Don't change it. You will regret it like many of the changes done over the past 50 years. Mess with the small town atmosphere to make it into a grandiose shopping mall, and people will go to the real thing and abandon MP. - Just look at the empty store fronts right now.
Planners get paid to plan and they rarely know when to leave well enough alone

Please do not build hulking parking structures in Menlo Park! They are unsightly and not what people prefer to use when running errands and shopping at local stores. When Safeway had a parking garage at the old store on the corner of Middle and El Camino, very few people used it. People preferred the ground level parking lot, even in rainy weather. The character of Menlo Park is preserved by the open nature of the parking plazas, the trees lining the center of Santa Cruz Avenue, and the independent businesses that make up the bulk of our retailers. We don't need this "new development" concept. Sprucing up a few storefronts will do the trick nicely.

Gunther
Why change anything? Everything is just hunky dory. If people like you have their way, there would not be a Kepler's Bookstore and Cafe Barrone. That project passed by narrow margin. Don't visit Flegel's Furniture. Their store was rebuilt. Two levels. Don't visit Draegers Grocery. They added a second floor and moved an apartment building across town to add more private parking. Change has happened while you were sleeping. Go pack to sleep.

I do think this story is somewhat biased in favor of the downtown plan. For example, the workshops are characterized as a "vetting" process by one of the planners interviewed. They were advertised as a forum for ideas to be shared, but there was no real discussion of how final decisions would be made. It's crazy to think a couple hundred random people in a room are going to agree to and be able to vet all the details of these plans over coffee on a few afternoons. Different people went to put in their ideas, and that is great, but don't call it something it wasn't.

Also, the writer claims the council "went to the public instead of the land owners". Again, this is somewhat baised. One of the most controversial items in the plan is a parking garage, as reading the comments from the various workshops, many of the attendees did not like that idea. Also, how do we know only the public was represented at these workshops? There may have been landowners, such as churches or business park owners at these meetings. The downtown business owners and landowners who rent to the retail businesses do provide revenue to the city in the form of sales tax revenue. If these businesses do not believe a parking garage at the far end of downtown (away from the train station even) will help them, why are we doing it? The public likes having downtown businesses.