Downtown Revival Draws Inspiration From Past

Gaze into the newest vision of the future of downtown Temple City and you also get a glimpse of the past.

The central portion of Las Tunas Drive again becomes a stroller’s paradise, a homey Main Street with clusters of eye-catching shops and restaurants aimed at the walk-in customer. The scene is spiced up by regular art displays and music festivals, by the weekday bustle of local workers and maybe even by new residences upstairs.

That picture emerges from an ambitious 10-month study of how to revive Temple City’s aging downtown. In addition to its proposal for a village square atmosphere in the center of town, the 20- to 30-year strategy, which won City Council approval and initial funding earlier this month, has plans for all of the city’s 1 1/2-mile section of Las Tunas Drive, including senior citizen housing to the west and a medical-service community near Arcadia.

The effort is in part a nostalgic reach back to the years before department stores and five-and-dimes gave way to multiplying nail salons and video stores, and before regional malls left parts of Las Tunas Drive with the wan look of the forgotten.

“Let’s call it ‘pre-blight.’ We haven’t reached that technical term ‘yuck,’ but we’re almost there,” said Councilman Thomas D. Breazeal, who as mayor last year named the committee that produced the report.

Vanishing traditional stores, more specialized services, a market fragmented into ethnic niches and the world-weariness of many of the strip’s older buildings and signs prompted fears that the bedroom community’s main thoroughfare would end up in decay. A 1986 revitalization strategy never was put in place.

The new rescue program proposes recasting downtown in the mold of “neo-traditional town planning,” which favors pedestrian-scale development and an old-style mix of business, residences and other uses. The city hopes to pitch in with improvements to streets and sidewalks, plus loans or grants to help business owners improve signs and storefronts.

The council has agreed to spend $85,000 to turn some of these proposals into a Specific Plan--building standards similar to zoning rules for an identified area--and hire a consultant to ensure that the plan makes economic sense. The council also allotted $2,500 for consultants to review a 1989 recommendation to target the area for a redevelopment project, although redevelopment is likely to be controversial.

The committee could not agree on the need for redevelopment, and the report suggested that a consultant investigate the issue further.

Other than redevelopment, the report recommends no major use of public funds to stimulate business activity. Instead, the strategy is aimed at steering future building and renovations so that work is done in a coherent way over the long run.

The committee focused on Las Tunas Drive as the city’s Main Street, noting that “time has taken its toll on many of the original businesses.”

“Many of the major landmarks, such as Lieberg’s Department Store, have disappeared and some buildings suffer from structural deficiencies and a dated appearance,” the report said, adding that “some public facilities suffer from deterioration.”

The report divides the revitalization approach into three areas:

* The pedestrian-oriented “City Center”--an eight-block area along both sides of Las Tunas from Cloverly to Kauffman avenues--would hold a concentration of stores and restaurants, with large offices restricted to upper floors. The city’s tallest structures--up to six stories--would be here, and buildings would be located near the street, with eye-level signs, to better serve walkers. Parking would be limited to side-street lots.

The area, just west of City Hall, includes the 1.3-acre site of a former supermarket that could be combined with other property for use as a large “anchor” store to draw out-of-town shoppers.

* “Las Tunas West,” a block-wide strip from Sultana to Cloverly avenues, would remain a largely car-oriented gateway to busy Rosemead Boulevard, with an emphasis on offices, small restaurants and service businesses. Two large stores, Ralphs and Thrifty Drug Store, would remain important anchors. Because of “awkward” lot shapes and poor parking, the report discouraged new retail stores.

The committee said the area would also be a prime location for senior citizens housing.

* On the other end of town, city offices, existing medical offices and a Kaiser Permanente health facility would make “Las Tunas East” a good site for more offices and institutional uses and perhaps senior housing as well, the committee concluded.

Officials are considering a revolving loan or grant program to help business owners fix up facades or old signs. Meanwhile, the public improvements program could range from a minor cleanup to full-scale rebuilding of streets and sidewalks, said Luke A. Sims, the city’s economic development director.

Any redevelopment effort, which Sims acknowledged probably would be “very controversial,” would follow the review of a previous study concluding that downtown was sufficiently blighted to qualify. In 1989, the city’s Redevelopment Agency met strong local opposition when it seized a longstanding restaurant, a bank branch and half a dozen homes to make way for a 110,000-square-foot shopping center nearing completion at the corner of Las Tunas Drive and Rosemead Boulevard.

Aware of lingering public reservations, officials are planning a one-day workshop next month to explain the redevelopment process. The report concluded that “condemnation is not seen as being beneficial in the city center.” Breazeal said he opposes using condemnation to take private businesses.

Officials hope the downtown effort gives the tree-shaded city of 32,000 a distinct identity in an area where boundaries are smudged through the homogenizing effect of strip malls and chain stores along the long commercial arteries.

Aside from about 300 ficus trees that frame Las Tunas Drive in green, “we don’t have anything that’s really outstanding that would tell you you’re in Temple City,” said Marianne Milch, executive director of the Temple City Chamber of Commerce.

Longtime residents say the main street has changed through a new emphasis on services, such as beauty shops and travel agencies, a rise in businesses catering mainly to new Asian and Latino residents and the hit-and-run shopping habits of today’s harried customers.

“In the old days we had as many as five men’s clothing stores, a dime store, dress shops and things that pick up walk-in trade,” said Penny Graham, who has owned a music store on Las Tunas Drive for 27 years. “People don’t go downtown and walk around anymore. It saddens me to see the vacant buildings. It saddens me to see the types of businesses that are going in.”

Supporters don’t expect to turn the clock back: Specialty shopping and services will stay. But Breazeal said the effort may create needed sales-tax revenue, add housing for the elderly and, most important perhaps, restore downtown’s unifying cultural role.

“Part of it is somewhat nostalgic, but not really in a parochial way,” Sims said. “Downtown is the heart of the community. The health of the downtown reflects the health of the community.”