City Council Members,
My family and I have been Menlo Park residents for the past 32 years, and we utilize our downtown on a daily basis. I have just learned about the meeting this evening, where you intend to consider and VOTE ?? on declaring the downtown parking lots as surplus land.
As a developer, I understand Menlo Park is now under extreme pressure to meet the state mandated low income housing requirements, though this is not the way solve the problem.
Having been in commercial real estate for the past 38 years, both as a developer and as a land / development broker, you should know you are making a HUGE mistake. If you sacrifice this parking in the way being proposed the downtown will suffer a major blow. These parking lots are not simply “surplus land”, they are an essential amenity to the vitality of our downtown. Without parking the downtown will further deteriorate. And by adding mid and low income housing in such an dense and intense way, the downtown will continue to struggle as these mid and low income tenants will not have the resources to support the downtown, which is already struggling to stay fully occupied as it is. No doubt we could use a much more vibrant mixed use neighborhood, with higher density housing, though not in the way being proposed.
I have current insight into the economics of developing high density housing in this challenging environment, as I am in the process of developing a 3 acre site in another Peninsula city. I would be happy to meet with whomever is interested on the City Council to explain the current economics of building high density housing - they simply do not work. And even if Menlo Park is successful in somehow declaring these parking lots as “surplus”, and then serving it up to a developer as “free land”, is mis-representing reality, as the existing parking amenity is then going to need to be replaced in a garage, which will need to be absorbed either by developer (which will not happen as the economics do not work), or by Menlo Park and its residents.
So in summary, the current path you are on is to declare extremely valuable land, central to our downtown core, as having no value. Then removing that amenity from the downtown retailers, putting further pressure on their trading, no doubt driving many of them away, pushing down retail rents, reducing the value of the Santa Cruz Avenue real estate (and the real estate taxes tax thereon).
And in return Menlo Park residents will then be asked by a non-profit developer to subsidize the building of a parking structure as part of a land transaction.
I am unable to attend his evening’s meeting, though respectfully request that you do NOT take a vote, and slow this process down in order for there be further review and consideration by all interested residents.
Sincerely,
Rich Johnson
RA Johnson (Properties), LLC
rj@rajohnsonsf.com
415-699-5053
https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-johnson-99a2a35a/
