Menlo Park voters face a critical decision regarding the economic survival of our local businesses and the long-term character of our community.
Measure P offers a common-sense solution to a poorly conceived city initiative. By requiring voter approval before the city can sell, lease, or permanently alter our eight downtown parking lots, this measure establishes a vital safeguard for our vibrant commercial core.
The city’s current plan to replace Plaza 1, 2, and 3 with high-density public housing is a gamble Menlo Park cannot afford to take. Wiping out 556 essential parking spaces would hand a death sentence to the mom-and-pop storefronts, hardware stores and restaurants that are already struggling with rising vacancies.
A recent report by consultant Strategic Economics confirms the financial volatility of these proposals, revealing massive funding gaps ranging from $19 million to $45 million. To close these gaps, consultants are already suggesting the city scale back its parking replacement requirements — a move that completely betrays local merchants and visitors.
Good alternatives exist
We can fulfill state-mandated housing targets without sacrificing the economic lifeblood of our downtown. Viable, logical alternatives exist that don’t threaten our local businesses. The spacious City Hall campus on Laurel Street is an ideal location for higher-density projects. Other underutilized areas, such as the VA campus on Willow Road, the former U.S. Geological Survey site, or the Bohannon Industrial Park, provide expansive footprints that can easily accommodate the state’s housing quota.
We must also be realistic about the unintended consequences of high-density public housing concentrations. Historical data from urban centers across the nation — from Chicago’s Cabrini-Green to various projects in San Francisco — demonstrates that dense, insulated pockets of public housing frequently struggle with elevated crime rates and subsequent declines in surrounding property values.
Shifting this environment directly into our primary shopping and dining corridors threatens to transform a welcoming downtown into an unstable area that deters regional consumers and devalues local real estate.
City Council has consistently rushed this process, routinely favoring aggressive outside advocacy groups over the taxpaying residents and merchants who built this community. Vote “Yes” on Measure P to protect our businesses, preserve our parking, and demand a smarter approach to housing growth.
This is a great point of view! The question is not whether we need affordable housing in Menlo Park. We do need affordable housing. That question is do we want to waste years of effort and millions of dollars on a plan that is bound to fail? The current plan is going to fail, not because of Measure P, but because it is not economically feasible.
Measure P is one way to keep just three members of the Menlo Park City Council from forcing our community headlong into a foolhardy plan.
This is certainly one of the best–most fact-based, accurate, and informative endorsements of a ballot measure I’ve ever seen. The Post nails it! The City Council’s plan is a costly gamble Menlo Park cannot afford to take. And the Post is right that the Civic Center’s spacious city-owned acreage, much of it underutilized, is an obviously better location for housing than the downtown parking lots our businesses rely on to accommodate their customers–and it’s only one among other better choices. In fact, had the Council wanted to choose the worst possible location for housing–the one that would cause the most harm to our community–they would have chosen our downtown parking lots! They are the foundation for our inviting shopping district with its unique family businesses and small town ambience our community and visitors prize. All Menlo Park voters should read the Post’s spot-on endorsement and vote YES on Measure P!
I don’t know about crime rates, but towers without parking are a disaster. [Portion removed — Terms of Use violation.] Real people actually own cars. Helps with tools, kids and groceries, y’know. Passion-driven housing projects need voter review – Menlo Park needs measure P.
Thank you to the Daily Post for endorsing Yes on Measure P and recognizing what is at stake for downtown Menlo Park. As someone who has owned three downtown businesses and still owns property in Menlo Park, I know how hard our merchants work and how essential convenient parking is to their survival.
Residents and business owners deserve clear answers about funding, replacement parking, and the potential costs to taxpayers before the city commits these public assets. Hope is not a financing plan, and our downtown should not bear the consequences of promises that cannot be delivered.
We can support housing while demanding a financially responsible plan that protects our commercial core. Measure P gives voters a voice in decisions that will shape Menlo Park for generations. Vote YES on P.
As a Commercial Real Estate Attorney, experienced with complex real estate transactions, I have reviewed all three bids. All 3 are Financially NOT Feasible. All 3 will irreparably damage the businesses; AND the city council is ignoring this and all the opposition from more than 125+ businesses, who publicly oppose the plan. When our city council becomes a closed-minded cabal, unresponsive to the taxpayers, and unchecked by reason; we voters must intervene, and use the only tool available: a “YES on P” on the Nov3 ballot.
Michael DeMoss, Former Member: Menlo Park Finance & Audit Commission
Sadly, Measure P just makes it impossible for the council to do anything. The voters don’t have time to attend or watch planning commission or city council meetings; they elect council members to do hard work for them. Put aside the existing structural budget deficiencies and the new law suits from the developer on the former Sunset Campus, the city doesn’t have the funds to put things like this on the ballot.
So what I hear you saying is, “The city council is failing, and Measure P makes it hard for them to continue doing the job they’re doing.”
Sounds like an endorsement to me!
Wow, there is some underhanded racism and overt classism in this editorial. Did I suddenly move to Mississippi? Comparing the proposed developments in downtown Menlo Park to urban public housing (Cabrini Green, are you serious?), and then saying that as a result they will necessarily be crime-ridden and drive down property values, is a fear mongering misstatement. There is a term for this – it’s called a “dog whistle” – and I didn’t think I would see it coming from a local editorial board.
There are so many other fallacies in this editorial, I am not sure where to begin. Put simply, Measure P is not at all common sense – it ties the hands of the City and its representatives for eternity. It guarantees that no housing development takes place west of El Camino Real since there are no other sites on that side of town. Great for those residents, but bad for the City. HCD has repeatedly told the City that the burden of new development needs to be shared across the City. Does the author know that the VA is unavailable federal land with its own development, or that the USGS site is already an opportunity site slated for 670 housing units, or that there are 1082 units planned for the SRI site directly across the street from the “spacious City Hall campus”? It’s easy to ignore inconvenient facts.
