Retailers Shopping for Identity : Pasadena: South Lake Avenue and Old Pasadena are different in type and style. Officials are trying to unite them into a regional shopping destination.
While other retailers start the Christmas shopping season battling a sluggish economy and fears of war, Pasadena clothing store owners Charlie Bayne and son Steve are preparing to leave the fray.
After 36 years of business on South Lake Avenue, Bayne-Williams Shop for Men will close in January. The Baynes say two things forced them out: changes favoring high-volume, discount outlets in the men’s retail clothing industry, and the changing nature of South Lake Avenue.
Pasadena’s premier shopping area since the 1960s, South Lake Avenue now attracts fewer strollers who once wandered through the street’s shops of traditional clothing, Steve Bayne said.
Meanwhile, strollers throng the nighttime streets of Old Pasadena, an up-and-coming area that has emerged as a hot spot for trendy shoppers looking for boutique-style bargains.
South Lake Avenue, however, is still by far the stronger shopping street. With its established stores and built-in customers in high-rise office buildings, South Lake did five times the retail business of Old Pasadena last year.
The two areas provide a marked contrast for Pasadena’s holiday shoppers. They will also provide the anchors to a fledgling effort to market Pasadena as a regional shopping destination.
“The older, more traditional Pasadena resident is probably more likely to shop on South Lake,” said Bruce Ackerman, executive vice president of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce. “The trendier, newer Pasadena residents and a broader cross-section of the community have tended to go to Old Pasadena.”
After 6 p.m. most Friday nights, strollers throng Old Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard. They wander in and out of the area’s glitzy boutiques under the colorful glare of trendy neon signs. Over on South Lake, the sidewalks are nearly empty, the noontime business shoppers long gone.
Jim Plotkin, a vacuum cleaner dealer and head of the Old Pasadena Business Improvement District, sounds almost cocky as he explains the difference.
South Lake businesses “are living off their old mailing lists; their old clientele is dying off,” Plotkin said. “It happens to every business. It happened to me. You have to infuse, and South Lake is just beginning to wake up to this.”
Nelson Holdo, president of the South Lake Business Assn., says that his area is at a mature stage and that some changes may be needed. “We want to inject some new vitality into South Lake,” Holdo said.
But he added that South Lake remains the city’s premier shopping district. “South Lake and Old Pasadena have different roles at this time,” he said.
South Lake, filled with traditional men’s and women’s shops and shoe stores, began its ascendancy at a time when Old Pasadena, which dated from the 1920s, was languishing.
South Lake encompasses 458 stores and businesses along South Lake Avenue from Colorado to California boulevards, including adjacent Shoppers Lane. The avenue still brings in hefty sales. City statistics put last year’s gross sales at $147.2 million, a $22-million increase over 1988.
Old Pasadena had $28.6 million in gross retail sales last year. In contrast, Plaza Pasadena, the city’s only shopping mall, on Colorado Boulevard just east of Old Pasadena, had $77 million in 1989 sales.
Over the years, however, a few of the family-owned, traditional men’s stores--like the Bayne-Williams Shop for Men--have moved out of South Lake. They were victims, Holdo and Ackerman said, of discount houses and department stores that offer the same clothing at cheaper prices. In their place, South Lake now has chain stores, selling the same goods but owned by large corporations.
The area also has a large number of high-rise office buildings with thousands of business and professional workers, whose existence guarantees that the downstairs shops will continue to flourish. It is an element that Old Pasadena lacks, Holdo said.
Yet a handful of the business and professional workers have also brought a discordant note to South Lake. About 60 of them refused last year to pay the area’s annual business assessment fees. The fees ranged from $150 to $300 per business and are used for street improvements and advertising promotions.
The protesters claimed that such expenditures may increase ground-level business but do little to increase visits to the high-rise offices of doctors, accountants and attorneys. Most of the holdouts paid up when the city took them to small claims court. Two, however, appealed to Pasadena Superior Court. A decision is pending.
Meanwhile, the association is trying to expand the appeal of the area. Under a proposed “Streetscape” program, benches, bicycle racks, trash bins and two concrete identification signs will be installed to encourage more pedestrian traffic. Such changes would have been implemented even without the impending competition from the One Colorado shopping center in Old Pasadena now under construction, Holdo said.
“South Lake is one of the oldest shopping areas in this area,” Holdo said. “It represents the core of high-end retailing.”
But Plotkin believes that South Lake may be burdened by its own success. He contrasts the 300 small, individually owned shops in Old Pasadena and their ability to unite on sales promotions and street events to the corporate-owned giants of South Lake.
“Who do you talk to at Barker Bros., Silverwoods, Bullock’s or I. Magnin?” he said. “They’re corporations, an institutional type of retail store.”
Although Old Pasadena--bounded by Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena Avenue, and Union and Green streets--has only about one-fifth the retail sales of South Lake, Plotkin thinks that completion of One Colorado, a 260,000-square-foot shopping center on Colorado Boulevard, will change the picture.
One Colorado will have “the same type of stores as South Lake, very high fashion, very upscale,” Plotkin said. “A lot of specialty stores on South Lake are going to be dramatically affected.”
However, Plotkin admits that his area lacks the office workers that back up sales in South Lake. Old Pasadena also lacks major stores. Although most of the small retail space in Old Pasadena is almost completely rented out, larger spaces of up to 3,000 square feet go unrented.
But the competition between South Lake and Old Pasadena may be more perceived than real. Both areas have agreed to participate in a proposed market study of Pasadena to improve the city’s visibility as a shopping destination and give it more clout against malls.
The idea is to determine trends, demographics and attitudes of those who visit and shop in Pasadena. The information would be used to make Pasadena a regional destination for the San Gabriel Valley’s 3 million residents, an idea proposed by City Director Rick Cole.
Expected to contribute $12,500 each for the study are the South Lake and Old Pasadena business associations, the city, the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, and the Pasadena Center Operating Company, which runs the city’s convention center.
Cole believes that the two areas could complement each other in a marketing strategy. “Old Pasadena and South Lake could become the stars in a crown,” Cole said. “Right now, we don’t have a crown, just the stars.”
