In 2000 the Menlo Park City Council tasked Safeway and the local neighborhood to work together to come up with a plan for a new store at Middle Ave and El Camino Real. The Safeway Working Group was formed and Safeway hired a mediator to facilitate the process. I have been an active member of the working group since its inception and leveraged my project and team management skills to enable "new ways of working together" in an effort to create a resolution acceptable to all participants.

Eight core Working Group Members, several alternates, and dozens of concerned residents, spent countless hours over the last 10 years in many Working Group, Sub-group, Neighborhood, and City meetings, and came up with a successful project plan and Conditions of Development (CoD) as endorsed to the City Council in 2005. Hundreds, if not thousands of more hours were spent in addressing many issues including demolition, construction, and operations including, trash, pedestrian access, aggressive panhandling, and security. The culmination of all the meetings and discussion resulted in a Conditions of Development document, which I firmly believe is not being adhered to by either Safeway or the City.

I appealed the new use permit for Safeway (that would effectively increase the square footage of the retail space by hundreds of square feet,) on grounds that they have not complied with their own Conditions of Development (CoD) in the following areas:

• Safeway Van Parking. The ONLY five spaces in the entire development that are directly adjacent to the store (not having to cross busy driveways) Safeway took to park their .com vans. City Planner negated the CoD by allowing Safeway to park in prime customer parking. The CoD states limited hours. No changes should be made regarding parking until all the retail space is fully occupied for a holiday period, to understand potential impacts before changing CoD.
• On-site Banking: CoD calls for on-site banking. Wells Fargo was going to be in-store until Wachovia was going to open a branch in the retail space, but that fell through. Currently there is a high-fee, non-bank ATM inside the store.
• Safeway is two years in arrears on Transportation Demand Management Program reporting, and the current plan they submitted (Dec. '09) has no checks and balances or employee surveys attached.
• CEQA Exemption. California Environmental Quality Act. Sometime after 2005 Safeway slipped CEQA exemption into the project without Working Group knowledge. Why did Safeway pay for sound/noise, light, and traffic studies to insure compliance before the EIR, only request exemption after the fact? This is simply unacceptable, should be revoked, and not allowed in El Camino Real corridor development.
• In addition I would like to see the addition of a "smoking area" and have all the store fronts be non-smoking.

I am not anti-development, I support outdoor seating for both Peet's and Rubio's. And, while the above has little to do with outdoor seating, I simply want Safeway to keep the promises they made.

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 Elizabeth Houck
www.blueeggpartners.com
http://myventurepad.com/MVP/82986

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