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Menlo Park leaders and residents were already aghast over a proposal to build a towering, multi-building, mixed-use development on the former Sunset Magazine headquarters.
The latest revision to the proposal by the development company N17 has only deepened their anxiety and worry as it would go even denser and higher — up to 421 feet — compared to two previous iterations.
Council member Jen Wolosin described the project as “jaw-dropping” but not in admiration.
“Trying to think of additional synonyms for shocking, outrageous and beyond acceptable,” she said of the updated proposal for 80 Willow Road in the Linfield Oaks neighborhood.
‘Trying to think of additional synonyms for shocking, outrageous and beyond acceptable.’
Jen Wolosin, Menlo Park Council member
N17, founded this year by real-estate professional Oisin Heneghan, is pursuing the project under the so-called “builder’s remedy” — a California provision that allows developers to bypass local land-use rules when cities fail to garner state approval for a long-range housing plan.
Similar to other jurisdictions on the Peninsula and elsewhere, Menlo Park continues to work toward a state-compliant plan known as the housing element.
N17’s revamped proposal “has a similar unit count and square footage to the previous submittal,” Heneghan said in an email. “Massing and height are still being designed and will be included in the final design when it is submitted later in 2024. The project will include 160 affordable units.”
Heneghan did not respond to other questions from this publication about why he started his own company, what attracted him to building in Menlo Park, why he revised the proposal, the estimated project cost and timeline, and his reaction to the community’s concerns about his project.
In a recent newsletter, Wolosin alerted residents to the changes in Heneghan’s proposal.
“Incredibly, the height and scale of the project (have) increased,” she wrote. “The tallest building proposed is now 421 feet tall.”
In the new submission to the city, the project would include 305-foot and 371-foot buildings as well. The tallest structure in the previous proposals would top at 349 feet.
As a comparison, the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco features four office towers — two rising about 570 feet and the others at 413 feet.
Like the first two proposals for the Sunset site, Wolosin said in her newsletter, “I find this submission to be outrageously out of scale from what is reasonable. The City Council has worked hard to designate sites for housing development throughout the city during the housing element process and rezoned land to enable that development. This project is completely inconsistent with what we had planned.”
Menlo Park Council member Jen Wolosin put together a video in October 2022 discussing the “builder’s remedy.”
The project now would provide up to 805 residential units, fewer than the 1,150 dwellings from the last submission but about the same as the original proposal.
The new proposal would also build 300,000 square feet of offices, 15,000 square feet of retail space and a 128,635-square-foot hotel. Those numbers are up from the prior versions.
Linfield Oaks residents, already upset about the project’s possibility in their neighborhood, were livid to hear what N17 now wants to do.
“This newest proposal is talking about three buildings that would be considered skyscrapers in San Jose, San Francisco or Oakland,” JoAnne Goldberg said, “but at least in those cities, they’d be located in a nonresidential area like the Financial District. They don’t belong in any residential area anywhere.”
Goldberg argued that the latest configuration would only worsen — not help close — Menlo Park’s housing deficit because of the increased office space.
“Remind me why we need more office space?” she asked, noting that many employees continue to work remotely.
In addition, Vincent Bressler said, the project would mangle traffic flow in and around the intersection of Middlefield and Willow roads — a key transportation node serving a larger area.
“This project will damage quality of life in my neighborhood,” said Bressler, a former planning commissioner.
Residents lambasted the builder’s remedy law and urged the city to fight it.
Patti Fry, also a former planning commissioner, contended that the law allows builders “to thumb their nose at the community.” She implored the city to join efforts and lobby state-level decision-makers to overturn the law.
Like other cities, Menlo Park is navigating through builder’s remedy concerns.
“There remain many unknowns about builder’s remedy projects,” Wolosin told residents in her newsletter, “and I don’t really have any more information about what this means at this time.”
This publication has reached out to Mayor Cecilia Taylor and Vice Mayor Drew Combs for comment on the updated proposal.