Personally, I don’t like the idea of building that much housing in the corridor defined by those lots. But dictating by law that they remain unchanged forever and thereby hamstringing the City government is a bad idea. Endorsing that idea through profile-based fear mongering is beneath the dignity of any newspaper.
Wow, you can tell when somebody is losing an argument, they cry “racism”
So it’s racist to even debate this? I don’t think the editorial brought up race. It’s quite a reach!!!
There is nothing wrong with debate. The editorialist wrote 5 paragraphs making what many would consider valid points, some of which I challenged. But then he spent 2 paragraphs fear mongering, which is where I have a problem.
The proposed apartments in downtown Menlo Park are not public housing as the author suggests. He equates this type of development to increased crime, declining property values, and an unstable environment. This is classist – “the poor people will ruin our neighborhood”. Using Cabrini Green as an example unnecessarily introduces race and gangs into the equation. Maybe that’s just my interpretaion.
I am an old white guy, conservative in most politics. I am not a housing advocate. Whether it’s class or race, I do not remember an instance where a newspaper editorial tried to play on fears in the way that this one does.
So Steve Shaw says it’s racist to compare this to Cabrini Green. Fine. Let me ask you, do you want 3 “Opportunity Centers” to open up in downtown Menlo Park? That’s the public housing on El Camino in Palo Alto. It’s in the Police Blotter every day. Outside on Encina Avenue you’ll see men standing around with nothing to do. You want that in downtown Menlo Park? It will be a disaster. You can’t be serious.
Steve, OK so voting yes on Measure P really isn’t racism, it “classist” (thanks for defining that for us) and you are not a raging liberal, you are really a conservative (because conservatives see everything through the lens of race and class). I don’t think you are a raging liberal or a conservative. You sound like just another sleazy real-estate developer willing to shape shift into any persona or political philosophy you think will advance whatever ill-conceived but very profitable project you have teed up for Menlo Park. Your true affiliation is probably with the G$R$E$E$N Party.
People like you have used the racist epitaph so indiscriminately that the term no longer has any meaning. It has gotten to the point that teenagers now describe anything they don’t like, from a sour chewing gum flavor to a foul odor, as racist.
“It guarantees that no housing development takes place west of El Camino Real…” That’s just a flat out scare tactic and lie. Shoving high rises in the middle of obsolete buildings and infrastructure is a horrible idea by any standard. I vigorously oppose this development. But give me a well planned, modern, redevelopment of the entire downtown area and I’ll be all behind it. And I know the residents would too.
Yeah, the Cabrini Green reference and the “Projects in San Francisco? That’s not a whistle, it’s tuba. Most businesses would kill to have hundreds of potential new customers living within walking distance of their establishments. It’s strange to see that these businesses aren’t eager for the business of these new families.
Which is it: “our vibrant commercial core” or “mom-and-pop storefronts, hardware stores and restaurants that are already struggling with rising vacancies”?
Our downtown has some nice things about it, but it’s pretty weak compared to others. Maybe adding new people and new businesses to cater to them might actually give us a lively downtown at last.
Making sure parking is replaced is a legit concern. Making sure we have the infrastructure to handle the increase is a concern. There are legit things to think about, but that message is lost in this badly written piece.
So typical. If you dare criticize a Progressive idea, you’re a racist. They don’t want to debate, they just call people names.
There is no debate that areas of low income rental housing will increase crime. I moved out of such an area in north San Mateo county because I was tired of the late night noise, fireworks, gunshots, loud cars, and my car getting broken into once a month. And if they do catch someone the parents just show up in court and say, “I can’t control my teens.” No fine, no jail time. We don’t need to change downtown Menlo into that.
With Measure P, Menlo will never build enough housing to keep local control of zoning. In 2031, developers will be ready. I predict the result will be 2 or more condo skyscrapers in every Menlo Park neighborhood after that.
You think the Sunset project was big? Get ready for a 50-story tower right next door to you. That’s what Measure P will do. Congratulations!
Voting Yes of P will kill downtown MP. Forcing it to remain the same forever will be its slow, steady death.
Jaun, we are all on the road to a slow steady death but it is a hell of a lot better than kneeling down and being shot in the back of the head by the YIMBYs.
No, what it says is, “Put in the work and properly redesign downtown.”
Do you REALLY believe “downtown” Menlo Park can survive hundreds of cheap new apartments? Come take a look at “downtown” Redwood City … or what’s left of it …
Excellent!!!! Common sense.., Yes on P will cost taxpayers &&$$$! Yes, you and I will have to pay for Measure P’s legal fees among many others !
The purpose of that provision is to protect the voter’s will. Let’s say Measure P passes and then some YIMBY group run by billionaire Karen Grove sues the city. The city then says, “Oh we can’t defend ourselves over this, we will won’t even fight the suit. Karen, you win, no Measure P.” If that happens, then the proponents of Measure P can step in and defend the measure in court, doing what the city should have done in the first place. But the provision only kicks in if the city has decided not to defend the Measure in court.
If you believe Measure P will cost taxpayers lots of money in legal fees, then you also believe that your council won’t behave honorably when it comes to defending a measure passed by a majority of voters.
Why do the idiots who run Menlo Park keep doing their best to destroy downtown, allied arts and surrounding communities ? Just drive down Santa Cruz and count the empty shops (much less the tax imposed to support empty shop owners). Why would anyone with half a brain want to open up in MPK ? This city is crazy. Go look at Mountain View and Moffett, vibrant and alive, vs these proposals. My prediction ? Big developers move in, folks like Draegers and Flegel and Beltramo families sell and now we have a developer landscape. Good bye MPK.