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Hi Dana , Thanks for opening up this conversation. We agree with all your ideas in concept. The parking structure concept has been bantered around for over 15 years and we are certainly at the point where it is sorely needed.
Re; Closing off a portion of Santa Cruz ; I have lived in Eugene OR , Boulder and also visited many smaller communities where this has been done and either flourished or failed. The communities where it seems to flourish have had mostly mixed use buildings,2-3-4 stories with retail/restaurants on the ground and apts and office above. They also have a strong downtown business owners association, who meet monthly to plan themed activities, art walks, sidewalk sales and samples, music end kids events. Maybe it could be done for a trial basis.
*But it does not seem feasible to do prior to the parking structure construction.
Bend Oregon debated doing this for 10 years and did do it somewhat on a trial basis. Then decided to do it on a monthly or bi monthly basis in the summers.
It has been great for business , but it is event based. Some last for 1-2 days or occasionally more. But it too was started after the parking structure was in place. All employees of commercial building there are required to use the Structure at a discounted rate.
TRAFFIC MITIGATION is our biggest concern. The entire El Camino corridor from MTview- RWC is getting maxed out with apts and offices. Needless to say
we need to keep the winding pass through traffic out of our neighborhoods as
people wind their way to 280 from Menlo…..the current city council seems to have no sitivity to the importance of this issue. They are turning several lovely
quiet neighborhoods into pass through areas, most of which don’t even have sidewalks. Projects of the scale being built have had pretty terrible proactive
environmental impact studies w/ regards to the traffic on El camino. I do not know of one that unifies all the combined impact of projects of the EC corridor. (………but we do have a guarantee it will be a mess ;-/ )
Looking forward to how this forum evolves….will look for the title of some books we ve read on current town/village urban design where the street closure issues are covered and forward to you.
Hi and thanks for the thoughtful and articulate feedback and ideas. You should also add these to The OAKs Nextdoor neighborhood so others will benefit from them.