July 24, 2023
OPINION
BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor
It’s hard to believe, but a developer has submitted plans to demolish the Sunset magazine campus on Willow Road in Menlo Park and replace it with four large buildings, one taller than Hoover Tower.
That tower would be 348 feet and stand between Willow Road and San Francisquito Creek. The others would be 279, 246 and 30 feet.
The towers would contain offices, apartments and stores. The development would contain 1,895 parking spaces.
The developer, Oisin Heneghan of N17 Development in Hillsborough, has invoked the builder’s remedy provision in state law.
It says that a city without a state-approved housing plan like Menlo Park can’t stop large housing projects as long they contain 20% subsidized housing.
He can ignore the city’s zoning and build what he wants. The quiet Linfield Oaks neighborhood will get a 29-story office complex, hotel, stores and apartments.
There are places around here that are appropriate for big projects. For instance, you could update the Palo Alto Square office development at Page Mill Road and El Camino Real and get more than 1,000 new homes.
But Linfield Oaks?
Menlo Park missed the Jan. 31 deadline for a state-approved housing plan, officially called a Housing Element. The city submitted its last housing plan to the state on June 30 and will hear whether it’s approved by Aug. 29.
The purpose of the plan is to show where the city has zoned for enough housing to meet state quotas. The quotas are based on the idea that the Bay Area is going to continue growing.
Palo Alto, which also missed the deadline, is grappling with a builder’s remedy project proposed for the Creekside Inn at 3400 El Camino Real. But that proposal is much smaller compared to the towers on the Sunset campus.
The city has a mixed record when it comes to development. While many residents vehemently oppose growth, City Council has approved the Stanford and Springline projects on El Camino Real, along with Meta’s 1.75-million-square-foot Willow Village on Willow Road.
If council members wanted to stop this project, they might hire a good land-use lawyer to look for mistakes in Heneghan’s plan.
One problem is that the law says 20% of the entire project needs to be subsidized low-income housing to qualify for the builder’s remedy. But it looks like Heneghan is only setting aside 20% of the housing as low-income. Housing is just one component of his project, which would also include offices, retail and a hotel. He might have to increase the low-income housing to get the builder’s remedy.
Another concern is whether this development would interfere with flood abatement work on the creek?
Heneghan filed his application to build the towers on June 21. The city has taken no public action on this application since then. In fact, the councilwoman whose district includes this project, Jen Wolosin, went on vacation. Maybe city leaders are OK with a 29-story building and they’re hoping the public calms down and accepts it?
The housing law needs to be challenged in court by Palo Alto, Menlo Park and other Mid-Peninsula cities. The law assigns quotas of new homes to each city. But those quotas were handed out under the assumption the Bay Area would continue to grow.
Actually, people are leaving the Bay Area and California in droves. The state government, however, hasn’t adjusted its housing quotas. City governments need to challenge this and get the quotas reduced or eliminated.
I’m not against development, but we’ve got to project our residential neighborhoods like Linfield Oaks. The people who live there never bargained on being neighbors with a 29-story tower, which might reduce their home values. And a home is typically a family’s biggest investment.
Yes, our community should grow — just not in the neighborhoods.
Here’s a link to the application Heneghan has submitted to the city.
Editor Dave Price’s email is [email protected]. His column appears on Mondays.
This sounds to me like the wrong way to look at growth. First off, I’m not sure that people are actually leaving Palo Alto. I haven’t heard of any of my neighbors moving away recently, and those who said they were thinking about moving to Austin or Boise have already changed their minds. Second, even if people were leaving in droves, housing is still too expensive. Our children can’t afford to live here, and we need more projects which will promote affordability. Third, it is a waste of city money to sue these projects. Ultimately, they are very likely to fail in court, and even if they succeed and make the project 30% smaller, what was all that for? To stop Menlo Park from getting a shopping mall and hotel? Give me a break.
An anecdote about your acquaintances must prove that you’re right. So much for actual data.
I’m looking at a May 21, 2023 story in the Mercury News that uses actual data from the state Department Finance, U.S. Postal Service and other agencies.
That story says the Bay Area lost a net 292,050 households since 2020. A household is two or more people. So call it a half a million who left.
Sorry to burst your bubble even more, but the data shows Texas gained the most Californians followed by Arizona, Nevada, Washington and Florida.
So can we stop the denial? People are leaving.
This application has been sitting on somebody’s desk at city hall for two months? And our council and staff have done nothing? What, did they figure it would just go away? They should be spending their time trying to come up with a way to stop this!
