Unlike its bustling neighbor Palo Alto, Menlo Park is a classic bedroom community. Much of the city’s appeal is centered on its “village character” downtown with its assortment of Mom & Pop businesses in mostly one-story buildings.
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When locals first learned of this plan, many exclaimed: “That makes no sense!” That sentiment eventually resulted in civic action and a ballot measure slated for the upcoming November election.

Yet Menlo Park’s City Council plans to convert three of our busy downtown parking plazas serving our one-of-a-kind small businesses, into high-density 7 and 8-story subsidized housing projects.

If this housing is built, half of our small businesses would be likely to close during the 3 years of construction alone, and more upon completion when our tranquil small-town ambience morphs into chaos and crowding as a thousand new residents move into the 345 units in apartment towers shoehorned between our one-story buildings.

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The concept being sold to the public is that “We need more housing!” even though people are leaving California in droves. In fact, the only increase in population we’re seeing is that of “undocumented immigrants“—aka illegal aliens—whom our local police are diligently protecting from those meanies from ICE who are federally charged with deporting them.

In the meantime, an explosion of inner-city style tenements-in-the-making are metastasizing all over our cherished bedroom communities.

And since our suburbs are largely built out, i.e. lacking much in the way of vacant land, these are classified as “in-fill” developments—literally squeezed into places where the residents’ response is often a heart-wrenching cry of “That will destroy our downtown!” that is ignored by their own city councils.