Menlo Park council reverses approval of Stanford's office building on Sand Hill Road

The only scenario where I would approve a new permit for 40,000 square feet of office space, is if it was tied with the permanent removal of 80,000 square feet of existing office space.

It's great to see the MPCC assert themselves on this.

Stopping growth is hard, but getting developers (including Stanford) to pay for infrastructure that moves more traffic should be what's required for approval. Many of the EIR's that have passed muster with MP have declared traffic impacts as "significant and unavoidable." Given the many tools available to alleviate traffic, most of which cost money, such declarations of unavoidability are really declarations of intellectual bankruptcy. I have written about this in several public documents (e.g. comments on DEIRs), which can be found here:
Web Link
Tools to move more traffic: focus on bottlenecks & widen them; get parking off of streets into new parking structures; add turn lanes; roundabouts have more throughput than stop signs and often more than traffic light-controlled intersections; underpasses, overpasses & tunnels are expensive, but the we are past the point at which it is justified (in other words it would have been justified long ago, but it's not too late).
These are solvable problems. The first thing it needs is backbone/resolve. It's great to see that emerge at the MPCC.
-GML

Just remember that if you ever get a Final Approval from Menlo Park that it is not worth the paper it is written on.

There is no standard for the capricious behavior of the City Council. Even if Stanford negotiates another Final Approval that approval could be overturned simply because Stanford admitted 10 more new students this year than last.

Peter,

Coming from you and some of the things you have done as a Fire District Board President and then as a "Private Citizen" I think that is high praise. [Portion removed]

[Post removed. Please focus on the topic, not on other posters.]