Dear Councilmembers,
Thank you for your dedication to our beautiful city. As a Menlo Park “native” and the daughter of Silas Payne who also volunteered to help form our City’s government policies, I have some idea of the hours of dedication your job entails.
As our representatives, my husband Phil and I appreciate the tremendous responsibility to maintain the character of our city while faced with the real-life challenges of housing affordability and availability. The following comments are our hope that your decisions will be the right choices on your watch for Menlo Park’s future.
As with many of our fellow residents, we have been grieving the incremental loss of our downtown. Many buildings stand vacant with “For Lease” signs everywhere. Our parking lots are simply awful with narrow parking spaces, narrow corridors and broken asphalt. In our opinion, building affordable housing downtown by converting City owned parking into underground parking garages with affordable housing above would serve two purposes. First, it would provide a perfect housing solution and second, would bolster the much-needed economic development of downtown. Under these circumstances the need for a car ideally would not be needed thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping reduce climate change. You can utilize/update the already approved ECR/Downtown Specific Plan to enhance housing above retail in coordination with the parking areas.
As an example of great urban planning, our neighborhood of Sharon Heights was one of the first “planned” development communities. In the development, the shopping center, Sharon Heights, was appropriately placed (and with great foresight since there was no real traffic), backing up to Sand Hill Road. Next came the apartment complexes of which Sharon Green, Seven Oaks and Sharon Oaks are a part and which comprise many housing units. Then came PUDs with houses which have a shared foundation on smaller lots on Eastridge and Blueridge. Next are the single-family homes on larger lots. This is what I envision for downtown, housing development concentrated next to retail services for a shared benefit with larger homes and lots radiating from this center as they do now. In your consideration, up zoning Sharon Heights shopping center for housing above retail makes good sense.
Growing up in the rural Menlo Park of yesteryear, green spaces were everywhere. Now that we have become an urban megalopolis, the need for our City’s parks has never been greater. The Sharon Heights park as an example, provides a daily refuge for those who want to enjoy the mental health of walking trails and relaxing in a green, treed, and mask-free environment. This is true for all our community parks. PLEASE don’t trade housing shortage for open space shortage! Reducing open space at Burgess Park, as an example will also reduce playing space for our youth which is already at a premium and will continue to grow.
We view the necessity of affordable housing as a great opportunity for Menlo Park to develop housing downtown, bolster economic development where it is sorely lacking, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while maintaining our existing large and beautiful parks for everyone to enjoy.
Respectfully,
Maya and Phil Sewald
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www.OvationHomes.com
MAYA SEWALD
BROKER ASSOCIATE & FOUNDER
DRE #0993290
CELL: (650) 346-1228
MAIL: 325 Sharon Park Dr #223
Menlo Park, CA 94025
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