The downtown parking-plaza question runs back nearly a decade. Here is the whole saga, milestone by milestone.
The downtown parking-plaza question did not appear overnight. It runs back nearly a decade — to a library the City almost got for free. Here is how Menlo Park arrived at a November ballot, in dates.
Developer and philanthropist John Arrillaga offers to cover most of a new, roughly $55 million main library.
After delay over cost, scope, and where to build, Arrillaga pulls the offer. The library is never built.
Menlo Park’s first district-based election seats Cecilia Taylor, Drew Combs, and Betsy Nash.
The 6th-cycle housing mandate requires the City to plan for 2,946 new homes by 2031 — 740 of them very-low-income.
The City opens three city-owned downtown parking plazas to affordable-housing proposals.
The City issues its RFP for the three plazas, framed around a 55-year ground lease at one dollar a year.
The question is set for the November 2026 ballot: must any conversion of the plazas to other uses first go to the voters?
Alliant, Related/Alta, and Presidio Bay submit competing proposals for the sites.
The three teams present their plans to the public at a City open house.
The City Council takes up the proposals; several due-diligence questions go unanswered.
Voters decide whether any future conversion of the downtown parking plazas to non-parking uses must first win voter approval.
Two tempos define the story: a gift lost to delay, and a subsidy pressed forward on a deadline. The dates above are the spine; the individual reports on this site fill in the flesh.
Dates are drawn from the reporting and primary records cited in the related pieces on this site: The Almanac (library offer and withdrawal, 2017–2018; the 2018 district election; the December 2025 ballot referral); SFYIMBY (the April 2025 opening of the plazas); the City of Menlo Park’s Request for Proposals and the developer responses posted December 16, 2025; and the City’s 6th Cycle Housing Element (2023–2031) for the state housing mandate. Source documents are collected on the site’s Resources page.