Town Square

Post a New Topic

Menlo Park: Environmental report released on Facebook's expansion plans

Original post made on May 31, 2016

An environmental review says that Facebook's plan to build three 75-foot-tall buildings, adding 962,400 square feet at two proposed office buildings and 174,800 square feet at a 200-room hotel, plus 3,533 parking spots, could have some impacts determined to be "significant and unavoidable."

Read the full story here Web Link posted Friday, May 27, 2016, 11:45 AM

Comments (6)

Posted by Enrique
a resident of Menlo Park: Suburban Park/Lorelei Manor/Flood Park Triangle
on May 31, 2016 at 5:42 pm

The addition of a million square feet comes on top of the million square feet just now under construction a half mile away, also along Bayfront Expressway. There is already heavy traffic on the Expressway, the Dumbarton Bridge, 101 and all the arteries connecting same.
We cannot keep building if the cities, counties and state refuse to provide the infrastructure for people to get to and from work. In the past "traffic mitigation" was left to the building developer, usually meaning traffic light timing and TDM promises. What is needed now is regional infrastructure - possibly light electric trains running to the east bay where housing is still available. (The morning and evening 101 jams are directly related to the Dumbarton Bridge.)
We need to accommodate some growth to keep our leading employers in town. But until our state and local leaders address the need, we are building gridlock. Jerry Hill and Rich Gordon, this includes you.


Posted by Christin
a resident of Menlo Park: Downtown
on May 31, 2016 at 9:35 pm

There is something very wrong with this draft EIR that finds the plan "consistent" with Menlo Park's Housing goals. Any significant expansion in employee population without a plan to build sufficient housing means by definition displacement, hardship and negative impacts on our community. Displacement is most likely to hurt our elderly, our disabled, our low-wage and increasingly our middle class workers. Already there are too many heart-wrenching stories about evictions and displacement. I have set up this page to start collecting these stories in one place: Web Link My hope is that Menlo Park's elected officials will hear these voices and better understand the human cost of their prior decisions to approve commercial growth.

Building housing MUST be our first priority before expanding the community's commercial space. To prioritize commercial expansion over housing means a vote for even greater displacement of our friends, family, and neighbors.


Posted by Homeowner
a resident of Menlo Park: Belle Haven
on Jun 1, 2016 at 8:50 pm

Christin,

FB expansion will have a miniscule impact on traffic compared to Greenheart downtown on an already gridlocked El Camino,

FB provides large busses to various housing points throughout the Bay Area and they are located w/easy access to a major freeway and a bridge to the East Bay, Add on when Stanford builds out El Camino along with Greenheart if you want to see gridlock.

Willow Rd. will get even worse if that's possible.

This is why a starter home is now selling for $750k in East Palo Alto. You can walk to FB,
To walk to Greenheart a starter home is $2m and up.

I can't afford $2M but I would rather live in EPA or Bellehaven and walk to FB than spend an hour to get out of Downtown Menlo Park and it is going to get worse.

Thank you FB for being a good neighbor.


Posted by Name hidden
a resident of Menlo Park: Suburban Park/Lorelei Manor/Flood Park Triangle

on Sep 6, 2017 at 10:45 pm

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?


Posted by Name hidden
a resident of Menlo Park: Suburban Park/Lorelei Manor/Flood Park Triangle

on Sep 22, 2017 at 9:06 pm

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?


Posted by Name hidden
a resident of Menlo Park: Suburban Park/Lorelei Manor/Flood Park Triangle

on Sep 23, 2017 at 4:31 am

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?


Don't miss out on the discussion!
Sign up to be notified of new comments on this topic.

Email:


Post a comment

On Wednesday, we'll be launching a new website. To prepare and make sure all our content is available on the new platform, commenting on stories and in TownSquare has been disabled. When the new site is online, past comments will be available to be seen and we'll reinstate the ability to comment. We appreciate your patience while we make this transition..

Stay informed.

Get the day's top headlines from Almanac Online sent to your inbox in the Express newsletter.