Honorable members of the Menlo Park City Council. Honorable members
of the Menlo Park Planning Commission:

Here we go again! Without a coherent strategic plan for the El
Camino Grand Boulevard, decisions continue to be made -- repeatedly
-- regarding development projects on El Camino without regard for
their impact on this major Peninsula thoroughfare, or the quality of
life of our city.

Please stop it. Now.

Please impose a moratorium, a suspension, a temporary block to any
development that borders on El Camino Boulevard in Menlo Park. Please
create a task force that participates in the creation of a coherent,
business-friendly, aesthetically pleasing conception of an El Camino
for the next one hundred years. Please do so before it is too late.
Please stop giving away valuable development opportunities to the
developers -- especially along El Camino -- without regard for the
impact upon the residents and citizens of Menlo Park.

The Planning Commission voted (Jan. 22, 2007)to reject a proposal for
a medical/dental office building to be constructed on the site of
the former Acorn Restaurant. However, that decision was based on
purely aesthetic criteria (that the facade was not facing El Camino).
There was little objection to the fact that the proposal wished to
reduce parking from the C-4 zoning requirement of 60 parking spaces
to 49. Indeed, one Planning Commissioner dismissively labelled the
site the "tail end" of Menlo Park, and therefore presumably not
worthy of concern. She is not a resident of that "tail end." My
wife, I and my neighbors are. It should also be pointed out that a
carefully argued letter by Mike Brady, critical of this project, was
"inconveniently" misplaced and not included in the obligatory
document brief presented to the Planning Commission.

In order to avoid a traffic study and EIS, data about the size of the
intended structure of this project was jiggered and fudged to be
below 10,000 sq.ft. This, despite the fact that this intersection on
Watkins is a key traffic concern, linking El Camino with Marsh and
101. This El Camino intersection, without traffic signals, is
already an accident waiting to happen. Watkins also borders Atherton
as one of its two rail crossings. If any recent Menlo Park project
demanded a serious, independent traffic study, this surely is it.
(Making comparisons with a hypothetical restaurant is "apples and
oranges.") A drive down Welsh Road in PA during the day can attest
to the full parking lots and continuous heavy traffic flow in a
medical office environment.

Menlo Park has, in recent years, become the victim of development
decisions based on one project at a time, without a coherent plan,
each demanding zoning variances, each ignoring and/or making changes
to the General Plan, each enormously profitable to the proposing
developers, but each harmful to the well being of the residents and
citizens of Menlo Park.

Enough already! We ask for a City Council that will stand up to its
obligations. Starting here. Starting now.

Respectfully submitted,

Judith Engel-Orasanu
Martin Engel

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Martin Engel
1621 Stone Pine Lane
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650:323-1670
martinengel@earthlink.net
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