Topics / BUSINESS : Pasadena Redevelopment Project OKd

The City Council on Monday approved an agreement with developer and community activist Danny Bakewell to build the first major supermarket shopping center in predominantly black and Latino Northwest Pasadena with the help of Pasadena’s redevelopment agency.

Bakewell’s Pasadena Commercial Development Co. plans to build the 69,000-square-foot shopping center, which is to feature a Vons supermarket, on the southwest corner of the intersection of Fair Oaks Avenue and Orange Grove Boulevard. The supermarket will anchor the center, which is expected to also have several smaller stores.

The site is now home to a grocery, a check-cashing store and other small shops.

The redevelopment agency is expected to spend an estimated $8.5 million to buy land for the shopping center, relocate existing businesses and demolish buildings on the site.

The redevelopment agency will sell the property to Pasadena Commercial for about $1.5 million, which the firm would repay over 20 years from shopping center profits.