MonitorMenlo · Analysis · illustrative model, not a forecast
The interactive chart below allows you to forecast downtown’s retail vitality from today forward — through the uncertainty period, down through the build, and back up, if it climbs back at all — based on assumptions you control. Pick a proposal, or dial in your own assumptions, and watch the one number that carries the tune: how long until downtown is made whole — not merely back to today’s line, but square again after accounting for the years of loss.
The three presets are illustrative starting points, not the developers’ own projections. They vary with each proposal’s scale: Related/Alta is the tallest and densest (7–9 stories, plus a standalone garage), so its construction dip is set deeper (−16%) than Alliant’s or Presidio’s (−12%); all three assume roughly two years of uncertainty and free replacement parking. But the most informative reading is the one you build — nobody knows the true numbers, so move the sliders to what you find plausible (that switches the model to Custom) and treat the result as the scenario you envision.
Each change slider runs both ways, with a dotted 0 for “no change.” On the two construction-era sliders, right of 0 is a loss (the expected direction) and left a gain; on demand, right is the gain — so the uncertainty-period and construction figures read as the negative numbers they are. Time sliders are marked at their left edge.
The line is a running total: how many months of business downtown is ahead of or behind where it would be if nothing changed. It starts at zero today, sinks as the uncertainty and construction years pile up losses, bottoms out around occupancy, and — if the new residents lift demand enough — climbs back. Where it crosses back up through the zero line is the moment downtown is made whole. Red = still behind; green = the surplus that has finally overtaken the loss. The dashed blue line is your payback target — the chart always runs the full 20 years so you can see whether the crossing lands before then (👍) or not (👎). Modeling assumptions: each phase — pre-build, construction, long-run — runs at its own flat level versus today, set independently (construction is its own rate, not the pre-build change plus a further dip); the long-run shift is a one-time step (flat, not compounding growth). The model assumes full occupancy and full resident spending as of the day construction ends — no lease-up ramp — so the recovery begins the moment the build finishes. Illustrative, not a forecast.
The dashed birch line and the shaded band show what the same yearly percentages would produce if they compounded — each year’s change stacking on the last (a −15% construction year becoming 0.85, then 0.72, then 0.61 of today, and a long-run gain likewise snowballing) rather than holding flat. The shaded band is the gap between the two — shaded green where it sits above the zero line and red where below, the same convention as the main line. It is there for contrast only: the payback period, the deepest-shortfall figure and every readout are calculated on the straight-line, non-compounded rates (the solid navy line).
What kind of analysis this is: in financial terms the line is a cumulative cash-flow (payback) curve. Picture a bank balance that starts at zero, where each period you deposit or withdraw the difference between that period’s business and today’s: the account runs overdrawn through construction, and downtown is paid back the moment the running total climbs back to zero. By default it is a simple, undiscounted payback; set the discount-rate slider above 0% to apply a time-value-of-money rate, which discounts future recovered trade to present value — pushing the made-whole date later, and at a high enough rate to “never.” (It uses a one-time long-run step, not compounding growth, and is stated in months of a normal year’s downtown business rather than dollars.)
One clock that counts, not two: the moment downtown’s pace returns to today’s level is not the moment it is made whole. Every month spent below the zero line is business lost for good, and it is earned back only once the running total climbs back up through zero — the headline date above. “Deepest shortfall” is how far behind downtown falls at the low point, measured in months of a normal year’s downtown activity.
Baseline (100) is downtown today — mid-2026, its current level of storefront occupancy, sales, and foot traffic. Today is the realistic starting line because the harm starts now: the years of uncertainty between the plan’s announcement and a final go/no-go vote already chill lease renewals and push marginal shops to close, as three long-standing restaurants already have. The vertical scale is a relative index, not dollars: a reading of 85 means roughly 15% below today; “+4 pts” means four index points above today’s level in the long run. The uncertainty period is not hypothetical timing: Alliant’s own filed schedule shows construction beginning only in Q4 2028 and lease-up running into 2032 — roughly two years of uncertainty from today before a shovel moves, then years of building. The model opens on the Alliant scenario because — as the next section explains — it is the proposal most likely to be built, and the one whose residents can patronize downtown’s shops the least.
And read the clock carefully: an index that merely touches 100 again is not “recovered.” The years spent below today’s line are real business lost for good unless a later surplus repays them — which is why the headline figure is time to be made whole, net of the uncertainty-period and construction losses. In the default Alliant case, downtown is not made whole for decades, even though the index first taps today’s level within a few years.
The clock in this model runs from one vantage point only: downtown’s merchants and the patrons who rely on them. “Payback period” and “made whole” here mean the time it takes those businesses to earn back the trade lost between now and the day residents move in — and nothing more. The model does not look at rates of return, cost recoveries, or make-whole timelines from a taxpayer or municipal point of view.
That is a separate calculation, resting on different facts, assumptions, and timelines. To incentivize affordable housing on its own downtown plazas, the City may commit sizable public value of its own — transferring the land or leasing it at a nominal, below-market rent; waiving developer fees and other charges; helping cover parking-garage construction costs; and absorbing any loss or diminution of sales- and property-tax revenue. Several of those asks are already on the table in the submitted proposals (a roughly $63M garage bond in one, a $15M contribution plus fee and tax waivers in another). Weighed on that ledger, the “made-whole” date for taxpayers and the City itself would look nothing like the merchant timeline above. This piece takes no position on that municipal return; it simply flags that the two questions are distinct — a downtown made whole for its shopkeepers may still be a very different bet for the public purse. For what the City’s own $164,951 analysis quietly concedes on exactly that score — that the affordable housing it is pursuing would likely cost the General Fund more than it returns — see our report, Truths and concessions..