PERSONAL COMMUNICATION
I wanted to point out an interesting article that ran in the San Jose Mercury early this week that I think has implications for Menlo Park building and zoning. In particular, the article identifies a trend, including at Sun Microsystems toward eliminating fixed employee space locations and cubicles. And the trend is apparently not isolated, but rather gaining a lot of traction. The article identifies benefits the employer perceives, which I won't rehash here, other than one really key I think for local planning for parking as well as traffic. Quoting the article: "But among other benefits, more employees now work in spaces previously designed for fewer. At Cisco, that number is 40 percent more - from 310 people on one floor of cubes to 420 workers on a newly designed floor without. Don Doyle, Cisco's manager of Workplace Resources Group, said that helps reduce the amount spent on real estate. Intel's Tunmore said he anticipates 15 to 20 percent more people will work in the same amount of space. That will allow the company to provide more conference rooms, which are in such demand that they are booked months in advance, he said." Appearing on the SJ Mercury's companion blog and chat board summary is the following statement, apparently provided by the paper's staff to provide context to the generally quite negative employee comments they are receiving: "Those in favor of a cubicle-less workplace freely admit that they can house more workers on a cube-less floor than the can in a traditional workplace." Let's bring this home for Menlo Park. This trend means more average employees per square foot of office space. It also means by implication any perceived traffic savings or lesser demands on parking on a given day from telecommuting are being offset by this employee "density increase." The above quotation from the article makes exactly that point. I urge our council to keep this in mind as you evaluate projects, particularly larger ones, but also medium or even smaller ones. I also continue to think the parking guidelines put in place several years ago have come to be abused and now seem to have become the norm, without even justification for their use by many project applicants. To me that's effectively a change in the zoning ordinance, which I think is not just improper, but also poor planning. Several more parking related references: o the recently released MTC Traffic Study for Menlo Park. For general reference, while I assume some folks worked hard on this, I regard its conclusions and recommendations as almost pure fantasy. They are neither realistic, nor ultimately good policy in my judgment. The undercurrent seems to be to squeeze everything in to pack in even more people and density. I reject those kinds of concepts--in inviting everyone in to the quality of life and small town feel, we destroy the small town and destroy its character in the process. More general population taxes our facilities, taxes our roads, taxes our general infrastructure, taxes our schools and ultimately consumes even more total resources. o 1906 El Camino. Once again I see coming back. Again, parking related issues very much in the forefront. The parking guidelines are also resulting in space being so maxed out that there is no physical space even left on a lot in a "parking reserve" sort of context to later try to ameliorate problems that are later found indeed to be the case in the field. I think this is another mistake that we can now see in actual projects being designed and submitted under the guidelines. o Safeway. Early returns are great store and addition to our city, but parking problems as well as safety hazards. Perhaps the parking will mitigate when the construction is done, but like others I am concerned. I'm also concerned about the Middle Avenue driveway safety with its proximity both to El Camino and to the Shell station, as well as safety of the new El Camino entrance which leads not to a street but to a driveway with a pretty steep angle that is causing conflicts between turning movements and through traffic. Hopefully these are just bugs to be ironed out. Some do need attention though regardless of whether the parking situation is a transitory issue or not. I continue to urge you to think critically about parking matters, the reality of a suburban--not urban--environment, and the shortcomings of the parking guidelines and their application.

Regards, Elias Blawie
Menlo Park Resident

SJ Mercury article follows below (pictures omitted so a few related captions for them make the text a bit choppy):

Out of the box: Valley companies dump cubicles for open office spaces PUSH FOR EFFICIENCY, TEAMWORK
By Mark Boslet and Katherine Conrad
Mercury News
Article Launched: 12/03/2007 01:34:25 AM PST

