Two very different decision-makers spent 2026 quietly resizing Menlo Park's housing pipeline, and neither of them was thinking about your home search. On November 3, voters decide whether the city needs their permission before any of its eight downtown parking plazas can become housing. Across town, on 59 acres Meta once branded Willow Village, the company already made its call back in May and put construction on indefinite hold. Neither story is really about parking spaces or one company's balance sheet. Both are about how many new homes actually get built in a city that already commands a premium, and that arithmetic tells you more about a specific Menlo Park pocket than the citywide median ever will.
Two Stalled Sites, One Housing Plan
Every California city operates under a state-mandated housing element, an eight-year plan (this cycle runs 2023 to 2031) that spells out how many units of each affordability level the city expects to permit. Menlo Park had already had its plan rejected twice before the version that eventually passed leaned heavily on two specific sites: the downtown parking lots and Meta's Willow Village land.
Willow Village was not a minor contributor to that plan. Its planned housing accounted for 18 percent of the city's below-market-rate requirement and, according to city officials, more than 100 percent of its market-rate housing target for the entire cycle. At the Planning Commission's May 19 review of the pause, Commissioner Misha Silin pointed back to the commission's own March assessment that everything had to go perfectly to hit the housing goals, and said that clearly was no longer the case. Mayor Betsy Nash put the resulting gap at 1,730 units that now need to be found somewhere else. As of August 2026, state figures showed Menlo Park had permitted fewer than 350 units citywide since the current cycle began, a pace that leaves little room to absorb a hole that size.
That is the backdrop against which Measure P is being decided. Housing advocates have called the downtown parking lots the only realistic site left in the plan for deeply affordable housing within walking distance of Caltrain. If Measure P passes, that site gets harder to build on too.
What Measure P Actually Changes, And What It Doesn't
The initiative, organized by the group Save Downtown Menlo, would require voter approval before the city sells, leases, or otherwise disposes of any of its eight downtown parking plazas, or before it makes physical changes that would permanently reduce public parking there. It qualified for the ballot after more than 15 percent of registered voters signed the petition, well past the 10 percent threshold. Save Downtown Menlo's own materials are specific about scope: the measure does not prohibit housing anywhere else in the city, does not require a vote for routine parking upgrades like EV charging, and does not apply outside those eight downtown lots.
Despite the looming vote, three developer teams submitted formal proposals for the three parking lots between Santa Cruz and Oak Grove avenues. Alliant Communities proposed 345 apartments and said it could rebuild all 556 replacement parking spaces without city funding. Presidio Bay Ventures proposed 347 apartments with a plan that could require the city to help cover roughly $33.3 million for a six-story public garage. Related California, partnering with Alta Housing, proposed the largest project: 500 apartments, including 126 senior units and 220 family units, across buildings as tall as nine stories.
A Presidio Bay representative, John Meany, summed up the developer's dilemma this way: without more certainty that the project can proceed, he said, it becomes hard to justify putting more private capital behind it. That uncertainty is the practical effect of Measure P regardless of how the vote goes: developers need confidence a project will survive the entitlement process, and a pending ballot measure erodes that confidence on its own.
Why A Company With Billions In Cash Walked Away
Meta's decision was not about affordability politics. In a May 1 statement, spokesperson Adam Alberti said the project was being placed on hold due to "shifting real estate market conditions and evolution in space requirements." The development agreement between Meta's project entity and the city remains legally in effect until 2032, but it is nonbinding, meaning Meta was never obligated to build anything on the timeline residents expected.
For Belle Haven, the neighborhood immediately surrounding the site, the pause extends a wait that predates the project by decades. Longtime resident Peter Adams described a neighborhood that still lacks a pharmacy, a bank, or a post office, with one gas station and a couple of small restaurants standing in for a commercial corridor. Willow Village had promised a projected $188 million in community amenities, including a grocery store and pharmacy, plus roughly $6 million in new annual tax revenue for the city. State Sen. Josh Becker, whose district includes Menlo Park, said he was not surprised, noting that Meta and other tech companies have backed away from housing commitments before.
The Submarket Math The Median Doesn't Show
By late summer 2026, Menlo Park's citywide median depended almost entirely on which source was counting. One market tracker put the six-month median at $2.899 million as of early September. Zillow's home value index showed a typical value closer to $2.549 million as of July 31, down 6.7 percent year over year. Redfin reported a three-month median of $3.3 million for the period ending in June, up 14.5 percent over the same months a year earlier. Three legitimate measures, three different numbers, all describing the same city in the same season.
That spread exists because Menlo Park is not one market. It is several, and each one is being touched differently by the supply story above.
| Submarket | Typical Price Band (2026) | What Sets It Apart |
|---|---|---|
| Belle Haven | $1.2M – $1.3M | East of Highway 101; still without a full grocery store, pharmacy, or bank; typical listings run 25 to 28 days on market, roughly double the citywide pace |
| The Willows | $2.5M – $3.5M | Mid-century ranch homes on 6,000 to 8,000 square foot lots along streets like Oakdell Drive and Felton Drive |
| Menlo Oaks | Around $3.48M typical value (June 2026) | Up roughly 11 percent year over year as of mid-2026 |
| West Menlo / Felton Gables | $4M – $7M+ | Larger parcels and newer construction; Felton Gables holds only around 80 homes total |
| Central Menlo / Stanford Hills | $5M and up | Lot size, mature canopy, and privacy that start to rival neighboring Atherton |
Belle Haven's affordability and its longer time on market are not a defect. They reflect a submarket where the buyer pool and the housing stock are both more varied than the citywide average suggests, and where the amenities that were supposed to arrive with Willow Village still have not.
What This Means If You're Comparing Menlo Park Pockets Right Now
If Measure P passes on November 3, expect the three downtown parking lots to stay exactly as they are for the foreseeable future. That means no new construction competing with resale inventory in the walkable pocket near Santa Cruz Avenue and the Caltrain station, at least not soon. If it fails, one of the three proposals, up to 500 units, eventually breaks ground, which changes the pedestrian experience and parking availability on those blocks for the years construction takes. Either outcome is worth knowing before you commit to a listing timeline or an offer in that specific pocket.
For Belle Haven, the calculus is separate. Willow Village's pause was a corporate decision, not a ballot outcome, and nothing about November 3 changes it. The neighborhood's amenity gap and its longer days-on-market pattern are likely to persist regardless of how the vote goes. One infrastructure project worth watching regardless of submarket: the Middle Avenue Pedestrian Underpass, currently under construction, will eventually provide a grade-separated crossing between the east side of the tracks and downtown. That kind of connectivity change rarely shows up in comps until well after it opens.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is the Measure P vote? November 3, 2026, as part of Menlo Park's general municipal election.
Does Measure P affect my property if I don't live near downtown? No. By its own text, the measure applies only to the eight downtown public parking plazas and does not restrict housing or development anywhere else in the city.
Does Meta's pause mean Willow Village is cancelled? Not officially. The development agreement remains in effect until 2032, but it is nonbinding, and Meta has not provided the city with a construction timeline.
Should I wait until after the election to buy or sell in Menlo Park? It depends entirely on which submarket you're in. A property near the downtown parking lots sits closer to real near-term uncertainty than one in the Willows or West Menlo, where neither story directly applies.
Menlo Park's next few years will be shaped less by one headline number than by how these two stalled sites eventually resolve. If you're trying to figure out what that means for a specific street, a specific submarket, or a home you're getting ready to list, Tom Correia has spent decades reading these Peninsula micro-markets from the inside. Request a Free Home Valuation to talk through what these shifts actually mean for your property.
