USGS campus in Menlo Park approaches end of era while next chapter remains a question    

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After nearly five years, the U.S. Geological Survey’s gradual move from Menlo Park to Moffett Field in Mountain View is now in its final stages.

But exactly what’s next for the 17-acre property that the agency is vacating at 345 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park’s Linfield Oaks neighborhood remains up in the air.

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which owns the campus with 17 buildings and about 400,000 square feet of rentable space, still seeks a buyer after the federal government decided to sell the space in 2020.

Meanwhile, Menlo Park in its recently state-certified long-range housing plan has targeted the site for potential mixed-use redevelopment with affordable dwelling units although that vision worries residents in a neighborhood already contending with other proposed large-scale building projects.

Relocation wrapping up

“GSA is helping relocate the U.S. Geological Survey (USGA) offices at Menlo Park as well as supporting that agency’s decommissioning efforts at the site,” GSA spokesperson Mary Simms said in an email to this news organization.

“USGS personnel are already working at Moffett Field,” she said, “and full relocation is scheduled by the end of the year.”

Right now, she said, USGS is removing “laboratory-specific equipment” from the Menlo Park location.  

Many of the geological features around the campus have also been moved, such as the various decorative rocks collected by researchers over the decades, USGS spokesperson Paul Laustsen said. The stones have found a new home in a rock garden in front of USGS’ new lab building at Moffett Field.

Those stones include the 9-ton granite boulders from the main roundabout of the Menlo Park campus, he said. The boulders were transferred by crane and flatbed truck in early April.

USGS, which has been leasing the Menlo Park space from GSA, formally launched the transition to Moffett Field in the summer of 2019 as a way to reduce costs while strengthening collaboration with NASA.

The plan has been to close the Menlo Park facility, which was established in 1954 and has housed such programs as the Earthquake Science Center, and bring the 420-member workforce and equipment to the NASA Ames Research Park at Moffett Field.

In 2022, GSA put the campus up for auction with the minimum bid set at $120 million, but the bidding closed without a buyer.

However, Simms said, GSA “continues to receive interest from potential buyers” and plans to offer the property again through another auction next year.

A small USGS contingent is still working at the Menlo Park campus, Laustsen said.

The only other tenant there currently is the early-childhood development program GeoKids, Simms said. But GeoKids, founded by parents who worked at USGS and the nearby SRI research center, is expected to depart in August 2025.

Prime housing opportunity

For Menlo Park, the USGS site’s pending availability, whenever that may happen, means a prime opportunity for new housing — particularly affordable units — and other development.

“It’s so difficult to have good housing projects and especially affordable-housing projects that whenever there’s one that comes forward it has to be really looked at to see the maximum benefits that it can bring to the community,” said City Council member Jen Wolosin, whose District 3 covers Linfield Oaks. “So I would hope that whatever project comes forward takes advantage of that great site and improves our overall community.”

In its housing element for the 2023-31 cycle — a planning document for nearly 3,000 new residences as mandated by the state, the city eyes a minimum of two acres of affordable units at the USGS site. 

The city envisions issuing residential building permits for at least 89 units at the site by the end of 2030, according to the housing element, which the state approved in March. But much more housing, including market-rate units, could be pursued there.

As of November 2022, the document said, the city had fielded eight inquiries from private developers about the USGS campus with most of them expressing interest in partnering with an affordable-housing builder for a redevelopment pursuit.

The Menlo Park City School District is also interested in the property for probable future needs.

In a September 2023 letter to the city included in the housing element, district leaders expressed interest in possibly acquiring between five to 10 acres to develop new school facilities for a potential increase in student enrollment fueled by the residential growth called for in the housing element.

A large land purchase would prove cost-prohibitive, the district said in the letter, but it would consider a joint-use agreement or owner partnership with the city or a buyer of the USGS campus benefiting both the schools and larger community.

In a 2022 email to the city, also included in the housing element, Menlo Park resident Morgan Ames urged for more residential units than what has been projected at sites like the USGS campus.

The city needs “to make the most of this historic opportunity to create a lot of high-density housing,” Ames wrote. “We should build higher and denser, focusing on creating walkable and transit-friendly communities” instead of retail development and the accompanying parking lots.

Neighborhood concerns

But residents in Linfield Oaks are wary of what could result from a USGS campus redevelopment.

“I’m not aware of any plans to increase capacity or reduce trips on Middlefield, Ravenswood and Willow,” said Vincent Bressler, a Linfield Oaks resident and former city planning commissioner. “Linfield Oaks is boxed in by these streets, and their intersections are already a problem during busy times of the day. I’m concerned about any new development that will make this worse — residential and commercial.”

Sue Connelly expressed similar sentiments, describing that what could happen at the USGS site is a “massive overdevelopment” burdening her neighborhood.

Linfield Oaks is also facing other major mixed-use development possibilities – a multi-tower project on the site of the former Sunset Magazine headquarters at 80 Willow Road and a transformation of SRI’s 63 acres at 333 Ravenswood Ave. into a new enclave of offices, homes and recreational spaces.

Wolosin understands concerns about Linfield Oaks “getting too much, too fast” in terms of possible developments, she said.

“I definitely think that housing needs to be distributed throughout the city,” she said. But the so-called “builder’s remedy” proposal for the Sunset Magazine site “is not something that is part of our planning process.”

Builder’s remedy refers is a state provision that allows developers to bypass local land-use regulations when a city or county has yet to gain certification for its housing element.

A preliminary application to redevelop the Sunset Magazine property was filed with the city under that provision before Menlo Park’s housing element could garner the state’s full blessing. 

State certification does not appear to nullify that application and two much-smaller builder’s remedy proposals that the city had already received.