Playhouse Area Gets Into the Act : Pasadena: Plans to revitalize the Pasadena Playhouse neighborhood will be presented at a public hearing tonight.

With its undistinguished collection of older retail shops and asphalt parking lots, the Playhouse District along Colorado Boulevard has yet to acquire the panache of Old Pasadena, the Civic Center and Lake Avenue.

But since February, a 13-member task force has been holding public meetings on revitalizing the eight-block neighborhood, which is bounded by Green and Union streets and Oakland and Hudson avenues.

The district derives its name from the Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave.

“Having this indefinite, vacuous place in the middle of Pasadena doesn’t serve the city,” said Donlyn Lyndon of Berkeley, who was hired to come up with architectural plans for the area.

Those plans will be presented at a public meeting tonight, where Lyndon hopes to get reaction and further direction on how he should proceed.

Lyndon, who also devised the city’s Civic Center Master Plan, has come up with two alternatives. Both include a “civic patio” in the heart of the district at Colorado Boulevard and El Molino Avenue. The patio would be small, with an intricate design and landscaping to draw pedestrians there and with passageways winding through the district to provide spaces for people to discover.

Around the patio, office buildings would be clustered in a stepped design, rising 10 stories in places, he said.

The second version of the plan would feature shorter buildings with more retail shops. Emphasizing the cultural aspect of the district, art galleries and night entertainment would be added, Lyndon said.

Both versions call for extensive retail development and the addition of about 250 housing units, he said.

“The main thing we’re trying to do is to find ways of enlivening the entire Playhouse District and give it a character of its own, make it a distinctive destination place in Pasadena,” he said.

Singled out as landmark buildings for the district are the Renaissance-inspired Sanwa Bank building, the Mediterranean-style courtyard of the Arcade Building and the courtyard architecture of the Playhouse itself, he said.

Cost of the project, the financing and the economic benefit to the city are yet to be determined, task force Chairman Al Lowe said.

The city has allocated more than $200,000 to pay for architectural, economic and environmental consultants. Merchants in the district will have to pay back the money when the development plans get under way, Lowe said.

“So far, everyone on the task force has been accepting and receiving information,” Lowe said. “Now we’re at the stage of starting to sift out and say, “Am I willing to live with this?”

The group hopes to have final plans before the Board of Directors by November. If the board wants to move quickly, an exemption from the city’s Growth Management Initiative would probably be needed, Lowe said. Directors could place the Playhouse District plans on the April, 1991, ballot.

“At this point in time, the citizens of Pasadena have an opportunity to guide the shape of the district,” Lowe said. “Close to half of the district is vacant land, parking lots, and it’s best to develop when land is vacant.”

The hearing will be at 7 tonight in the Pasadena Unified School District Board Meeting Room, 351 S. Hudson Ave.