Downtown plan: Is Menlo Park changing direction?

I think this is really the wrong approach. It will make Menlo Park into a Valley Fair or Stanford shopping center, and we already have those. I love to be able to park close to the shops and walk around downtown. I certainly don't want parking structures, as it will change the entire small-town atmosphere that we all love. Please re-think this, once Menlo Park is "mass produced" we can never have what we had before!

I don't think downtown Palo Alto feels like Valley Fair, and they have parking garages. I think that parking garages are essential to revitalizing our downtown.

No parking garages, please. We like the open feeling of Menlo's downtown & don't want to emulate mega-shopping centers or the neighboring towns. Presently, it's the small town low profile that is a major attraction to doing business here.

Downtown Palo Alto has more & higher office buildings among which parking structures are better concealed. It also had an entirely different design for the downtown long before parking structures were inserted. I lived in downtown Palo Alto in the 1960's and moved to Menlo Park in the '70s. Likening the 2 downtowns is silly.

The existing parking plazas are adequate for all but 1 or 2 disgruntled restaurant managers and the full-time employees who don't want to buy parking permits.

Cheaper solution? Make the Chestnut St. lot across from Carpaccio a 3 hour limit & meter Santa Cruz Ave.