Menlo Park to seek financial review of three developers’ downtown parking‑lot housing proposals

Menlo Park’s City Council on June 12 agreed to commission an independent financial review of three competing proposals to redevelop the city’s downtown public parking plazas into mixed‑income housing with structured replacement parking.

The study-session presentations — from Related Companies/Alta Housing, Presidio Bay and a third developer team — outlined designs that would add hundreds of housing units while aiming to replace lost public parking and add public benefits such as pocket parks and retail. Council members said they want a consultant to verify assumptions, gap calculations and financing risks before selecting a preferred team.

Tom Smith, the city’s principal urbanist, told the council the meeting was a study session and “no se tomará ninguna acción esta noche,” underscoring that tonight’s step was review and instruction, not approval. Each developer answered a structured set of council questions about affordability mixes, financing, phasing, construction impacts and parking replacement.

Related/Alta presented a plan that the team said would deliver roughly 345–346 affordable or workforce units across the three plazas, plus replacement parking and public open space. Ann Silverberg, speaking for Related, described a layered financing approach using state tax‑credit programs and private capital and said the team had modeled scenarios to reach city goals.

On parking funding, developers differed. Related’s presentation included a direct ask to local government: “pedimos una contribución de 15 millones de dólares” to subsidize the parking component and close the pro‑forma gap, the team said. Another developer pro forma included a roughly $7.5 million contribution and additional outside sources; in question-and-answer exchanges teams and council members repeatedly returned to the point that the final subsidy need depended on unit mix, prevailing‑wage assumptions and which tax credits the projects could secure.

Public comment was robust: more than a dozen speakers urged the council to prioritize deeply affordable units and jobs for local workers while expressing concerns about loss of accessible parking, construction impacts to small businesses and whether local residents would benefit from the new homes. Gastol Bill, a union representative, urged prioritizing local labor and training; Rob Solano, a local resident, alleged gaps in the developers’ outreach and permitting studies, saying the fire department and other agencies had not fully signed off on some technical assumptions.

Developers told the council they would phase construction to limit disruption (they described delivering a new parking structure early in the schedule and then building housing in phases) and pledged ongoing community engagement, business liaisons and outreach tools. They also said deeper affordability — units targeting 30% AMI or lower — would substantially increase subsidy needs and change competitive positioning for state tax credits.

Councilmembers repeatedly asked for technical clarity: how rents and AMI tiers would be set, whether project labor agreements or prevailing wages were assumed in pro formas, and how many public parking spaces would be available at each phase. Developers said they were flexible on affordability mixes but cautioned that more deeply subsidized units would require additional public funds or vouchers.

By the end of the meeting the council agreed to move forward with a consultant-led financial analysis of all three proposals and to ask teams for any updated confidential pro forma material to include in the review. The city will return to the council with the consultant’s findings and recommended next steps.

The financial review is intended to provide the council with a comparative, evidence‑based assessment of each developer’s assumptions on subsidy needs, timing, risk and trade‑offs between unit affordability and parking costs. Council members said they expect to see clear numbers on financing gaps and reliable scenarios for how the city might structure any contribution or manage ownership and operations of replacement parking.

Next steps: staff will solicit or retain a qualified financial analyst, collect updated pro forma details from the three teams and schedule the consultant’s report to return to council before any selection of a preferred developer. The council then signaled it would proceed to closed session to discuss related labor negotiation items.

(Reporting from the Menlo Park study session. The council’s direction to commission the financial analysis was recorded in the public meeting.)