Glendale Envisions a New Urban Village

Glendale planners are envisioning replacing an aging strip of businesses along Broadway near downtown with an East Coast-style urban village that mixes neighborhood retail stores with housing built over them.

“I think it’s a good way to revitalize the area, a good way to redevelop commercial areas, provide housing and hopefully lessen some of the issues pertaining to traffic,” said Glendale Mayor Frank Quintero in a recent phone interview.

Glendale City Council members unanimously agreed last week to rezone 12 blocks for mixed-use purposes on Broadway, between Glendale Avenue on the east and Louise Street on the west, and between Wilson Avenue on the north and near Colorado Street on the south.

The area currently houses a mix of businesses, including restaurants, beauty salons, a tattoo parlor, parking lots and a used-car dealer.

The current mix “just doesn’t fit here. We have vacant lots, some little stores, a lot of asphalt parking,” said Councilman Dave Weaver. “It’s a question of rezoning areas of the city to what is the best use for the city.”

The plan is to build restaurants, markets, cafes and retail shops at the street level with a maximum of five stories of housing units above them.

City officials hope to create a new kind of community, where residents can walk downstairs to run errands, converge at coffee shops and find entertainment all on the same street -- and maybe even walk to work a few blocks away. Officials also hope pedestrians will spill over to Brand Boulevard, the city’s main drag, and boost business there.

“You can go shopping for food at local grocers, you can go to the movies right there,” said Elaine Wilkerson, director of planning. “This means we have less traffic, which is important. It also means less parking problems.”

Not all business owners along Broadway believe a revitalization is needed. John Brown, who owns a building with four retail stores, said his stores are doing fine and questions the city’s belief that major changes are required.

With the vote, Glendale hopes to join a spattering of Southern California cities developing mixed-use complexes on commercial boulevards, such as Venice Renaissance, Burbank Media Village and Pasadena’s Paseo Colorado.

It is too soon to tell how much a prospective Broadway resident would have to pay in rent. Quintero said he does not expect the units to cost as much as those at the Post Paseo Colorado Apartments, which run between $1,200 and $3,000 a month.

“They can’t be overpriced because people are not going to go for it,” he said.

The city envisions having upscale residential units as well as affordable housing, Weaver said, but added that Glendale needs to set parking guidelines before developers can move on the project.