would HOUSING + PARKING

be GOOD FOR BUSINESS?

SHORT ANSWER:

No.

  • For anyone with mobility issues or carrying anything heavy (shopping bags, a child, etc.), using a difficult-to-reach parking garage is non-starter. They will drive to a strip mall or shop online.

  • For everyone else, the added delay caused by congestion and inconvenient parking will make other alternatives more attractive.

Increasing density is good for business. But the density businesses care about is not the number of people within X miles. It is the number of people within X minutes. If housing in the parking lots adds 5 minutes to the time it takes to reach your destination, then our businesses would lose about 150,000 potential customers.

This “downtown development” is likely to lead to downtown devastation.

LONG ANSWER:

To properly think about this, it’s helpful to classify people into two groups: Encumbered and Unencumbered.

The Encumbered

If you will be pushing a shopping cart, carrying a child, lugging bags, holding a bulky item you just bought, or have health issues that reduce your mobility, then getting back to your car will top-of-mind. You will not subject yourself to using a multi-level, detached parking garage which could be a block away. You will instead drive farther to a strip mall, or shop online.

Turning away the elderly and people with children is not good for our community. And turning away people with shopping bags is not good for our businesses.

The UnEncumbered

For people who are mobile, the issue is not how far they must walk, but the total time it takes to get to where they are going.

According to the 2022 Menlo Park Downtown Market Study (page 5), our downtown’s “trade area” is the daytime population (370,000 people) within a 20 minute drive of downtown. 

Using Traveltime.com, we can see what’s within a 20 minute drive of downtown Menlo Park:

UNFORTUNATELY …

Housing in the parking lots will increase the time it takes for you to get to the downtown businesses:

1.        You will encounter more traffic congestion getting to the parking lots.
2.        You will need more time to find a parking space because you must either deal with a parking garage or compete for a prized space in a remaining outdoor lot.
3.        You will have to have to park farther away from your destination, so you’ll have a longer walk - especially if you have to first exit a garage.

All told, it’s fair to expect the time to get to your destination to increase by about 5 minutes.

So what does that mean for a business?

IMPACT ON BUSINESSES WITH A 20 MINUTE DRAW

Let’s say a business can draw people from 20 minutes away. 

If the use of the parking lots for housing adds an extra 5 minutes, then for someone to be within the 20 minute range, they must now be within a 15 minute drive, not 20.

So the trade area of the business would shrink like this:

That’s a loss of roughly 150,000 potential customers. 


IMPACT ON BUSINESSES WITH A 15 MINUTE DRAW

What about businesses that can only draw people from 15 minutes away?

For them, the 15-minute-drive range shrinks to a 10-minute-drive range:

The decrease is even more dramatic.


CONCLUSION

Housing in the parking lots would slightly increase the pool of potential downtown customers (just as it would if the housing was in the Civic Center).

But businesses would lose customers with mobility issues or who who expect to buy more than they can easily carry back to their car. And if housing in the parking lots adds anywhere close to 5 minutes of delay, businesses could lose half of their customer base.

We would lose many, if not most, of our businesses - along with the services, jobs and sales tax that goes with them. The remaining businessess would be the ones that can survive by selling impulse items to people who happen to be walking by. Is that all we want our downtown to be?