When will Menlo Park wake up and foster a downtown that thrives and has energy? Small businesses struggle to survive in downtown and the council is re-hashing go nowhere arguments from 2012 that don't have a clear expected result. Do something to inject life into the downtown. Stop writing tickets as fast as possible for parking 5 minutes over the time limit and instead encourage people to visit downtown. Catch up with the rest of the Peninsula where the other downtowns have flourished and become lively, proud destinations.

There are development projects in process to fill all of the empty car lots on El Camino Real.

The City is already moving forward on a parking Garage, a new live entertainment venue, and possibly a second entertainment venue downtown.

There are three redevelopment projects in the approval process for Santa Cruz Avenue itself.

Downtown isn't even close to ghost town is it was in 2012.

The City is already closing in on the development caps put in place in the original Downtown Specific Plan.

This is hardly the discussion that occurred in 2012.

The discussion taking place now is because the City can see whats on the books before it is built and is reviewing what occurs thereafter.

When I think about wanting to go to a lively vibrant downtown area around here, I first think of Mountain View, then Palo Alto, possibly Sunnyvale, and more recently even Los Altos comes into play, sort of.
I never think about downtown Menlo Park.

Thank you for the update, Facts. Those are promising steps toward some sort of vibrant downtown. But 2012 was six years ago. People would be thrilled for things to progress faster and be proud of a better downtown...sooner. I just met a Facebook employee who lives in Menlo Park and is moving to San Francisco because he is so bored here. I'm not trying to be negative but would love, love, love a downtown that is more fun, more bustling, more lively, more people friendly. On a side note, there are still way too many dollar stores, carpet stores and furniture stores which maybe is a byproduct of the lack of planning motion, or maybe not, but it doesn't help the atmosphere.