The Transformation of Old Pasadena

Old Pasadena is not only one of Southern California’s most thriving downtown destinations but also a nationally known case of progressive urban redevelopment. It is hard to believe that this vibrant urban core was one of the city’s most dangerous places in the ’80s. How did this transformation come about and who were the main players?

What came to be known as ‘Old Pasadena’ was developed at the turn of the last century when horses, buggies, pedestrians and the Pacific Electric Interurban Red Car system were the core transportation systems. After World War II, the car became the dominant form of transportation; however, Old Pasadena lacked parking facilities, had seismically unreinforced historic buildings and did not have a safe and aesthetically-pleasing pedestrian environment. Banks would not make loans to property owners who wished to upgrade their buildings and to merchants who wished to develop their businesses.

As a consequence, Old Pasadena was abandoned and the area became blighted, crime-ridden and a ‘red light’ district, making it one of the most undesirable areas in the San Gabriel Valley. Pasadena’s downtown business district moved eastward along Colorado Boulevard where buildings could be built with larger office and retail floor plates than historic buildings could accommodate and parking could be provided to meet commercial requirements and the City’s Zoning Code.

By the early 1970s, Old Pasadena was slated for demolition in a city-approved redevelopment strategy called ‘Colorado Boulevard West’, which was aimed at bringing corporate headquarters to Pasadena. The Pasadena Redevelopment Agency (PRA) saw Old Pasadena as an obstacle in the way of this plan. 

The redevelopment formula, like others in the state and nation, was to assemble land and buildings through eminent domain, relocate businesses, clear the land and sell it at substantially reduced prices for private development.

The buildings that resulted from this effort were for the most part internally-oriented, turning their backs on the urban environment, essentially creating ‘islands on the land’. This strategy did not depend upon the revitalisation of the surrounding area to be successful.

As parts of downtown were razed in the 1970s in favour of block-sized buildings with associated parking structures, concerns were raised by a broad-based coalition of preservationists, local property owners and merchants that they were losing what made Pasadena ‘Pasadena’. They wanted to see the historic downtown revitalized through a ‘place-based’ economic strategy of historic preservation, small business assistance, public parking facilities and associated sidewalk and alley improvements. They saw that Old Pasadena had significant value because it was an authentic place and would provide unique experiences that could not be duplicated elsewhere. A successful citizen initiative abolished the PRA in 1980 and the City Council took over the redevelopment powers. The demolition of Old Pasadena was no longer city policy.

The Old Pasadena revitalisation effort was a comprehensive co-development strategy in which public and private investments complemented each other. The main players in the revitalization of Old Pasadena were Pasadena Heritage, a local preservation organisation, the Junior League of Pasadena, the Pasadena Central Improvement Association, an organisation of property and business owners, and the City of Pasadena led by the City’s Development Department. The Old Pasadena District Redevelopment Project was established in 1983 with eminent domain powers limited to public improvements only. In the same year, Old Pasadena was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. A public investment of $28 million in public parking facilities and streetscape and alley walkway improvements leveraged over $500 million in private investment. This was in contrast to providing tax increment financing for individual block-sized developments using eminent domain. The success of Old Pasadena is reflected in the growth of annual sale volumes from $10 million in 1983 to over $350 million in 2018. 

The revitalisation of the Old Pasadena Historic District represents a true grass roots effort by historic preservation, business and property interests. It is one of the earliest and most successful eorts in the United States to transform a blighted older business downtown district into vital transit-oriented, walkable mixed use community district with commercial office, retail, restaurant, multifamily housing, civic, cultural, non-profit, parks and community uses. In recognition of this successful downtown revitalisation effort, Old Pasadena was awarded the first Great American Main Street Award in 1995 by the National Main Street Center, National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The transformation of Old Pasadena owes a lot to a progressive parking strategy that has now been applied to several downtowns regionally and nationally. Can you describe the key ideas and ingredients of this strategy and how it relates to the social and economic vibrancy of the place?

