Final steps for Facebook’s Willow Village project

City Council members vote to move ahead with drafting environmental impact report

MENLO PARK » With Facebook ready to break ground on its massive mixed-use Willow Village development in the early 2020s, Menlo Park residents and council members on Monday night gave final notes on what the scope should be for the project’s environmental impact study.

Along with calling for netzero housing impact and a true study of how the project will affect area schools, council members considered dozens of other concerns and proposals from residents, housing advocates and school officials that were submitted to the city as they moved forward with drafting the state-required Environmental Impact Report.

The study report — the first draft of which is set to come out in fall 2020 — is one of the first steps in the developments’ timeline, after which residents will have a chance to give feedback before a final EIR is submitted in 2021 and the groundbreaking can begin.

Facebook’s Willow Village will be the largest development in Menlo Park history and feature 1.75 million square feet of offices; 200,000 square feet of retail, including a grocery store, pharmacy and restaurants; 1,735 rental units, including more than 250 below-market-rate units; a hotel with up to 250 rooms; a town square; and open spaces, including a public dog park.

But with the potential of adding 6,000 more employees to Facebook’s Menlo Park campus — the project is expected to increase Facebook’s workforce to 30,000 — council members are still left wondering where they will all live.

“The entire time I’ve been on council, we’ve been dealing with Facebook building and telling us, ‘don’t worry, we’re building all these offices, but housing is coming,’” said council member Catherine Carlton. “I’m delighted that it’s here, but it’s not okay that it’s making it worse.”

At the very least, Carlton said, Facebook’s project should be balanced, as the previous two campuses were approved without housing requirements.

She called on the council to not set a maximum or minimum for the number of housing units the development could include, and instead asked staff to come up with a report that includes a net-zero office-tohousing total.

Still, Menlo Park council members will likely be left in the dark about the true impact that years of building office space and little housing have had on the area since the housing needs assessment that will go along with the EIR won’t include a regional look at the jobs-housing imbalance.

City staff will have to do a study of that themselves.

“The jobs-housing balance is a broader regional issue,” said Assistant City Attorney Leigh Prince. “The assessment looks at the impact of this particular project, so looking at just one project doesn’t give the full picture. This might be something you look at concurrently, but separate and apart from the project.”

Breaking down the census data and commute share that Facebook provided, Menlo Park Principal City Planner Kyle Perata added that the number of jobs to workers is not one-to-one.

When looking at the number of workers that might locate in Menlo Park, Facebook would be required to build between 276 and 175 units based on population, or between 7.6% and 4.9% of Menlo Park’s about 35,000 residents.

Councilmember Betsy Nash said she doesn’t understand those numbers.

“Those are the people who would be assumed to live in Menlo Park, but a lot more people would like to live here if there was more housing available,” Nash said. “Do other jurisdictions hear about the other 93% of the housing they are supposed to accommodate? When Google builds in Mountain View, do they take it into account? Isn’t this how we end up in a regional jobs-housing imbalance?”

That housing imbalance is a key concern of Sequoia Union High School District Assistant Superintendent Crystal Leach, who said the surge in residents could put a strain on school resources.

“We urge the city to consider not just the general impact, but the project’s specific indirect impact on district students, families and staff,” Leach said. “While comments state the potential for generating students, the city also states the assessment of population change is beyond the scope. The district disagrees.”

Leach said any true impact study will look at overcrowding in area schools, traffic and potential fixes for a surge in students.

Concerned about the potential for finding Native-American remains or cultural heritage, Pamela Jones, a resident of Menlo Park who spoke to the council Monday, said that developers should scrap the project or limit it if construction crews do find something of interest.

Jones said the discovery of the Hiller shellmound — one of more than 425 Native-American mounds found in the Bay Area — could mean trouble for the development.

“We have an idea of what’s there,” Jones said of the site. “Under mitigation, I wanted to see that alternatives include no build or partial build, not relocation. Native-Americans have always been relocated. We need to move away from a manifest destiny philosophy and instead look and see who lived there long before we came to this country.”

For Samuel Muñoz, a senior field representative for Carpenters Union Local 217, the project is a no-brainer.

“We have a strong relationship with Facebook, and the carpenters union is in favor of the project,” Muñoz said. “I’m here representing my fellow workers because many of them have to drive to San Jose or San Francisco for good union jobs. But jobs like Willow Village will create goodpaying jobs with strong wages and benefits for local carpenters.”