East Palo Alto wants to triple MLK Park with lighted fields

At the north end of Daisy Lane in East Palo Alto, past the last one-story houses, Martin Luther King Jr. Park runs out at a chain-link fence. On the other side is a dry, empty field. Past that is the Bay Trail levee, the Runnymede channel and the salt marsh.

The city wants the field.

A plan filed with the state on Oct. 28 would rebuild the 4.7-acre park and push it east and north onto that open ground, for 13.89 acres in all. That is nearly three times the park the neighborhood has now, with a lighted turf field ringed by a running track, a lighted baseball diamond, lighted courts, an outdoor stage, a fenced dog park and 90 more parking spaces. The city's environmental review of the plan is open for comment until Nov. 17, and the City Council is scheduled to vote on Dec. 15.

This is a bigger deal than a new soccer schedule. East Palo Alto has about one acre of park for every 1,000 residents, a third of the state's three-acre benchmark, according to Green Foothills. Parks are also already the city's strongest suit in Houseberry's East Palo Alto data: a public spaces score of 4.0 out of 5, its best mark, in a city where the typical home sold for about $1.13 million in September 2026.

What goes on the empty field

The draft keeps what people already use, the concessions and restroom building, the play structure and the barbecue tables. Everything else is new.

The lights matter most.

In November the sun is down before 5 p.m., and an unlit field is an empty field by dinner. Turf and lights turn one field into something leagues can book every night of the year.

This has been a long time coming. The city held its first design workshop on Nov. 10, 2021, and its project page listed the start of environmental review as spring 2022. The last time East Palo Alto filed state paperwork on this park was January 1988, for picnic tables, drinking fountains and an irrigation system on three acres. Councilmember Mark Dinan put it plainly this spring. "Everything in government takes 10 times as long as you think it would," he told the M-A Chronicle.

The marsh writes half the rules

The park backs onto Faber Marsh, and the land it wants holds seasonal wetlands that may shelter the salt marsh harvest mouse and the salt marsh wandering shrew. So the review attaches 15 biology measures, and several shape what a visitor will actually see.

Field lights have to be shielded, aimed down and kept from adding more than 0.1 foot-candle over today's light at the habitat edge. Off-leash dogs are barred within 100 feet of the wetlands. No shrub or tree taller than 4 feet can go within 100 feet of them, because tall plants give hawks a perch over the mice. Heavy work within 700 feet of the marsh is supposed to wait out the rail nesting season, Feb. 1 through Aug. 31, unless surveys say otherwise. The wetlands themselves stay.

Water is the quieter catch. The park would use 19.3 acre-feet a year, and the review makes the city line up more supply first, through a new well, a water transfer or recycled water. In a city that has spent years short of water for new buildings, that line deserves a close read.

Who lives next door

Homes within 500 feet of the site and a home child care on the edge are listed as sensitive neighbors in the review. The western fence along the backyards would be replaced with an 8 to 10 foot chain-link fence with a privacy screen. Construction would run weekdays from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

That is the honest trade-off. A dead-end street that goes quiet at sunset would get night games, a PA system and a stage. The draft we read does not say what time the lights go off or when the PA can be used, and it does not give a cost or a funding source. Those are the questions to put in a comment before Nov. 17.

We think the city should build it, lights and all. East Palo Alto has a third of the park space the state suggests, and this is land nobody else is lining up to use. Lock the curfew into the approval and the people on the west side get a park out their back fence instead of a vacant lot.

The Beech Street side has its own thread. In February the council backed a non-binding deal with San Mateo County and the nonprofit EPACANDO, reported by The Almanac, in which the city would get county land at 1266 Beech St. next to the park and the county would get 2277 University Ave., where about 60 affordable homes are planned. Dinan called the Beech Street lot "a vacant lot, it's blighted." The county still has to sign off. We covered another big East Palo Alto housing site, 430 affordable homes at 2120 Euclid, last month.

What the park score buys here

On Houseberry's yardstick, East Palo Alto already scores like its expensive neighbors on parks. Crescent Park in Palo Alto and The Willows in Menlo Park both score 4.0 on public spaces, the same as East Palo Alto. According to Houseberry data, the typical Crescent Park home sold for about $5.71 million in September 2026, roughly five times East Palo Alto's $1.13 million. Belle Haven, the Menlo Park neighborhood across the city line, scores 2.5 on public spaces at about $1.31 million.

Prices have moved differently, too. In Houseberry's price histories, East Palo Alto rose about 1.5 percent in the 12 months to September 2026, while Crescent Park rose about 7 percent and The Willows about 6.8 percent. East Palo Alto peaked at about $1.16 million in June and has slipped about 2.5 percent since.

We would not promise anyone on Daisy Lane a bump from a ballfield. Parks pay off slowly, and this one is years from opening. What the plan changes is what the city can offer every household that already lives there, at a price no other city on that chart comes close to.

Comments go to Community Services Manager Maurice Baker at mbaker@cityofepa.org. The state lists Nov. 17 as the deadline, while one line of the city's notice says Oct. 30, so file early. Before the Dec. 15 vote, see how East Palo Alto stacks up against Menlo Park and Palo Alto on Houseberry's East Palo Alto ranking, then open the Menlo Park ranking for the blocks across the line.

Sources

• Martin Luther King Jr. Park Master Plan, mitigated negative declaration, State Clearinghouse 2026101107
• Martin Luther King Park Improvements, State Clearinghouse 1988012617
• MLK Park master plan project site, City of East Palo Alto
• East Palo Alto looks to add housing, expand park as part of three-party deal, The Almanac, March 2026
• EPA approves affordable housing plans and expansion of Martin Luther King Jr. Park, M-A Chronicle, April 2026
• Better Parks in East Palo Alto, Green Foothills
• East Palo Alto population, City Population (U.S. Census Bureau)