Silicon Valley Renaissance with The Menlo Park City Council
Thursday, August 11, 2011
5 comments
For those of you who resonated with the ideas presented in my Silicon Valley Renaissance piece, we (myself, Dominique Trempont, and architect Bernardo Urquieta) have since opened a dialog with members of the Menlo Park City Council, and they are interested in incorporating them into the city’s revival plans. As many of you are aware, Facebook is about to move to a large campus in Menlo Park, and plans to house 9000 employees in it. Add to that the impact of their upcoming IPO – lots of angel investors and spin-off entrepreneurs are in the making.
The question we have asked the city council is how does Menlo Park play a role in harnessing this energy and momentum, and turn the city into a hotbed of exciting incubators, startups, great restaurants, cafes, boutiques, nightclubs, designers, while still maintaining what is lovely about the ‘village’ ambience. In addition, true to the ‘green’ theme, we have posed questions about how to create live-work spaces that do not require commute and an excessive infusion of cars, such that the ambience becomes one of a ‘sophisticated village’ and not a high rise and car infested nightmare.
This is an interesting opportunity to envision and engage in building the future of a city that houses the largest chunk of the world’s venture capital industry, and is about to become the home of the world’s largest social network.
Please email me if you wish to participate in this effort. You can also use this blog to brainstorm.
Is Green the latest buzz word?Buildings,parks,houses and even computers are turning green.
The planet is waking up to the fact that it will get destroyed unless some measures are taken, so no, it is not just a buzz word.
Green is a great word so we will keep it firmly in mind…..As owner of a company that specializes in planning and installation of residential and commercial properties, if I could just look a bit bigger. It is a great idea to start with a strong team of professionals to help implement a long term strategic goal of building a sustainable community. Great design starts with creating a 'Program' of what's needed and wanted (which comes from community involvement, participation of the City and business owners, etc.) and building from there. How exciting!!!
I was recently in Boulder, CO where Pearl Street is closed and is a pedestrian precinct. It was buzzing at night with pedestrians and lively restaurants. In Manchester, England there are bollards that rise up out of the street (similar to ones on the Stanford Campus) and they close the street from approximately 9-5 pm so people have a pedestrian precinct during office hours.
California has few towns with completely closed streets. By closing Santa Cruz Avenue from Pete's to El Camino, downtown restaurants would be able to expand into the street as they have done on a few summer nights. This might improve restaurant profitability, especially as many Menlo Park restaurant premises are small which makes it difficult to attract high quality, high value, establishments.
A bike lane through the middle of a closed Santa Cruz Avenue might be considered with bike lanes to the new Ringwood Avenue bridge and the Stanford bridge.
Palo Alto and Mountain View have not closed their main shopping streets. Doing so in Menlo Park would give it the competitive advantage that it needs.
Agreed.