Dear City Council,
We are strongly urging the city council to move more slowly before fast tracking the housing development slated for the parking lots between Santa Cruz and Oak Grove.
As residents of Menlo Park for over 25 years, we specifically chose to live here over the surrounding cities because of the small town feel it offered us and the safe, friendly downtown where we knew the shopkeepers and felt part of the community. We felt comfortable when our children walked or bicycled to theIr public schools and enjoyed the city sponsored events that made raising a family here a pleasure. We love Menlo Park and all that it has offered our family. We feel blessed to belong to a close knit neighborhood that is a rarity these days.
We don’t want this to be jeopardized by rushing into a development that will irrevocably change our beloved town.
We’ve watched as the traffic has increased along with the population density over the years especially during commute hours when it can take 25 minutes to travel 2 miles. The routes to the local schools are also congested. Adding 450 units of housing into this already densely populated area will further increase these issues and make our streets more dangerous to our residents both biking and driving.
We are worried that fast tracking this housing development will continue to erode the village-like feel of downtown which was the reason many of us chose Menlo Park to call home. We are very concerned that there has not been in-depth parking and traffic studies to address the consequences of adding 450 units to downtown. We are concerned for the many businesses that will be adversely affected by the lack of parking, many of whom are just now regrouping after the Covid years.
We are equally concerned that the vision and future of this town could be decided without taking a more holistic, long term approach to changing the town’s landscape.
We urge you to take a more measured, less rushed approach to this process.
Sincerely,
Fariborz Rostami and Elizabeth Harrity
