In 2000 the Menlo Park City Council tasked Safeway and the local neighborhood to work together to come up with a plan for a new store at Middle Ave and El Camino Real. The Safeway Working Group was formed and Safeway hired a mediator to facilitate the process. I have been an active member of the working group since its inception and leveraged my project and team management skills to enable "new ways of working together" in an effort to create a resolution acceptable to all participants.

Eight core Working Group Members, several alternates, and dozens of concerned residents, spent countless hours over the last 10 years in many Working Group, Sub-group, Neighborhood, and City meetings, and came up with a successful project plan and Conditions of Development (CoD) as endorsed to the City Council in 2005. Countless more hours were spent in addressing many issues including demolition, construction, and operations including, trash, pedestrian access, aggressive panhandling, and security. The culmination of all the meetings and discussion resulted in a Conditions of Development document, which I firmly believe is not being adhered to by either Safeway or the City.

I appealed the new use permit for Safeway (that would effectively increase the square footage of the retail stores by hundreds of square feet,) on grounds that they have not complied with their own Conditions of Development (CoD) in the following areas:

* Safeway Van Parking.  The City Planner negated the CoD by allowing Safeway to park the Safeway.com delivery vans in customer parking - the CoD calls for them to be parked there limited hours.  The City Planner should not change the CoD regarding parking until all the retail space is full for a holiday period, to understand potential impacts before changing CoD.
* On-site Banking:  CoD calls for on-site banking, currently there is only an ATM machine and the ability for employees to cash paychecks at the service desk.
* Safeway is two years in arrears on Transportation Demand Management Program reporting, and the current plan they submitted (Dec. '09) has no checks and balances, or employee surveys attached.
* CEQA Exemption.  California Environmental Quality Act.  Sometime in 2007 Safeway slipped in CEQA exemption into the project.  This is simply unacceptable and should be revoked.
* In addition I would like to see the addition of a "smoking area" and have all the store fronts be non-smoking.

I am not anti-development, I support outdoor seating for both Peet's and Rubio's.  And, while the above has little to do with outdoor seating, I simply want Safeway to keep the promises they made.

http://safewayphotos.blogspot.com/
http://moresafewayphotos.blogspot.com/