Public parking garages became key to the economic revitalisation of Old Pasadena in the early 1980s pioneering the concept of ‘Park Once’ in ‘Main Street’ downtowns. This concept is based upon shared parking among the uses (much like a shopping centre does) to prevent buildings in Old Pasadena from being demolished for needed parking. Importantly, these city-owned garages, opened in 1987/88, provide 90 minutes free parking to encourage use of the garages and to reduce cars circling the District looking for street parking. The garages were designed to be compatible with the historic buildings and to provide a pedestrian-oriented ‘liner’ commercial use. The retail outlets and restaurants at the base of the garages provide an active and safe environment for pedestrians returning to the garages, particularly at night, and generate revenue to meet debt service for garage financing. In recognition of how effectively the Old Pasadena garages integrated into the historic district, the DeLacey Avenue Parking Facility won the President’s Commendation from the Pasadena Beautiful Foundation in 1996.

After the success of Old Pasadena became a reality, parking meters were installed in 1993 to better manage parking and to provide net operating income for ‘return to source’ revenue for District-wide streetscape and alley walkway improvements. 

This financing strategy was featured in Donald Shoup’s book entitled The High Cost of Free Parking (American Planning Association 2003) and has become a national example of such funding. The streetscape and alley walkway improvements provide more effective linkages between the garages and the District. It also enhances the historic alleyway system, thereby reinforcing the District’s unique sense of place. As capillaries link the human body to the heart, these needed upgrades and pedestrian amenities provide safety, particularly at night and link the garages to the uses in the District. The streetscapes and alley walkway programme was aimed at ‘place-marking’, not ‘place-making’ in recognition of the fact that Old Pasadena was already a place and did not need public improvements to make it so.

One of the most interesting aspects of Old Pasadena is the economic strategy specifically underlying the parking structures. Could you elaborate on how they are owned, funded and how the income from these garages is spent?

The location plan for the Old Pasadena parking garages was to place the garages north and south of Colorado Boulevard to eliminate car-pedestrian conflicts on the sidewalks along the Boulevard and to better anchor revitalization efforts within the larger District. The first garage in Pasadena (850 spaces) north of Colorado Boulevard (the Fair Oaks/Union garage) was completed in 1986 through a public-private partnership between the city’s redevelopment authority and the Old Pasadena Parking Consortium, a limited liability company. The City assembled the site and approved Industrial Revenue Bonds (IDBs) to provide public below-market, interest rate financing for public use garages in historic districts. No other public subsidies were provided to this privately-owned, publicly available garage.

The next two public garages were built south of Colorado Boulevard: the DeLacey Avenue (520 spaces) and Schoolhouse Block (950 spaces) parking facilities. These garages were designed, financed and built by the City of Pasadena under the leadership and direction of the City’s Development Department and opened in 1987/88. 

The financing was accomplished with City-backed ‘Certificates of Participation’ (‘COPs’, a form of bonds) amounting to $23.5 million, a very risky investment at the time in Old Pasadena’s future revitalisation. Essentially, the city ‘rolled the dice’ on Old Pasadena.

The historic buildings in Old Pasadena were not seismically upgraded and could have been destroyed during a major earthquake, leaving stand-alone garages with few customers and without sources of revenue for COP debt service. In such a scenario, the redevelopment tax increment funds, sales taxes from Old Pasadena, garage net operating income and lease revenue from garage, retail and restaurant use would not have materialised. The city’s strategy was to use annual redevelopment tax increment funds from property taxes in Old Pasadena to repay the City as development materialised in Old Pasadena.

The garages have retail and restaurant space at street level, which provide revenue for the parking garages and activity at night, primarily for pedestrian safety. In addition, return to source revenues used to supplement expected redevelopment tax increment revenue flows were garage net operating income and Zoning Entitlement Credits, which were created to link properties to parking spaces to meet city-required parking. The COPs are paid o and garage revenues are now used to support the operation of garages.

The garages continue to be owned by the City of Pasadena and are operated under contract by the Old Pasadena Management District (the OPMD), a property-based business improvement district formed to protect and enhance Old Pasadena. The OPMD operates the garages on a customer-friendly basis and has incorporated needed amenities and public artwork and historic photos in the garages.

In terms of urban mobility, you have been a strong and consistent advocate for balancing public transit, automobiles and pedestrians. How has this manifested itself in the case of Old Pasadena? Is it all there? Is it missing some components? What more would you like to see in Old Pasadena as it evolves over the next few decades?

Old Pasadena is a successful balance of pedestrian, bicycle and transit with two Gold Line light rail stations.

Streetscape improvements, including lighting, wayfinding signs, pedestrian directories and street trees, link this mobility system successfully to the District’s retail and restaurant uses, to multifamily housing within and adjacent to the District, to commercial office space and to community-serving uses such as an arts centre, an internationally-known museum, a senior centre and the Civic Centre.

