BY ADRIANA HERNANDEZ
Daily Post Staff Writer
The new owner of the former USGS campus in Menlo Park is proposing to build 670 apartments and office space for about 3,000 employees on the 17-acre lot.
Presidio Bay Ventures submitted plans on Jan. 30 for the former federal campus at 345 Middlefield after purchasing it for $137 million in a federal auction on April 15.
It is proposing:
- 670 apartments, 101 of which will be offered at below market rates,
- Three office buildings totaling 740,000 square feet of office space (which is large enough for 2,960 employees using the benchmark of 250 square feet per worker),
- A 15,000-square-foot childcare center,
- 40,000-square-feet of retail space and
- 3 acres of open space, including a dog park and 1.5 acre “redwood lawn.”
Most of the buildings on the campus will be demolished. The only building that will remain is the Survey Lane building. That building will be used for office space and the childcare center.
Six to seven stories
The remaining buildings and parking canopies will be demolished to create six buildings across the campus. Three six-story office buildings will be built between Oak Street and Forest Drive, totaling 740,000 square feet of office space. Since some of the new office buildings will replace already exisiting office space, about 320,000 square feet of office space (enough for 1,280 employees) will be new, according to the city.
Three apartment buildings, ranging from six to seven stories, will be built along Forest Drive and Redwood Way, with units wrapped around the buildings.
All residential buildings will have ground-floor parking totaling 804 amongst the three buildings, according to project plans.
Presidio Bay also plans to build a two-story build-ing, The Pavilion, to host community events and activities and host retail space.
The developer will also make changes to Middle-field Road by separating the bike lane with a wide strip of trees.
Between 2026 and 2027, the project will evolve to meet community needs, and by 2028, Presidio Bay Venture founder Cyrus Sanandaji previously told the Post, plans to submit building permits. Construction is estimated to start in 2029, he said.
New neighborhood
The project is one of two developments in the center of Menlo Park that will result in a new neighbor-hood. In October, the city approved Lane Partners’ plans to redevelop the similarly closed-off 63-acre SRI campus next door to USGS into 800 apartments and 1 million square feet of office and retail space.
Lane Partners have told city officials they plan to submit plans with another 200 or so apartments on the SRI campus.
Presidio Bay owns the Springline project at 1300 El Camino Real and has submitted a proposal in response to the city’s plan to redevelop three downtown parking lots into up to 450 subsidized apartments.
That seems like a terrible proposal. Middlefield already has gridlock. How will Menlo Atherton High School students get to class? Will Lane Partners provide helicopter shuttles for them?
Not the very wosrt new project but still — it is a crying shame what’s been, being done to the Peninsula.
So many nice, good things have already been lost, torn down, and replaced with (in many cases) ugly dense ($4,000 woke yuppie whatever) tenements (and piles of worker-bee cubicles). Yuck!
Yuck indeed. How will students get to class? How will I get to my dentist at 321 Middlefield and/or Menlo Park to shop since development at Town & Country / El Camino will make Embarcadero even more gridlocked than it already is?
Perhaps Aeroflot can provide helicopter shuttles for everyone since a Russian oligarch — and a Putin buddy — is the developer pushing the Builder’s Remedy project at the Sunset site which is very close to the USGS site where Menlo Park has spent years and big bucks narrowing Middlefield to one lane.
Actually getting to Menlo Park to shop won’t matter without the Aeroflot helicopter shuttles won’t matter since it’s the same developer proposing to replace half the downtown parking in Menlo Park with housing.
Maybe the YIMBY’s and their DODO (Developer Owned Developer Operated) politicians could project how many businesses this will close, how much sales tax revenue will be lost and how far the traffic gridlock will extend since this also blocks 101 access.