Melahn Wins Menlo Park Race, Squire House Lists at $19.9M & Meta Sues

From a decisive downtown housing election in Menlo Park and a landmark 1904 architectural listing in Palo Alto to major legal reversals and federal lawsuits involving Silicon Valley's largest social platforms, four Peninsula developments stood out on November 7, 2026.

Charlotte Reed Concedes as Laura Melahn Leads Menlo Park District 4 With 61.6%

In Menlo Park, communications professional Charlotte Reed, 31, conceded the District 4 City Council race on November 6 after updated election returns showed venture capitalist and Downtown Menlo Fund co-founder Laura Melahn, 41, leading with 1,199 votes (61.6%) to Reed's 749 votes. Melahn will succeed Mayor Betsy Nash, who is stepping down after 8 years representing District 4, which encompasses downtown Menlo Park, Allied Arts, and central neighborhoods.

Melahn praised Reed for knocking on 4,000 doors across the district. The race revolved around the future of city-owned downtown surface parking plazas: Reed backed the city's plan to build affordable housing on 3 of the 8 downtown parking lots and opposed Measure P (a ballot initiative requiring voter approval to repurpose any of the 8 lots, which citywide voters appeared to reject), whereas Melahn argued the three-lot housing proposal was financially infeasible and advanced an alternative compliance plan for state housing mandates.

Palo Alto's Historic 1904 Squire House Hits the Market for $19.9 Million

Across San Francisquito Creek in Palo Alto's Crescent Park neighborhood, the iconic white-columned Squire House on University Avenue entered the market for $19.9 million, marking the first time the property has been listed for sale since 1999. As also detailed by the Mountain View Voice, the mansion was commissioned by Stanford University Greek and Latin lecturer John Adams Squire and his wife, Georgiana—who settled among Palo Alto's first 35 households after Stanford opened in 1891—and constructed in 1904 by builder George W. Mosher from a Roman Classic Revival design by Scottish-born San Francisco architect T. Paterson Ross (who designed more than 200 Bay Area buildings and a pioneering 150-automobile garage on Geary Street in 1913).

Set on nearly one acre with a swimming pool and trellis terrace, the 7,794-square-foot main residence (featuring four bedrooms, six full bathrooms, one half-bath, Ionic columns, quarter-sawn oak floors, and a top-floor flex attic) and a 600-square-foot one-bedroom guest house total nearly 8,400 square feet. When a developer sought to raze the mansion for four houses in the early 1970s, the Save the Squire House Committee raised $90,000 (aided by Girl Scout bake sales at Liddicoat's Market), the City of Palo Alto contributed $118,000 for structural stabilization, and the city sold the property to a preservation-minded buyer for $135,000 with a permanent façade easement—catalyzing its 1972 placement on the National Register of Historic Places, its designation as California Historical Landmark No. 857, and Palo Alto's 1979 Historic Preservation Ordinance.

Meta Pauses Nov. 20 AI Scraping Terms and Joins Google, TikTok in Suing Over AB 1709

In Menlo Park's technology sector, Meta indefinitely paused controversial updates to its Commercial Terms, Product Catalog Terms, Self-Serve Ad Terms, and Ad Creative Generative AI Terms that had been slated to take effect on November 20, 2026. Those revisions would have granted Meta sweeping permissions to scrape websites and product catalogs of any company operating a Meta Business account to train generative AI models. Meta backed down following an October 28 letter from U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) questioning the lack of an opt-out mechanism, formal opposition from News/Media Alliance CEO Danielle Coffey (representing more than 2,200 publishers) and 4 European press associations, injunctions in Norway and Brazil, and a UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) inquiry.

Separately, Meta, Google, and TikTok filed federal lawsuits in the Northern District of California seeking to block California Assembly Bill 1709 (AB 1709) before it takes effect on January 1, 2027. Authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, AB 1709 bars platforms from serving infinite scroll, autoplay video, or personalized algorithmic feeds to users under age 16 without verifiable parental consent and restricts push notifications between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May. The companies contend the law violates the First Amendment and is preempted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.