The Menlo Park City Council will review and potentially vote on an affordable housing proposal in downtown public parking lots on Tuesday. The meeting will explore development plans on three different lots between Santa Cruz Ave. and Oak Grove Ave. as a part of a larger movement to build below-market-rate housing to meet state requirements.
The three lots (lots 1, 2, and 3) were chosen for their location, size, accessibility, and more in a 2024 city-directed evaluation of potential lot development areas, but faced criticism from surrounding businesses and community members.
In anticipation of the vote, petitions both in favor and against the proposal have circulated online.
“We’re going to the meeting tomorrow as a group of all the merchants in Menlo Park,” Lainey Pizanis, an employee at the Stephen Miller Gallery in downtown, said. “It’s a very bad idea, and it’ll kill the livelihoods of hundreds of people.”
Several long-time business owners noted how this potential traffic could weaken their economic opportunities.
“They need to look at the traffic impact. I just don’t see how this can be good for this area or good for the business. Traffic is gridlocked from seven in the morning until seven at night. I don’t see how they plan on fitting 400 more cars in here,” Mark Rutherford, manager at Gray’s Paints, said.
The Steven Miller Gallery has been on the street for over 34 years. “Stephen Miller has invested so much money in the business, and all those people will be out of work too,,” Pizanis said.
There are 556 total parking spaces between lots 1, 2, and 3. As of now, the city has not provided a plan to replace the parking spaces if the proposal is passed.
“Our customers, as it is, are having a hard time parking. We can’t imagine how it’ll be with the buildings,” Menlo Atherton Reweavers owner Mina Smyrniotis said.
“Parking resources are limited at best now. Without a new parking lot, it’s going to be curtains for us. This business can’t exist without parking,” Rutherford said.
Though many business owners understand the need for affordable housing in Menlo Park, they and other community members hold out hope for an alternative location. Some have suggested relocating the housing to areas surrounding the city’s Civic Center, near Burgess.
“There are places they could put up a building and make sure that there’s a parking lot and make sure that there’s adequate housing. We understand that the cities in California are under mandate to provide housing. But there’s a smart way to do it, and there’s a stupid way to do it,” Pizanis said.
The 6th Cycle 2023-2031 Housing Element, a city’s general housing blueprint, explains that the City Council decided not to pursue housing development in the parks or the Civic Center site to preserve green space and community space for local residents.
“We’re for low-cost housing,” Hansen said. “We’re just against taking the public parking lots away from downtown Menlo Park.”