Old Pasadena is missing bicycle lanes and secure bicycle parking, more high tech office space and commercial uses on and abutting the newly developed pedestrian paseo over the underground Gold Line in Old Pasadena. The two parks in the District – Memorial Park and Central Park – need to be better maintained and programmed with entertainment, food fairs, movies in the park and the like. Old Pasadena has many homeless individuals living on its sidewalks, near public and private buildings, churches and parks. This is a regionwide problem that needs to be effectively addressed at both the regional and local levels. Design standards for the integration of new, more compatible buildings into the historic fabric need to be improved and enforced. In addition, awnings and shade trees need to be installed on Colorado Boulevard to make the pedestrian experience more enjoyable.

Old Pasadena is also a great example of heritage conservation on a broader scale. How do you see the relationship of effective mobility planning with conservation and place-making?

Pasadena is an internationally recognized example of a city that did not have to choose between economic success and preserving its heritage. The city had the foresight and political will to take risks and the courage of vision to protect its unique historic resources and strong sense of place and to make them key to its economic prosperity. Public-private partnerships went far beyond individual development deals aimed at revitalisation. These partnerships involved public investments in the District as a whole in order to support District-wide economic development, a much more difficult and longer-term risk. This approach reinvented how redevelopment could be used effectively for public-private non-profit partnerships to revitalise a historic district without the use of eminent domain and without tearing down buildings in favour of creating ‘islands on the lands’.

Economically successful place-making is enhanced by providing effective mobility, which provides new life and economic vitality to older buildings. It is the essential link between the uses and their customers. In terms of pedestrians, the ‘main street vernacular’ historic buildings promote and enhance the connections among and between buildings, parking lots and structures, and the ‘first and last mile’ to and from transit stations. The buildings are built close to the sidewalk and have transparent windows along the front of the building and door openings every 50 feet. The regularly spaced doors and windows provide lighting and entryways promote a pedestrian-scale environment that is safer and more engaging to those on foot. The Old Pasadena streetscape and alley walkway improvements complement this street-level retail by effectively linking the Old Pasadena garages to businesses day and night. Old Pasadena pedestrian links to transit reduce the need for parking and increase access to local and regional trade areas.

Finally, a number of new mobility trends have emerged in the Los Angeles region over the past two decades – light rail, transit-oriented development, bicycle-share programmes, Zipcar etc. Where do you see all this going regionally? Is it truly making a difference on a larger scale and is Los Angeles truly transforming its ‘autopian’ landscape?

Los Angeles was invented by enormous public planning and public and private investments: creating water resources beyond its local supply, creating a man-made port where there was no natural port and developing a 1,100 mile regional interurban ‘Red Car’ throughout the Los Angeles region. Land development was at its core. A city had to be on the Red Car line (‘transit-oriented’) to have any hope of success. 

The Red Car lines set the basic urban and suburban patterns of the Los Angeles area that we know today. The rise of the automobile and the resulting demise of the Red Car system resulted in the creation of freeways to replace the Red Car line and a pattern of streets and buildings uniquely accessible by automobiles. Huge tracts of land became ripe for development. In this way, Los Angeles changed from a ‘line-oriented’ land use pattern to a ‘matrix-oriented’ one in response to the dominant form of transportation.

As for the autopian landscape of Los Angeles, I think large strides are being made in trying to transform it. However, reorienting or ‘bending’ the auto-generated matrix land use pattern back to a transit-generated ‘line’ land use pattern is an impossible task and can only be done at the margins: developing high-density buildings and villages around light rail and heavy rail stations known as ‘transit-oriented’ and ‘transit-adjacent’ development and creating denser mixed use urban downtowns in the Los Angeles region. These urban places can be planned more effectively for pedestrian, bicycle and transit travel in mixed use, denser towns and cities, including those in the suburbs. However, this form of development will depend largely upon public acceptance which, in many instances, is out of scale and incompatible with the surrounding buildings and uses. Another way to ‘bend the matrix’ is for people to live in urban clusters – individual cites, urban villages and towns that grew up along the Red Car line – which do not require regular travel on the freeways to meet daily needs. The freeway trattic in Los Angeles is nearly at a stand-still, making living and working in the same area desirable. The price of housing in the Los Angeles area however is over twice as much as that in the nation as a whole, making commutes to outlying areas with more affordable housing a growing trend.