Counciloerson Jen Wolosin, who represents the neighborhood, decided to take a vacation rather than deal with it. I don’t want to hear any fake outrage from her.
Then you should definitely take over that thankless job. Run for office! and in the meantime, show your two-week plan for effectively “dealing with it” (the one that would have been so time-sensitive and effective to merit canceling a well-earned vacation). Actions, as you say, speak louder than words.
It’s been nearly two months, not two weeks.
She apparently read about the proposal in the newspaper.
This is the biggest development to hit Menlo Park in my lifetime, so of course she should postpone her “well-earned” vacation to hold a meeting to determine the city’s strategy. At the tip top of the list is getting that Housing Element done. Council should hire a lawyer to look for ways to stop this project (as Mr. Price said). A lot could have been done in two months. Instead nothing has happened. If you think I’m wrong, show me what they’ve done.
a) You must be quite young! It’s not even the biggest development proposal to hit Menlo Park even in the last five years (tallest? sure. but in terms of square footage, it pales in comparison to much of what has been unfolding over the last decade in the M-2.)
b) It’s a development proposal, not a natural disaster. Developments at this scale take years (sometimes decades) to materialize – so no – I don’t think 2 weeks or 2 months at the outset would have made a difference.
c) Council members aren’t supposed to comment publicly about legal strategy, even if armchair politicos and local gadflies wish they would. But a prominent land-use attorney outlined several potential options in a recent Almanac article. You’ll be relieved to know that none of those options was eliminated due to city council/city manager travel plans.
d) The council *did* vote to adopt the new housing element by the January 31 deadline, although HCD declined to certify it, and council and staff have since worked diligently to submit revisions to the state (before going on vacation). Right now the ball is in HCD’s court.
Now you’re making things up to support your argument.
Council can’t discuss legal strategy unless they have an executive session (closed door) that is properly noticed as required by the Brown Act. No such meeting has taken place. The city’s lawyers haven’t been directed to do anything about this. If you’re suggesting that council secretly ordered the city attorney to work on this application, then that’s a Brown Act violation.
During the last two months, council could have provided direction to their attorney.
And that’s idiotic to say that because council adopted the Housing Element by the deadline, that’s good enough. The state has to certify it. Had the council been planning ahead, they would have submitted it to the state long before the deadline to prevent the Builder’s Remedy.
I suspect you work for Yusufov and are being paid to write these posts. Will you be at Tuesday’s council meeting to give a rousing speech about Yusufov?
I’d like to hear “Go for it’s” defense of a 29-story building? The only people who think this is a good idea are surrogates of the developer and trolls who don’t live here.
This is crazy! I can’t believe it’s a possibility.
[Post deleted. Terms of use violation.]
I live near this site, and think it is a good place for new homes. Our region’s failure to build more homes has caused so many problems — homelessness, super commutes, $3M average sale price, displacement of working people, etc etc. Now is the time to build more homes.
@Anonymous, good points.
Am I correct that you believe that buliding this project will:
– reduce homelessness
– reduce the number of super commuters
– provide housign afforable to working people
If that will happen, I am all in…
…but I’m having a hard time connecting the dots from this housing and your expected results. Perhaps you could elaborate on how you see this happening.
– enable
Isn’t this the project that the Daily Post once described as the equivalent of Stanford Shopping Center or 42 Midtown Safeways?
Let’s recall that Middlefield near there was juyst NARROWED to remove more traffic lanes!
What a farcical disaaster this would be. Just say no to9 the Berman’s Remedy and to the DODO politicals (DEveloper Owned Developer Operated) who refuse to let communities address the changed economic realities of people leaving the area, of workers working remotely etc.
Nothing in the world stays the same for 8 years — not the huge state budget surplus that’s turned into a budget deficit due the market crash which leaves no state money for afforfable housin, not climate change causing droughts and flooding, etc etc.
Time to end these absurd housing targets and vote out politicians like Berman, Weiner etc. who only care selling out their communities to their deep=pocketed backers.
“Go for it” has got it backwards. Council members are free to talk about legal strategy unless it was discussed in closed session. That’s not an issue now because no closed session meetings have taken place. So any council member is free to give their views on stopping this monstrosity, like Drew did the other day in that Post article. What council members shouldn’t do is talk about advice they’ve received in closed session from their lawyer.
We need more housing in the mid-peninsular. I am a renter with very little hope of ever being able to put down roots unless the amount housing stock is increased. It is all very well for people who owns lovely houses to complain about these new buildings but they don’t need to deal with the consequence of the housing shortage.
I don’t care anymore, build it! Build something and keep building until ordinary people can afford to buy or rent at reasonable rate