City officials see potential in south Glendale’s small vacant properties

Council members spoke of potentially adding new housing on small vacant lots and creating retail villages in south Glendale during the second workshop held to draft a community plan for the neighborhood.

The feedback given will be presented to local stakeholders through the end of the year who, in turn, will also be able to provide their opinions.

All of the feedback will be compiled to help develop a plan that will undergo an environmental impact review and head back to the council for final consideration next summer.

A community plan for north Glendale was adopted in 2011, and the process typically entails envisioning the future growth of a specific part of the city 20 to 30 years down the road.

Councilman Vartan Gharpetian said he sees areas of south Glendale such as Adams Hill or south Glendale Avenue that could be made to resemble commercial strips such as those in Atwater Village.

It would require making those areas more pedestrian friendly and adding street lights, trees and rest areas, he said.

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

Councilwoman Laura Friedman agreed, saying some retail centers are already there, but are in need of some improvements.

“There’s places like Adams Hill, parts of Colorado Street, where you have retail centers where enhancing the experience will make them more walkable and invite people to spend some more time there,” she said.

Planning staffers pointed out to council members that south Glendale is scattered with what’s known as “widow and orphan” lots, meaning small individual vacant lots that have developed fewer units than allowed by zoning and could have room for more.

Mayor Paula Devine said those types of properties could be good candidates for building more affordable housing units.

The idea of condo conversions — turning rental apartment units into condominiums for sale — was also brought up, and it’s something about which Gharpetian spoke favorably.

He referred to the statistic that 80% of south Glendale’s residents are renters.

“We need to start creating more affordable, entry-level ownership housing,” Gharpetian said.

Councilman Ara Najarian said utilizing orphan lots and modifying existing buildings could be used to create projects with fewer units to address the problem of growing density.

Affordability will be a key issue and the decision-making must be done carefully in order not to drive up current rents, said Councilman Zareh Sinanyan.

“There already has been an unprecedented increase in rental rates,” he said. “We’re really facing an issue of how to deal with this, how to deal with forcing our current residents out of the city. It’s going to be an issue we’re going to have to confront. It’s a serious problem.”

Alan Loomis, deputy director of urban design and mobility for the city, brought up the idea of transferring density. The process would allow the owner of a lot to forfeit the number of units they are entitled to and sell them to someone else who could add those units on their own site.

However, that could create the problem of having a project that goes beyond the permissible number of units allowed in a single zoning area, Loomis said.

“That would be destroying my neighborhood,” Gharpetian said. “We have to be very careful as to where the units will be transferred to.”

City Manager Scott Ochoa said that moving ahead, some residents will likely start to feel the changes.

“No matter what you do, there is going to be some impact and somebody is going to feel that impact,” he said.

Loomis added the possibility of public-and-private partnerships, which could lead to the creation of more park land. For example, Loomis said, in West Hollywood, a developer opened a park but built a parking garage underneath it.

Gharpetian also tossed around the idea of creating new parking structures or lots to tackle the issue of congested parking on south Glendale streets, something Friedman spoke against.

“The one thing we don’t want to do is encourage more cars in the area. That causes traffic, which is also a huge problem,” Friedman said.

The third and final workshop for drafting the South Glendale Community plan will focus on the transportation network in the neighborhood and how to grow the area along transit corridors. It will be held at 6 p.m. next Tuesday in the council chambers in City Hall, 613 E. Broadway.

Bill Nye “The Science Guy” sends out a blast of smoke from a box during presentation at the Planetary Society’s PlanetFest at the Pasadena Convention C

--

Arin Mikailian, arin.mikailian@latimes.com

Twitter: @ArinMikailian

enter on Saturday.