Dear City Council,

With the strong public concern over using parking lots for housing, I’m guessing that someone will suggest that the City should start with just one parking lot.

But the traffic issues and loss of parking from the construction of even just one lot could have devastating effect on our business community and pose considerable hardship on our residents. Furthermore, declaring one lot to be “surplus land” will raise the same legal and ethical questions as doing it for three lots.

So I hope that the City’s reaction is to hit PAUSE.

PAUSE to explain to the people of Menlo Park whether sufficient affordable housing could be provided through upzoning, without using the parking lots. The Housing Element includes some upzoning, but it could do considerably more.

PAUSE to evaluate the legal ramifications. The staff report states that “the assessed properties have received the long-term benefit of the financed improvements.” I suspect that’s not enough to hold back the attorneys that property owners will most certainly hire.

PAUSE to see how the Sunset development plays out. The upcoming housing from that was not included in our Housing Element. The silver lining of the project is that this unplanned-for housing could be added to the Housing Element to lessen any “need” for downtown parking lot housing.

PAUSE to give the two recently elected city council members a chance to weigh in on this seismic decision for Menlo Park.

PAUSE to talk to businesses to see how their plans would change (i.e. find out how many would leave).

PAUSE to consider whether housing near the train station is the best way to provide affordable housing for people who work in Menlo Park, given that the people who take the train to work would be people who DON’T work in Menlo Park.

PAUSE for traffic studies to determine if the concept is remotely feasible given our already congested streets and the fact that access to the housing will be from streets that are one block long.

PAUSE to question the conclusions of the recent parking study that we could get by with less parking. That study shows that 2 of the 3 parking lots reach 100% capacity. If parking lots are filling up, people are being turned away. We need to more parking, not less.

PAUSE for better public outreach. The housing element meetings drew the attention of a small group of people who were protecting their own neighborhood from development. The vast majority of people did not know that their downtown was up for grabs.

PAUSE to let the downtown vacancies fill up before doing more parking studies. There are 4 restaurant/bars opening soon, and I’ve I heard from brokers that they have LOIs for other vacancies, so we can expect much more need for parking in the coming year.

PAUSE to help our downtown in the ways that City government should. Clean the place up (like the Civic Center). Replace faded street signs. Repaint crosswalks. Repave the parking lots that have been in terrible condition for years. Remove the pandemic-inspired road closure which has out-served its usefulness. Fill the gap left by the loss of our Chamber of Commerce with some sort of fund to help promote the downtown. Address traffic flow issues. In other words, make an honest effort to help our downtown thrive. If you do, downtown Menlo Park will be reinvigorated and economically strong. Once that’s the case, then we can talk about how things can be further improved with development.


Development is good. But it requires a solid foundation. Please pause, and shore things up first.


Alex Beltramo
Resident of Downtown Menlo Park