Commentary by Author, Michael Giudicessi
For a truly deep dive into the issue of Menlo Park’s downtown parking lots, and our City’s intent to give them away, these two pamphlets are must-reads. Author Michael Giudicessi regularly visits Menlo Park, staying at his family’s home near downtown.
The Past
Beginning in the 1940s, Menlo Park city leaders built the eight existing downtown parking plazas through a visionary plan that acquired yards and gardens from families and taxed downtown property owners to pay for it.
That plan took a span of three decades to develop and finish.
Time has proven that the effort was worth it--the plan worked at inception and still works today.
Residents and visitors gather and shop along Santa Cruz Avenue in a village atmosphere that exudes comfort and community, and safety and calm.
Now city leaders seek to give the plazas to private developers to build high-density apartment structures towering over neighborhood shops and restaurants. Those towers of five to 10 stories would diminish existing parking and irreversibly change the character of downtown.
These plans have continued to progress despite overwhelming community opposition.
The commentary presented in “Big Yellow Taxi,” published before residents requested a ballot initiative requiring voter approval of any conversion of plaza land, lays out the history and facts of how the community came to rely on this critical foundation of the downtown’s infrastructure.
Those facts make clear that City efforts to uproot that foundation represent a classic case of government trying to fix something that’s not broken.
The question must then be asked: Are City officials about to break something they cannot fix?
The Present
MENLO PARK—Guided by medical ethics and the Hippocratic Oath, physicians follow a principle of “First, do no harm.”
That ground rule inspires doctors to respect the wishes of those in their care, to make full disclosures that allow informed decision-making, to minimize risk, and, most of all, to avoid injury.
Government would do well to act in the same way.
Still, when it comes to Menlo Park’s anticipated giveaway of downtown lands, public officials hardly seem committed to openness or accountability, just as they must know that their selected path will do more harm than good.
By pursuing a course designed by staff members, Menlo Park’s five elected City Council members are tracking toward taking heavily used parking plazas to the north of the Santa Cruz Avenue commercial district away from the public, only to give the land to sophisticated developers to build apartment towers overshadowing the neighborhood.
Under the plan, the City Council would declare that the parking plazas are “surplus property” despite their constant use and value. Even worse, the City would donate that land to the winner of a RFQ/RFP beauty contest.
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