would replacement parking suffice?

SHORT ANSWER:

No, even with replacement parking, businesses will lose about half of their customer-base because:

  • For anyone with mobility issues or carrying anything heavy (shopping bags, a child, etc.), using a difficult-to-reach parking garage is a dealbreaker. 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 options more attractive.

LONG ANSWER:

Some people believe that the housing in the parking lots will be good for business because:

1.        The parking would be replaced
2.        The increased density would create foot traffic

Regarding 1 - Building parking structures to provide sufficient parking for the new residents, and replacement parking for the businesses, would be astronomically expensive. But let’s assume it happens.

Regarding 2 – Yes, increasing density is good for business.

HOWEVER …

The density that businesses care about is not the number of people within X miles. It is the number of people within X minutes.

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 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 if housing in the parking lots adds anywhere close to 5 minutes of delay, the resulting decrease in the trade area would have a much larger impact. The loss in customers would devastate many, if not most, of our businesses.

Any such downtown “development” would risk downtown disaster.