Impatience Grows Over Construction Delays in Pasadena
The owners of Jurgensen’s Grocery Co. have put $600,000 and a year of effort into planning a new upscale market and headquarters at Lake Avenue and California Boulevard.
But now, like plans for at least a dozen other commercial projects and more than 400 homes, apartments and condominiums, Jurgensen’s South Lake Market project is on hold while the city decides how to implement a growth-control measure approved by voters last March.
Kenneth McCormick, who heads a partnership that bought the venerable but declining Jurgensen’s chain 16 months ago and hopes to revive it through construction of larger stores, said he is growing impatient with the delay.
McCormick said his project has been stalled by the city since the beginning of this year, first to await the outcome of the city vote March 7 on two competing growth-limit measures, and since then for the city to devise rules to carry out the winning initiative.
In a recent appearance before the city board to plead for quick action, McCormick said: “We are now at the end of our tether. From a business perspective, Jurgensen’s in Pasadena cannot wait much longer. The company needs to get moving.”
He said that unless ground can be broken for construction by August, the company may sell its Pasadena property and seek a site elsewhere.
When Jurgensen’s began planning its proposed three-story building, which would include its market, headquarters office, restaurant, and other offices and shops, Pasadena was in the midst of a building boom. But the voter-approved initiative, sponsored by Pasadena Residents in Defense of our Environment (PRIDE), has put a brake on construction by establishing an annual building limit for multifamily housing and other large-scale projects. The limits are 250 residential units and 250,000 square feet of non-residential construction a year. (A typical four-story office building contains about 100,000 square feet, city officials say.)
The initiative contains numerous exemptions. There are no ceilings on construction of affordable housing and few impediments to development in economically depressed Northwest Pasadena. The reconstruction of the Huntington Sheraton Hotel and several other projects are specifically exempted.
Developers who obtained building permits and began construction before the initiative was passed are being allowed to go forward with their projects.
But there are numerous other projects that were on file with the city and well along in the planning review process but cannot proceed until the city decides how the PRIDE initiative applies to them. If the city were to approve all the pending projects, the annual building allocations permitted under the PRIDE initiative would be exceeded.
Can Borrow Allocations
However, the initiative allows the city to borrow from next year’s building allocations. Director Rick Cole said the city should do that to push through those pending projects that meet the city’s standards.
“People who are in the pipeline deserve some equity,” Cole said. “We should roll up our sleeves and work through these projects as quickly as possible.”
The planning staff reported to the board last week that the pending commercial projects total about 900,000 square feet but that about 40% of that footage represents parking structures. Planning officials have said it is unclear whether parking structures should be treated as buildings that require allocations.
Cole, a strong supporter of the PRIDE initiative, said that requiring building allocations for parking structures would be a “bizarre interpretation” of the measure. He said the initiative “was never meant to include parking structures.”
But Mayor William E. Thomson Jr. said the parking question “is a serious issue” and that the board should try to resolve it at its meeting Tuesday.
A Number of Options
If the board decides that there are no limits on parking structures, there would still be more than 500,000 square feet of pending commercial projects, including retail stores, offices, a hotel and a motel that could not be built unless they receive building allocations. In addition, there are more than 50 pending residential projects, which contain a total of more than 400 units.
The city Board of Directors, which will take up the allocation issue Tuesday, has a number of options. It could draw on next year’s building allocations to approve every project that meets its minimum standards, giving preference where necessary to those projects that have advanced furthest in the city’s planning process. Or it could set up criteria and judge all projects against each other, approving only the most meritorious.
The PRIDE initiative calls for the city to establish a process to evaluate projects, giving preference to those that best meet such goals as providing jobs for Pasadena residents and generating revenue for the city. But city officials say the city does not have to apply the full criteria to projects that were pending with the city before the initiative was adopted.
McCormick said the city could weed out a number of pending projects by simply restricting allocations this year to those builders who are ready to begin construction. He said some builders with projects on file do not intend to proceed with construction until next year.
McCormick has also urged the city to judge projects on their merits, not on how far they have advanced in the city’s planning process.
