structures that often
never pay back. The developers control the upside. The City carries the
debt risk, ballot risk, and political liability.
Public land is not supposed to function as a backstop for private
feasibility.
Sixth, scale and transparency.
One proposal includes buildings up to nine stories — completely out of
scale with a village downtown. Another introduces podium-scale massing that
permanently alters Santa Cruz Avenue. And notably, one proposal does not
even disclose how many stories it plans to build, making it impossible to
evaluate height, shadow impacts, or fire access.
If the City cannot see the scale, it should not be voting to give away the
land.
Finally, voter risk.
All of these proposals quietly acknowledge that voter approval may be
required. None offers a credible strategy to earn it. Messaging is not a
substitute for alignment with community priorities.
Housing is necessary. But housing that destabilizes downtown, weakens
safety, and erodes public trust is not progress.
Better alternatives exist — civic sites, government campuses, and
underutilized institutional land where infrastructure can be planned,
affordability can be guaranteed, and downtown does not have to be
sacrificed to make a deal work.
I’m asking you to pause this process, reject downtown parking plazas as
housing sites, and redirect staff to locations that solve the housing
problem without creating a permanent downtown crisis. Please stop advancing
housing development on Downtown Parking Plazas 1, 2, and 3 and redirect
staff to pursue other sites that can actually meet Menlo Park’s housing
goals without damaging the City’s economic and safety backbone.
Merry Christmas,
Mary Seaton
Menlo Park Homeowner
