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The Sand Hill Road freeway exit.

Looking eastbound down Sand Hill towards Stanford. Most of the office complexes are obscured by trees and brush and cannot be seen from the road.

Sand Hill Road is a road in Menlo Park, California, notable for the concentration of venture capital companies there.^[1] Its significance as a symbol of private equity in the United States may be compared to that of Wall Street in the stock market. Connecting El Camino Real and Interstate 280, the road provides easy access to Stanford University and Silicon Valley.

For several years during the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, commercial real estate on Sand Hill Road was more expensive than almost anywhere else in the world. The annual rent per square foot on Sand Hill Road peaked at around $144 (USD) in mid-2000; at the time, this was higher than rates in Manhattan and London's West End.^[2]

Some areas Sand Hill Road venture capitalists currently invest in:

• Biotechnology
• Computer hardware
• Computer services
• Computer software
• Electronics
• Healthcare
• Internet companies
• Semiconductors
• Telecommunication

Sand Hill Road is also home to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Notable venture capital and private equity firms located on Sand Hill Road include:

• Matrix Partners - 2500 Sand Hill Road
• Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers - 2750 Sand Hill Road
• Silver Lake Partners - 2775 Sand Hill Road

For many years, Sand Hill Road's northern end terminated in the middle of Stanford Shopping Center's parking lot, and the only four-lane segment was the section from Interstate 280 to Santa Cruz Avenue (the section where all the venture capitalists are housed) (note that Santa Cruz Avenue continues the alignment of Alameda de las Pulgas in this area).

This situation resulted in two severe bottlenecks which made it difficult to travel to and from Stanford Shopping Center, Stanford University, and Menlo Park.

The city of Menlo Park addressed sound levels generated by traffic on Sand Hill Road, and found year 2010 forecast sound levels expected up to 71 dBA Ldn at a reference distance of 50 feet.^[3]

Extension and widening of the road was fiercely opposed by environmentalists who were concerned about the road's proximity to San Francisquito Creek, and by residents of Menlo Park, who feared that completion of the road would increase traffic congestion in their area due to the mid-Peninsula region's lack of a direct north-south arterial.

After three decades of lobbying, negotiation, and litigation, the road was finally completed to El Camino Real in 2001. Oddly, only the existing portion from just north of Alameda de las Pulgas to just south of Stanford Shopping Center was widened to four lanes; the new extension past the shopping center was built only as two lanes.

The bottleneck near Santa Cruz Avenue has been widened as of 2006, and features a 16 foot high faux rock wall at the junction of Sand Hill Road and Santa Cruz Avenue. The project was delayed because the stretch of land at issue runs through Menlo Park, not Palo Alto; the city reversed its stubborn opposition to widening only after it saw how well the widening of the northern Palo Alto segment turned out.^[4]

1. ^ Holson, Laura M. "Still Feeding An Internet Frenzy." New York Times, June 6, 1999, sec. BU, p. 1.
2. ^ Ulfelder, Steve. "Welcome to the Hotel California No Vacancy: It's goodbye Santa Clara and hello Cincinnati for an increasing number of Internet start-ups that would rather not deal with the Valley's insane real estate costs and fickle workforce." Network World, September 25, 2000, p. 100. [1]
3. ^ Earth Metrics Inc., Noise Impacts and Mitigation Measures for the Environmental Impact Report on the Revised Land Use and Circulation Elements, Menlo Park, California, submitted by the city of Menlo Park to the California State Clearinghouse, Document Number 7942.002, May 23, 1989
4. ^ Neidorf, Shawn. "Menlo Park OKs Widening Sand Hill Road." San Jose Mercury News, November 13, 2002, sec. B, p. 1.