Arcadia Lays Plans for $4.1-Million Downtown Make-Over : Commerce: The aim is to recapture the area’s former glory and make it more attractive to pedestrians.

A $4.1-million make-over for Arcadia’s downtown will have the streets lined with trees, iron benches, Victorian lanterns and low stone walls.

The Downtown 2000 plan is an attempt to restore the area near Huntington Drive and 1st Avenue to its days of shopping glory before retailers deserted it in the 1960s and ‘70s for the malls.

Arcadia Mayor Mary B. Young recalled that four decades ago, the downtown area was filled with retail shops such as tailors, dress shops, a hardware store and a stationer. Now the area is dotted with offices, service businesses and only an occasional merchant.

“This street-scaping will do a great deal to make this a real downtown again,” Young predicted.

The key aim for the face lift is to make the area attractive to pedestrians, with mid-block crosswalks, benches and plants along Huntington Drive from Santa Clara to 5th avenues. The city plans to put in tall palms, which will be lighted at night, at street corners and decorate the area with flowers year-round.

At each end of the strip, 10-foot monuments representing the east and west gates to the 48,000-resident city will be emblazoned with the city’s name, although the west gate will actually be half a mile from the city’s border.

A similar look is planned for 1st Avenue from California Avenue to Wheeler Street, but that street will have simpler lanterns and a gray rather than red sidewalk to give a more informal style. The parking there will be changed so it is angled rather than parallel to the curb.

The project, which was approved by the council after a marathon session in October, will start in June and be completed by the fall, when Santa Anita Park’s racing season begins, city officials say. The City Council is expected to give final approval for the detailed plans on Feb. 7.

“If we can improve the streets, the private sector will reinvest in downtown,” City Manager William R. Kelly said.

But the area will not become a major retail center overnight, he warned, saying that similar changes in Old Pasadena and Burbank took nearly a decade to draw in a host of restaurants, movie theaters, coffeehouses and national retailers.

“In 10 years you will see a change in what is here and who is here,” he said.

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Local retailers say they are eager to see the project begin. “I think it’s a great thing for the area. Most people in Arcadia prefer shopping in the city,” said Garland Roberson, owner of Sullivan’s Paint & Wallcover. The area is “something right out of Compton now.”

Retailers in the area will get financial help to buy new signs and improve their storefronts. To get some space for new merchants, some businesses will be offered financial incentives to relocate and other businesses will be paid to make parking spaces available to the public.

City staff members are already negotiating for new tenants, including: a 20-screen theater, two restaurants and a five-story parking structure on the former Foulger Ford site at the Huntington and Santa Clara intersection; a restaurant near Huntington Drive and a giant retail store on 5th Avenue near the Foothill (210) Freeway.

Santa Anita Park officials who are planning a $100-million entertainment village at the nearby horse-racing track say the new downtown will complement their plans, although both the city and the track are pushing a multiscreen theater.

“It’s a terrific idea,” said Ron Sinicrope, Arcadia Chamber of Commerce president. “We need to revitalize this blighted area and I know of no one in Arcadia who doesn’t believe that.”

The plan was approved in October after going through several changes, at one point nearly dying on the drawing boards. A previous plan conceived in about 1992 by a former city manager and a different architect covered a smaller area, narrowed Huntington Drive, cost more than $5 million and initially eliminated street parking.

In July, that plan was literally torn off the wall by Kelly after it became a major issue in April’s council election and its opponents unseated the incumbents. Glendale architects Lawrence Moss & Associates were then brought in to rework the entire project, which was extended to include Huntington Drive from 2nd to 5th avenues.

“The original had a lot of design problems with many costly, specially designed items,” Young said. “This council’s design is more realistic and does include quite a few blocks more,” said Young, who was elected in April.

City officials recently said a test with cones representing the first plan for a narrower Huntington Drive did not leave enough room for the Fire Department’s trucks to turn left from 1st Avenue.

Mayor Pro Tem Sheng H. Chang, also elected in April as an opponent of the old plan, said he voted for the new version because it cost less and addressed many of the concerns merchants had with parking.

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Three-quarters of the project will be paid for by the Arcadia Redevelopment Agency, with the remaining money coming from the city’s capital improvements fund for new surfacing on Huntington Drive and a water main.

Council members and local business leaders say their only concern now with the project is that it must draw new businesses, not pull merchants away from the thriving Santa Anita Fashion Park and Baldwin shopping strip, or compete with the racetrack’s proposed entertainment village.