A plan for a better District 1
Every idea here comes back to one question: does it improve the quality of life for the people who live in District 1 today? And to one standard for getting it done — outcomes over process, not another study and another year of delay.
Quality of life
The basics — parks, streets, and services that work.
Renovate Belle Haven parks
Neighborhood parks are one of the simplest quality-of-life investments a city can make, and Belle Haven's are overdue — playgrounds, fields, and the everyday upkeep that makes a park somewhere families actually want to spend a Saturday. As a Parks & Recreation commissioner, I'm already advocating for these renovations and will prioritize the funding to get them done.
Parks & Recreation Commission presentation on Karl E. Clark Park (video) ↗
Move street cleaning to overnight hours
Today the sweepers run during the day, when cars are legally parked at the curb — so they can't reach it, and the debris never gets cleared. That debris clogs the storm drains — exactly what flooded the intersection of Hamilton Avenue and Willow Road this past year. The fix is simple: run cleaning overnight, when street parking isn't allowed and the curb is clear.
Tackle blight with proactive code enforcement
Illegal dumping, derelict lots, broken-down vehicles, and long-neglected properties drag down an entire block and signal that no one is paying attention. District 1 deserves the same proactive enforcement — not just complaint-driven cleanup — that keeps Belle Haven looking cared for.
Make Terminal Avenue safe to drive, bike, and walk
Terminal Avenue is the gateway to the Belle Haven Community Center and Kelly Park. It's a narrow two-way street, and cars parked along the curb leave too little room for anyone to use it safely — drivers squeeze past oncoming traffic, and cyclists ride with no protection. Reclaiming that curb space would open the street up for everyone: room for cars to pass, a protected bike lane, and safer for pedestrians — changes I'd work through directly with the residents most affected.
Schools & youth worth staying for
The surest way to keep families in District 1 is to invest in their kids.
Back Belle Haven Elementary as it grows
The test-score numbers families see on Zillow or Redfin are backward-looking, and they tell prospective families the wrong story about Belle Haven Elementary — sending many to look elsewhere before they ever set foot on campus. With the campus renovations now complete, the city can deepen its partnership with the school and the Ravenswood district, and help more young families see everything it offers their kids.
Expand programs at the Belle Haven Community Center
The Community Center is one of the district's greatest assets and the most direct lever the city has for young residents. As chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission, I originated Menlo Park's Community Fun Run — a neighborhood 6K that starts and finishes at the Belle Haven Community Campus — so I don't just advocate for programming here, I've created it. I'll keep pushing to grow the Center's after-school, sports, and summer offerings.
A commercial heart accessible to District 1
Bring in the shops, services, and revenue the district has gone without.
Recruit locally-serving commercial development
Other parts of Menlo Park have grown while District 1 was passed over. The neighborhood deserves its share — the everyday businesses that make a place somewhere you can live, not just drive through.
Carry forward the vision Willow Village promised
Willow Village would have brought housing, jobs, and retail to Belle Haven before Meta paused it, leaving its future uncertain. The vision was right — and I'll push to get it, or a plan like it, back on track.
Explore Bohannon Office Park as a mixed-use destination
Just across Highway 101 from District 1 sits Bohannon Office Park — one of Menlo Park's largest sites — and its owner has already asked the city to allow housing on the parcels it controls, describing a “multi-family village.” Imagine finally being able to walk a short distance over 101 to sit down for dinner, grab a boba or a coffee, or browse a bookstore — the everyday places District 1 has never had within reach. I'll push the city to study repurposing part of it as a mixed-use destination — housing, retail, and jobs on the district's doorstep — weighed honestly against the traffic and tradeoffs it would ask of the area.
Reinvest the new tax revenue into services
Sales tax flows straight into the general fund that pays for parks, code enforcement, and youth programs — and Menlo Park collects far less of it than it should. Residents' retail spending leaks out of the city, leaving per-capita taxable sales at roughly half the regional average. More locally-serving business keeps that money here: a healthier fund, and a city that can finally afford to invest in its own neighborhoods.
Menlo Park’s retail sales, about half the regional average ↗
A place to gather
Quality of life isn't only the basics — it's having somewhere to go.
Turn vacant lots into a night market
District 1 is dotted with stalled and idle lots — including the paused Willow Village site — while residents have nowhere to gather. A recurring night market on those lots, set up temporarily with the owners' cooperation, would turn idle space into food, music, and local crafts almost overnight and at almost no cost. Best of all, it gives the neighborhood's own cooks and makers a place to sell this year, not in a decade — and it draws the families in the district's new apartments and the thousands who work at Meta and Snowflake, too.
Carve out affordable live/work housing for artists
A commercial district comes alive when the people who make it interesting can afford to live there. On the Council I'll push for affordable live/work housing set aside for musicians, artists, and performers — the cultural draw that fills galleries, seeds sidewalk performances, and keeps shops and restaurants busy after dark, downtown and in the new commercial heart District 1 is working to build. And it's on solid legal footing: a 2023 state law lets California cities reserve a share of their affordable housing for artists in and around a designated cultural district — exactly the kind of downtown synergy this would create.
Outcomes over process
Government should be judged by what it delivers, not the process it runs. I'll cut the red tape between residents and the results they actually want.
Modernize permitting with real deadlines
Slow, paper-based permitting stalls small businesses and home projects. Online permitting with real-time tracking and hard review deadlines — so a complete, code-compliant application is approved automatically if the city blows its own deadline — treats residents' time as something that matters.
Sunset outdated rules and ordinances that only add delay
Cities add rules far more easily than they remove them, and over decades the code itself becomes the obstacle. Ordinances the city no longer enforces are the place to start — a rule that isn't applied protects no one; it just clutters the books and invites selective enforcement. I'll push a systematic review to sunset what's obsolete, duplicative, or unenforced, so the rules that remain are ones the city actually stands behind.
Put AI to work cutting government busywork
Menlo Park sits at the heart of the AI industry, yet its own operations still run on manual busywork — city surveys are a telling case, where staff read every open-ended response by hand. AI can group thousands of responses by theme in minutes — not to cut a single job or make the decisions, but to free staff from tabulating so they can act on what residents actually said. The tools this region sends out into the world should help run the city that hosts them.