Dear Ms. Chow,

I'm am not pleased that the city is considering rezoning the beautiful office complex at 75 Willow road. This office is done in the same style as the Sunset buildings. It is classic Menlo Park, in great shape and could easily be rented out by a motivated landlord. But the residential real estate market is hot and the Menlo Park city council is accommodating to speculative development interests as evidenced by this an other projects.

By rezoning this we are giving away a piece of our heritage, include a large number of heritage trees to be destroyed. What does the city gain from this project? This project will increase the number of school children in our over-crowded school district. Have you determined the actual impact by extrapolating from a similar project such as Burgess Classics? What about property tax? There may be some short term benefit but have you done a cost/benefit analysis. There are many demands on the city based on new residents and the property tax is constrained by Prop 13.

Have you computed the cost to the city of Menlo Park via the loss of our heritage? I'm not sure how you would do that, but I assure you that there is a real cost. Does this project conform to the general plan? And if not have you solicited and received broad public support for this and other substantial new residential developments? Does the project conform to a general idea of where we want to take the city? Or is this simply a favor to development interests with no other constituency? I suspect that it is.

Thanks,

Vincent Bressler
240 East Creek Drive
Menlo Park
Received on Thu May 11 18:22:06 2006