One Colorado Project’s 1st Phase to Open Friday for Moviegoers
After nearly 10 years of delays, the first phase of Pasadena’s controversial One Colorado mall project--an underground, eight-screen movie theater--will open Friday.
“We’re very excited,” said Mark Haines, president of the Old Pasadena Business and Professional Assn. “It’s the missing link in Old Pasadena.”
When completed, the $70-million project will comprise a 350,000-square-foot shopping mall, which will incorporate a block of historic buildings bounded on the north and south by Union Street and Colorado Boulevard, and on the east and west by Fair Oaks and De Lacey avenues.
In addition to the movie theater, the project will include restaurants and retail shops. The rest of the project--which had been scheduled to open next spring or summer--will more likely be in operation by September, 1992, to allow merchants to take advantage of the fall shopping season, officials said.
Prospective tenants include a branch of Il Fornaio, a popular Beverly Hills Italian restaurant; Johnny Rockets, a 1950s-style diner, and a.b.s., a Los Angeles-based fashion boutique.
“We’re very pleased with the leasing,” said Pam White, president of the Stitzel Co., the project’s developer. “We’ve got some major national tenants we’ll be talking to.”
Doug Brignole, owner of Brignole Fitness in Old Pasadena, said he has signed a letter of intent to move into the complex.
“We’ll be less than 100 yards away from where we are now,” said Brignole of his 7-year-old health club on De Lacey Avenue.
Santa Monica-based Broadway Deli is also considering leasing space, General Manager Beau Izad said.
“We haven’t signed a letter of intent yet, but we’re talking and going over preliminary plans,” he said.
White said she expects to have 50% of the mall leased within the next couple of months.
“The impact that it’s going to have, and the timing (of the project), is so keen to the recovery of small businesses here,” said Bruce Ackerman, chief executive officer of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce.
“It’ll draw the attention of people on both sides of the street,” said Ackerman, who also predicted that the mall will attract shoppers from a wide area.
One Colorado was first proposed in 1983 by developer John Patrick Wilson, who, with the financial backing of television producer Garry Marshall, purchased the block of turn-of-the-century buildings.
Wilson’s plan was to turn the center into a trendy shopping mall, with movie theaters, food stands and chic boutiques that would be united by an enclosed walkway and alleys. An antique trolley would run past the mall and around the perimeter of Old Pasadena.
But financial problems bogged the project down from the start.
Birtcher, a nationally known development firm, joined the project in 1986. Birtcher secured a $106-million loan, but later pulled out when the lender, First Interstate Mortgage Co., required a $30-million loan guarantee in case the project failed.
Wilson’s plans collapsed in 1987 and the project was sold, first to CMC Capital Corp., a Connecticut-based company that provided a temporary infusion of cash. But CMC bowed out in early 1988, saying the project was too costly.
Then the project was sold to Pierce/Lange Development of Los Angeles, which left the project after delays in obtaining construction financing.
In 1988, the San Francisco-based Stitzel Co. took over, and made major changes in the plan--including eliminating the enclosed walkway.
Other plan changes included adding ground-floor entrances to shops on both the first and second levels. To do that, the front entrances of several buildings were redesigned to lead down a few steps to a first floor several feet below street level. The entrances to other shops in the rear were rebuilt to lead up a few steps to a second floor slightly above the street. The design doubles the amount of space accessible from the street, Stitzel officials said.
Despite the death in April of the firm’s president, Douglas Stitzel, construction continued.
The development has also been slowed over the years by preservationists and other developers, who fought to save portions of the 3.25-acre block that contains brick buildings dating from the 1890s.
Preservationists attacked the project as being too glitzy, and predicted it would not draw enough shoppers to turn a profit.
“We may end up with a white elephant in the middle of the block,” said Claire Bogaard, executive director of Pasadena Heritage, a historic preservation group that opposed the project from the start.
Although Bogaard said she is happy the mall is nearing completion, she is upset that 11 of the project’s 18 old buildings have lost their status on the National Register of Historic Places. The structures were stripped of their original walls, windows, doorways, roofs and skylights during the refurbishing, she said.
“It’s a resource we have lost,” Bogaard said.
But Haines of the Old Pasadena Business and Professional Assn. said the block would still be just a collection of vacant, boarded-up buildings frequented by derelicts if it had not been for the insight of Wilson, the original developer.
“He saw something in that neighborhood that no one else saw,” Haines said. “Without that vision, it might still be a Skid Row.”
Now, local merchants hope the 2,200-seat AMC theater complex will be the start of a rejuvenated Old Pasadena.
The theater is in a new, three-story building in the middle of the Union Street side of the block. Eventually, the building will also house a restaurant and retail shops.
The theater’s facade features tiles, exposed beams and trusses and faux gold and brass accents, a stand-alone box office and flashing lights on the marquee.
Opening day features include Walt Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” director Martin Scorsese’s “Cape Fear,” and “The Black Robe,” starring Vincent Spano.
Throughout the theater’s opening weekend, moviegoers also will be entertained by musicians, a magician and a clown. Proceeds from scheduled opening week benefit screenings will be donated to the Pasadena Playhouse and the Variety Children’s Charities, both nonprofit organizations.
A spokesman for United Artists Theater circuit, which owns a six-screen complex across Colorado Boulevard from the new theaters, did not appear worried by the competition.
“There’s certainly plenty of movies to go around and we can’t show them all,” said the spokesman, who declined to be identified. “I think it’ll improve the area.”
