For fourteen years, Menlo Park bet that Santa Cruz Avenue would stay a retail-only main street. On June 23, the City Council conceded the bet. If you live here and walk the avenue on Saturdays, the storefronts you pass this fall will not be the ones the 2012 Specific Plan drew up. That is the short version. The longer version, block by block, is what follows.
The vote that quietly reset downtown
The council's June 23 decision amended the El Camino Real and Downtown Specific Plan, the document that has governed what can and cannot open on Santa Cruz Avenue since 2012.