When told to abandon her cubicle with its soothing Zen fountain and flourishing ficus tree, Cisco program manager Cynthia Pham was hardly enthusiastic. How could anyone function in the "workplace of the future" without a cube you could call your own? Pham's attitude changed in February, after she started working in a newly designed, cube-less floor in Cisco's Building 14. Suddenly, her 30-member team was interacting better and getting more work done. Like other valley stalwarts, including Intel and Sun Microsystems, Cisco is casting aside the cubicle culture that has thrived in the United States since the late 1960s. In its place, the company is embracing a new workplace design that saves space and money, and encourages collaboration among co-workers. Cisco is not the first to forsake the cube. Younger companies such as Google and VMware have created open office spaces that still retain assigned seating. But as the valley's largest employer - and with 6 million square feet of South Bay real estate - Cisco's decision reflects a push for efficiency and a trend that emphasizes the bottom line.
"It's a competitive world," said John Scouffas, principal and designer for Gensler, the San Francisco-based architectural firm that's been redesigning workplaces in valley companies, including Cisco's. "Collaboration has been shown to spark innovation and speed product to market."
Intel, which helped popularize the cube culture in Silicon Valley - even leader Andy Grove had one - also is having second thoughts about its gray, maze-like work space. And its practicality. On any given day, said Neil Tunmore, Intel's director of corporate services, 60 percent of the company's cubes are empty because people are visiting customers, telecommuting, vacationing or in meetings. Employees work in their assigned buildings only three days a week on average and spend 20 percent of their work hours telecommuting.
"People are just working differently these days," Tunmore said.
Beginning this month, the chip maker will set up three experimental work sites. Open areas, comfortable armchairs, extra conference rooms and tables where people can plop down with laptops will replace the ubiquitous cubes that have been standard issue for decades. Intel will conduct its first test of the alternative work space with 150 workers in Chandler, Ariz., followed by 650 workers at the company's Santa Clara headquarters in January, and 350 workers participating in its Hillsboro, Ore., campus in February. Each morning, Intel employees will log onto the corporate network using wireless connections. Their phone numbers will follow them. White boards that employees use to sketch out business plans and project strategies will be outfitted with electronics so drawings and plans can be transferred to laptops and e-mailed to colleagues. After a three-month trial, executives will decide whether to roll out the new design to the rest of the company. Workers appear to be interested. A May survey found 88 percent of employees were ready for a change. Rhett Livengood, an Intel director of sales development, will participate in the office experiment, giving up his cube in January to work in an area of unassigned tables and private rooms for confidential discussions. When he joined Intel in 1987, cubicles were still "cool," Livengood said. "They were open and free." But the way people work has changed, and new technology, such as powerful laptops and phone software that works through a computer, has made this possible.
"My office isn't a space in a building," he said. "My office is the space where I am."
Whatever Intel's decision, for many, cubes are becoming dinosaurs.
"Cubes have had their day," said Michael Joroff, senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's School of Architecture + Planning. "They were established at a time when work was done head down, by yourself. More and more, work is collaborative."
Clearly, the trend is gaining ground. Gensler architects confirmed they are also working with Intel, Intuit, Hewlett-Packard and Network Appliance. Already at Sun, about 56 percent of the workforce, or about 19,900 employees, work without assigned office space. Yet Tunmore said cubes aren't going away at Intel; they'll just become less prominent. At Cisco, which rolled out its new workplace in February, reaction has been mixed, according to managers. Pham said some workers still miss their "stuff," though small lockers are available for personal belongings, such as a purse. Nevertheless, she has become a believer.
"Cube walls acted as barriers," said Pham, 29, who inhabited one at Cisco for seven years. "Cubes were nice to . . . lock yourself away from the rest of the world and get some work done. But a lot of work requires interactions with one or more individuals. In this open work space, we can see each other and interact easier."
The change isn't cheap. Architects say the average cost of redesigning the workplace is $100 a square foot. That means altering one of Cisco's 50,000-square-foot floors, including new furniture, would cost about $5 million. But among other benefits, more employees now work in spaces previously designed for fewer. At Cisco, that number is 40 percent more - from 310 people on one floor of cubes to 420 workers on a newly designed floor without. Don Doyle, Cisco's manager of Workplace Resources Group, said that helps reduce the amount spent on real estate. Intel's Tunmore said he anticipates 15 to 20 percent more people will work in the same amount of space. That will allow the company to provide more conference rooms, which are in such demand that they are booked months in advance, he said. Productivity also is up, said Larry Matarazzi, Cisco's senior director of workplace resources. Ted Baumuller, a senior manager in Cisco's information technology department, agrees. He said the time it takes to make decisions has been cut by 25 to 30 percent because it's easier to round up the team, and collegial relationships have improved by working in a more open environment. Baumuller believes he is much more accessible now that he no longer has a door. His office is wherever he wants it to be - from a couch to a chair by the window, known as a touch-down site. Workers need only look across the floor to find him.
"People feel much more comfortable coming up to me. It's more of a friendly atmosphere," he said. "I hope I never have to go back to cubes."
                                                             

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