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Menlo Park’s downtown could see more tall buildings in the future if the City Council follows a new recommendation from the Planning Commission.
City officials are looking to changing the zoning to allow for greater density as a way to get its housing element approved by the state. The state-mandated plan must be renewed every eight years — and this time around, scofflaws face serious penalties for failing to draft an acceptable plan for accommodating development to meet a target number for net new housing units.
At a Planning Commission meeting on Oct. 23, one speaker lauded Menlo Towers, an eight-story condo complex on the corner of Valparaiso Avenue and University Drive, for living harmoniously with the single-story homes surrounding it. Commissioner Henry Riggs, on the other hand, said that the building inconveniences nearby residents.
Riggs recalled a time when he was at a nearby home on Valparaiso Avenue, saying that he couldn’t stop looking up at the balconies and seeing people there looking back. Riggs said that it would be “inappropriate” to suggest that an eight- to 10-story tower has no effect on nearby single-family homes.
“It's easy to forget that the reason Menlo Park exists and the reason that it was, until less than 10 years ago, a predominantly residential neighborhood is that people moved here so that they were not in San Francisco,” Riggs said. “While it certainly benefits future residents if we build towers and perhaps 20% of them are what we generously call affordable … It's just not a winner for people who are already here.”
The commission suggested that this could be eased by a stepped-back facade so that third or fourth floors are further back than lower floors.
“The concept of densification in the downtown specific area needs to happen,” Commissioner Andrew Barnes said. “It's the right thing to happen there.
Menlo Park missed the Jan. 31 deadline for getting housing element approval from the California Department of Housing and Community Development, and that failure has left the city open to so-called builder's remedy projects — like the high-rise proposal at the old Sunset Magazine headquarters on Willow Road — that can bypass the city's own development rules.
Menlo Park first submitted its housing element to the HCD over a year ago, in July 2022, but state housing officials sent it back, asking for revisions. A second attempt was shot down by the state in April. The third and most recent iteration of the housing element was submitted in June and rejected in August.
Since the city’s housing element was not approved by the Jan. 31 deadline, officials need to implement rezoning measures to make building affordable housing easier by Jan. 31, 2024 or Menlo Park could face further penalties from the state.
The Planning Commission said that Menlo Park’s downtown was using much more conservative densities than it could, and recommended that the City Council act to raise the density, although commissioners did not specify by how much. The commission also recommended the City Council offer incentives for including day care centers in new buildings.
