This story was first printed in the Daily Post on July 19. If you don’t want to miss out on important local news stories, pick up the Post in the mornings at 1,000 Mid-Peninsula locations. If you’re with a competing news organization and you’re planning to plagiarize this story, stop. Go out and get some original news instead. Quit copying the Post.
Corrections: A previous version of this story contained incorrect figures for the amount of retail and office space proposed. This version has been changed to correct those errors. Also, the property was sold by Embarcadero Capital Partners in 2019 to Vitaly Yusufov.
BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writer
A developer wants to replace the Sunset magazine campus in Menlo Park with four buildings, one taller than Hoover Tower, that would contain a hotel, apartments, stores and offices.
The project would contain:
• 800 to 1,150 apartments;
• 150 hotel rooms;
• 50,000 to 240,000 square feet of office space;
• and 8,400 square feet of retail space.
That information is from documents sent to the city by developer Oisin Heneghan of N17 Development.
The development will be spread across four buildings where the lifestyle magazine once had its headquarters on Willow Road.
One building would be over 300 feet tall. By comparison, Hoover Tower is 285 feet tall. Another building is proposed to rise 270 feet.
The current ranch-style buildings at Middlefield and Willow roads are about 18 feet high.
Heneghan is invoking the “builder’s remedy,” a provision in state law since 1990 that allows housing projects to ignore local zoning rules in cities with an out-of-date housing plan, as long as 20% of the units in the project are subsidized.
Menlo Park sent its most recent iteration of the city’s plan for new housing, called the Housing Element, to the state on June 30. The state will let the city know if its plans to rezone certain parcels to allow for 2,946 homes is accepted by Aug. 29.
Heneghan has requested a historical evaluation of the 7-acre property, which dates back to 1951. Then architect was Cliff May and the landscape was designed by Thomas Church, according to a preliminary review of the property by Alexandra Kirby, an architectural historian.
Sunset left its Menlo Park campus in 2015 for new headquarters in Oakland’s Jack London Square. The Sunset campus includes the headquarters for the investment company Robinhood at 85 Willow Road. Time Inc. sold the Sunset campus to Embarcadero Capital Partners, a real estate investment firm in Belmont, for $78 million in 2014. In 2019, Embarcardero sold the property to Russsian businessman Vitaly Yusufov for an undisclosed amount.
It is possible the Sunset campus could be eligible for historic preservation because the magazine made “significant contributions” to state and regional history, Kirby’s analysis said. And she said it might also fall into the historic category because of the commercial use of the ranch-style architecture.
Additionally, the site may be “potentially sensitive” due to Native American artifacts found near the property along San Francisquito Creek, according to a letter from Daniel Shoup of Archaeological/Historical Consultants, an Oakland based consultancy that goes by the name A/HC.
Because Menlo Park missed the Jan. 31 deadline to have an approved Housing Element, it will be forced to accept other projects submitted under the Builder’s Remedy provision. One of those is for 1305 Hoover St. That proposal would result in the tear down of a single-family home and garage to allow for construction of a five-story, 19-unit apartment building. That project is less than a quarter mile from Trader Joe’s in downtown Menlo Park and down the street from the Menlo Medical Clinic on Crane Street.
High rises in Menlo Park! We’ve got to stop this.
Sounds like a cool project
It is a pity you think this would be a cool project without much thought to the impacts of such a huge misplaced development. Growth is good, and even necessary, but this is leagues beyond good planning. Look to big Cities like Paris and Barcelona that have been around a millennium and have come around to keeping the hight of buildings to a human scale of 7 to 10 stories. To me even 10 is too high. Look at downtown Redwood City, we planned it right.
Sounds like a terrible idea. Impact to traffic on two already busy roads will create a nightmare situation, especially for those living off Middlefield & Willow!
>>Sounds like a terrible idea. Impact to traffic on two already busy roads will create a nightmare situation, especially for those living off Middlefield & Willow!
Just a short bike ride to the train station!
The architect of the Sunset buildings was Cliff May, and the landscape was designed by Thomas Church. These two men were giants in their respective fields. Let’s respect for this important part of Menlo Park history, please.
They’re some of the ugliest buildings I’ve ever seen. The run down ranch house eyesores are a huge blight on the bay area and it will be a relief to see them gone
They have 70’s charm, like my mother’s house but I understand for some people it not old enought to be a classic and not new enough to please.
The intersection of Willow and Middlefield is a great place for hundreds of new homes. Just a mile to Caltrain, even less to parks and restaurants.
So much for abating climate change.
The clown car that is the Menlo Park city council is responsible for the destruction of the town. I wonder how many other builder’s remedies will be filed that they can do nothing about. They were so worried about exceeding the requirement and bike lanes that they got caught in a ringer. AND we re-elected Combs and Nash to the clown car, two people who keep fighting for these developments. (To be fair, Combs said, “It’s not my problem” when faced with development in one of his neighborhoods.)
And the last election was a pathetic turnout. Well, my fellow homeowners of Menlo Park are getting what they asked for in their apathy. The housing advocates are winning, and smiling all the way to our destroyed property values and city vibe.
I don’t think it’s accurate to blame the current city council. For three decades, city council members have been doing exactly what their constituents want. Which was to blow off state law. We’ve kicked the can down the road one time too many.
Willow road traffic is alredy a mess buildings that high belong near 101 or the 280 freeway. Second option cut it down to five stories and find a place near the train station
To the padailypost.com owner, Keep up the good work!