Additional parking coming soon to Nealon Park

Published on October 07, 2024

In response to community feedback to alleviate existing Nealon Park parking demands and safety concerns, the City plans to make improvements at these two parking locations:

Park parking lot: add 9 parking spaces (from 27 to 36) by reconfiguring the parking spaces in front of the pickleball court and softball field from diagonal spaces to perpendicular space.
Park frontage parking: add 12 parking spaces (from 17 to 29) by reconfiguring the parallel spaces to back-in angle parking.

While back-in angle parking will be new to the City of Menlo Park, it's not new to the Bay Area. With back-in angle parking, loading and unloading, especially for families with children accessing the playground and Menlo-Atherton Cooperative Nursery School, would be improved. The trunk of the vehicle would be adjacent to the sidewalk adjacent to Nealon Park and there would be no interference with car doors, as they would open away from the roadway and bike lane. The back-in angle parking also enhances the safety of bicyclists, as it would provide the driver with greater visibility as they exit onto Middle Avenue.

A two-phase construction approach is tentatively scheduled to start the week of Oct. 21:

Phase 1 (Oct. 24 - 25) will reconfigure the “Parking lot”. Access to the rear section of the parking lot (i.e., near Little House) will remain open during construction.
Phase 2 (Oct 28 - 31) will reconfigure the “Frontage parking."

During their respective construction activities, the entire row of parking will be closed.

Locally, the Stanford Dish parking (Stanford Ave. between Junipero Serra Blvd. and Raimundo Wy.) has been utilizing back-in angle parking since 2015.

For additional information about back-in angle parking and construction activities, please visit the project webpage or contact Senior Transportation Engineer, Kevin Chen, at (650) 330-6748.