Support Measure P and help protect our Downtown and City Housing Element.
The City’s Horrible Bet On Downtown Housing
In 2022, the Menlo Park City Council – led by current Mayor Betsy Nash – made an extremely “bad bet” on the behalf of our community when it included in the City’s Housing Element a commitment to develop 345 units of very low-income housing on downtown parking lots. This commitment now requires our community to accept one of two undesirable outcomes. Either chose a substantial loss of public parking which would irrevocably damage downtown or preserve sufficient parking and provide substantial City financial support to a developer in addition to “no cost” use of public land worth an estimated $40M to $50M. Otherwise, the state would decertify the Housing Element and expose Menlo Park to more “builders remedy” projects like the current one at the former Sunset location on Willow Road.
Why did the City make this bad bet? I believe the Council was motivated by a strong desire to develop a large amount of affordable housing in Menlo Park and assumed the provision of “no cost” public land, i.e., downtown parking lots, would make a housing project attractive to developers. Unfortunately, the Council poorly understood the rapidly growing cost of constructing housing and parking in the Bay Area, in large part because city planning staff failed to warn them of the project risks. Now our community is bearing the burden of the City’s poor risk assessment. (Note: the state had questioned the financial feasibility of this strategy while Menlo Park was preparing its Housing Element.)
Why hasn’t the City acknowledged this problem and adjusted its strategy? Councils have continued to hope voters would be willing to fund any funding gaps that materialized. City planning staff never provided councils realistic advice. And no one wants to admit their mistakes.
Why is there a Measure P? Because voters should decide the future of this project, its downtown and how much the city is willing to fund affordable housing.
Our community is now confronted with this horrible choice. Last December, two developers confirmed that they need at least $19M to $20M in city funding or financing. I believe these rough estimates are not conservative enough, so the actual funding gap is likely much larger. For example, the district infrastructure for sewer, water/fire, and electric services could lack the capacities to serve the three new housing sites. This would mean expensive major upgrades are needed. Parking lot contaminants could require costly remediation and schedule slips. And developers have not yet secured needed project financing.
Voters cannot trust the City to protect either our Downtown or the City Housing Element.
During the past two years, the City has intentionally excluded our community from its planning for this project, displayed strong bias by prioritizing affordable housing over community interests, kept us completely in the dark about its planning activities and dishonestly masked the amount of City funding required to develop the downtown affordable housing project.
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- When the City published a feasibility study for the project in August 2024, it should have also acknowledged the potential City funding problem created by the requirement for replacement public parking, but it did not. Instead, it made a vague reference to new households sharing public parking spaces.
. - In April 2025 the City received developer responses to the project RFQ. At that time, it must have realized there was a big public parking-city funding problem, but it did not publicly acknowledge it.
. - In August 2025, the scale of this problem became obvious to observers because the City attempted to increase the investment appeal of the project by increasing its rental income potential and changing the requirement to fully replace the public parking to a high priority. But still the City did not acknowledge the public parking-city funding problem.
. - By December 2025, the two developers who proposed only affordable housing, Alliant Communities and Related-Alta, confirmed the actual scale of the public parking-city funding problem by revealing their project funding gaps and requesting additional City financial support. But the City said nothing about this problem for the next 10 months.
. - The City publicly acknowledged the problem for the first time in late September 2026, about a month before the November 3 elections. It still has not presented plans on how it intends to deal with the developer funding gaps.
“We need to start to begin the conversation with residents that they will have to pay for this, which is not what we’ve said,” Councilmember Drew Combs said. “We can move forward, but we are moving forward into a brick wall because at some point, the piper has to be paid. And if people don’t feel that the council had a true and transparent discussion with them about that, then they’re gonna be really upset.” – Council Review of the funding gaps in developer project proposals. (September 29, 2026)
The Alliant Communities construction schedule would cause irrevocable damage to downtown businesses by dramatically reducing the amount of convenient public parking.
These two graphics highlight the amount of public parking lost during over-lapping construction on the 3 lots.
There ARE many ways to protect downtown and the City Housing Element.
But the City has not shown any genuine interest in evaluating them.
1. Getting them will be challenging because it will require the motivation and planning, project management, and negotiating expertise the City clearly lacks. To evaluate and implement them, the City would need a different mindset and approach, one that leverages the expertise of both community and consultant professionals.
2. When the City created its Housing Element in 2022, it excluded many potential affordable housing sites. e.g., no public sites with existing city operational facilities, no new sites in District 1, no sites at Bohannon Park which could provide hundreds of affordable housing units. These all need to be included in future site evaluations.
3. The City needs to develop creative solutions like the one proposed by candidate Laura Melahn.
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=> Laura’s plan would incentivize the developers of Parkline and USGF to convert housing units from low income to very low income using both the City BMR Fund and effective negotiations.
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=> Meta intends to redevelop 50+ acres of land it had dedicated to Willow Village. The City should negotiate use of some land for affordable housing.
=> The City should consider downsizing the proposed downtown housing project. For example, Plaza 1 could provide at least 167 units of very low-income housing and reduce the funding gap. This plus additional very low-income housing at housing Parkline or other sites could protect the City’s Housing Element.
Two Ways You Can Help – Vote Yes on Measure P and elect the best Council candidates.
Voters need to ensure the next City Council will aggressively protect both downtown and the City Housing Element starting in January 2027. The state will monitor the City’s current situation and insist on seeing a credible plan that protects its HousingElement.
Voters have two critical opportunities to help. Support Measure P so you can decide what happens in downtown and elect two candidates who have displayed the most open-mindedness, best capabilities, and strongest interest in helping the City successfully address its affordable housing challenges. They are council member Drew Combs (District 2) and candidate Laura Melahn (District 4). Drew has been the only council member who raised specific concerns and possible solutions to drawbacks in the current project, and Laura has the strong business expertise and personal motivation that has been sorely missing on the Council.