City hears from opponents at meeting on plans to put public housing on downtown parking lots

This story was originally printed Thursday, Dec. 12, in the Daily Post. To get important local news stories first, pick up the print edition of the Post in the mornings at 1,000 Mid-Peninsula locations.

BY AMELIA BISCARDI
Daily Post Staff Writer

A swarm of Menlo Park residents, property owners and business owners descended on city planners during a Q&A yesterday (Dec. 11) about the city’s plan to build public housing on downtown parking lots.

“It’s going to accelerate the decline of downtown Menlo Park,” resident Kelly Blythe said. “Are you going to have enough new customers to counter all the customers that you’ve now alienated?”

The opponents were armed with a change.org petition with 483 signatures saying they want to protect the downtown and that the parking lots are the wrong place to build the required affordable housing.

Several people at the meeting pointed to the vacant stores downtown, saying they worry about the area. If the city moves forward, many of the parking lots between El Camino Real and University Drive would become housing, and downtown would lose 556 parking spaces for 345 to 483 subsidized apartments.

A previous city study for the downtown area recommended building one or two five-level parking garages with as many as 1,300 spaces.

Carmen Caricchio, who lives down-town, said she just found out about the plans, saying this could affect the already “stay do andowns and shops that would actually have an appeal to pedestrians have a really hard time getting permits,” Caricchio said.

Principal City Planner Tom Smith said plans for the project began in 2021, and the city notified residents in multiple ways.

Some residents wanted to hear from the city why other options were not chosen, throwing out ideas of lots by the library, Burgess Park and the SRI project.

“I’d really like to step back from discussion about the downtown parking lots when there’s potential adverse impacts for residents and business owners and see if we can’t mect our housing element goals with some of these other properties that don’t have these challenges,” resident Brian Collins said.

• Council puts off decision until January after large public turnout.