More  Mark Unread  Flag  Print Message  View Message Source    New Mail  Old Mail  Spam  Recently Deleted  Saved Mail  1 Oasis Grant  2836  7 Gardenia  Antique Office Machines  AOL Tech Support  Archive  Art  B'fast Club  BLOG  Debbie Alllison  El Callejon  FAMILY  Gotham  Health and misc  Hilary  Huffington  Madrid History  Movie Notes  Pete Witing  PRAT  RESTORING SAB  SavedIMs  Shufuni  Trevor's Art Pictures  Weeks  WH  Writing  Yale Environment    More    

Message View

Subject:A Missed Opportunity (A Parks Paradigm)
From:	e.
To:	trevoroche
Date:	Mon, Jul 8, 2019 9:04 pm

EAST PALO ALTO (EPA) AS A CENTER OF HISTORY

Within the space of a few years during the 90's, I conducted over 500 driving tours centered on the historic Weeks Neighborhood. I used my own car, and asked for no payment. I didn't get around to considering a tourist program for EPA HAS, much less one for the entirety of EPA. I would frequently tour the whole city, since it entire city offered something different and historic for my outsider tourists. 

I left town just as IKEA, Home Depot and the rest were being constructed. A nearby housing development was also in its early stage, managed by EPA CAN DO. By the way, what does the N in EPA CAN DO stand for? If it's part of the following title, East Palo Alto Community And Neighborhood Development Organization, it fell down on the neighborhood part. There has been no consideration of neighborhoods, and no plan that I know of, for any of EPA's traditional neighborhood other than the one done by EPA HAS for the Weeks Neighborhood by means of the Weeks Neighborhood Community Plan.

So why was the plan ignored? What harm did it do? None that I can tell. It allowed for the same number of residences as the neighborhood was zoned for. What was wrong with that? The unit sizes envisioned were varied, allowing for diverse incomes. The old Weeks lots with their elegant deep lots with long views down it it past large trees would be something any right thinking person would appreciate. 

But this perfectly sensible plan that would have created a parklike neighborhood that all income levels could afford, was cut to ribbons for all kinds of foolish reasons. It was zoned residential, although neighborhood businesses on the wider avenues were valued and planned for. So why has it become chock full of large charter schools?  Why were buyers able to imagine they could just sit on the land until large apartments could be persuaded to be built on them? One hears talk of making the neighborhood look like Manhattan. What is wrong with EPA to allow for these travesties of action and intention?

Bay Road was always there. It might have been an Indian track before Isaiah Woods built the village of Ravenswood along it around 1850. And the entire town west of Bay Road was laid out by Charles Weeks around 1920. That included University Avenue, extending all the way to Stanford. Weeks and Stanford worked together on this, and Weeks advertised the Weeks Poultry Colony, AKA Runnymede, now called the Weeks Neighborhood, as a University town. Rail lines ran along University. The next oldest neighborhood is Palo Alto Park, built in the 1920's. So the Weeks Neighborhood, with some extension into what is now Menlo Park (including O'connor Avenue, for instance) made up the great bulk of modern EPA up until the 1950's. And even including those 50's additions, the city's built environment is older than anything else around and is more deeply historic than anything else around. Palo Alto and the entire Mid Peninsula have been going about demolishing anything predating 1980. That makes EPA the last bastion of history in the region. The whole city could be a heritage park, and gain income by so being.

But who cares about history?