Honorable Menlo Park Councilmembers and City Staff,
"Like many urban centers in the United States, downtown San José is in a
vicious cycle — vacant and underutilized properties discourage pedestrian
activity, which in turn hurts remaining businesses and makes new investment
hard to attract. Yet downtown’s empty ground-floor spaces present a huge
opportunity to attract visitors and patrons for local businesses and to
reinvigorate downtown streets."
Unfortunately, one could make the same observation about downtown Menlo
Park. One could say downtown Menlo Park is far behind downtown San Jose,
which has worked hard to fashion itself into a dense, walkable,
transit-rich, and culturally dynamic urban center.
SPUR recently published a policy brief
focused on short term actions to address high vacancy rates in commercial
ground floor spaces. They present five strategies to support revitalization
and to "quickly improve conditions downtown for residents, visitors,
employees, small business owners, artists, and all San Joséans."
And while SPURs recommendations focus on strategies for the near term,
its important to note that: "The city’s long-range plans include
converting obsolete office spaces, building new housing, bringing workers
downtown, and boosting tourism."
Amen! Lets revitalize Menlo Parks downtown into a vibrant, welcoming
space where folks from all walks of life can live, work, and thrive!
I hope you find inspiration in SPURs report and the strategies and
recommendations therein. Id also like to highlight the recommendation
to "limit
public parking on ground floors and discourage new surface parking downtown
to reduce inactive spaces."
https://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/2025-12/SPUR_Getting_In_on_the_Ground_Floor.pdf
Best,
Katherine Dumont
Menlo Park, D3
