Azusa’s Civic Restoration Gives Birth to a Bad Case of the Blues

When Azusa’s civic leaders promised to inject some color back into the bland and dilapidated downtown, no one bargained on what they got.

Some call it purple pain, others Laker purple or Grape Crush.

However the purplish-bluish hue is described, it is on every new light pole, garbage can and traffic signal for five blocks of Azusa Avenue.

In this San Gabriel Valley foothills community, nothing quite elicits passions like this “Azusa azul,” as some in this predominately Latino city call it.

Most detest it. A few love it. But everyone seems to have a strong opinion about it.

“I have seen this color before. It was in Toontown. I am just waiting for the Disneyland parade to come down the street,” said Roland “Ron” Hoagland, owner of Azusa Gold, a prospecting supplies store on the avenue.

In his photography studio a few doors away, Luis R. Martinez echoes that view: “That style of lamppost doesn’t go with the horrific color. I hate them. They look like giant blue tin soldiers.”

The color was supposed to have been cobalt blue, a perfect match to an Azusa emblem at City Hall. But like every homeowner who has ever painted a room knows, selecting a color from a tiny paint chip is a risky proposition.

City officials were shocked to see that the paint, selected from a catalog, was way off. But the discovery was made only after about 90 Victorian-style street lamps, numerous traffic signals, sidewalk tiles and garbage cans were painted. Now officials are pondering whether to repaint.

“OK, it’s a little gaudy. But I like gaudy things,” Mayor Cristina Madrid said as she stood beneath one of the light poles, part of the $1.8-million face-lift designed to draw business back to downtown.

Regulars at the City Cafe, a downtown diner with pink vinyl seats and $2 breakfasts, call the paint job freaky and childish. They think a repaint job is in order.

“Everyone is complaining. Nobody contemplated such a pathetic color,” Don Paine, a 40-year resident dressed head to toe in beige, said as he sipped coffee. “The only thing they’re good for is conversation and ridicule.

“The poles are something out of a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera,” he added.

At another table, ex-City Councilman Tony Naranjo, in plaid shirt and jeans, said that while such a color may be good on the Westside, “it isn’t exactly Azusa”--a working-class community of 41,000 where pickup trucks are common and gun shops popular.

“Azusa wanted to make a statement, but this isn’t it,” he said. “I thought the primer looked better.”

Retired aerial photographer Harry Stemrich could not resist adding his jab: “It looks like a bunch of Milk of Magnesia bottles,” he said.

“After the March city elections, I bet the color changes,” said Stemrich, who recalled that when he was a councilman, city officials allowed nothing but earth tones.

A few blocks north at the Balzac Cafe, two teenage girls clad in black offered a dissent. They called the color “happening,” a “bright thing” in an otherwise drab town.

After all, they said, downtown is not much to shout about: a couple of gun stores, a pawnshop, income tax services, a few eateries and a boarded-up hotel.

Civic boosters say they don’t understand what all the fuss is about. “I personally like the color,” said Peggy Martinez, director of the Downtown Azusa Business Assn.

The streetscape, she said, is more than color. Azusa Avenue was narrowed from three to two lanes between 5th and 9th streets, the sidewalks widened and islands added with wooden benches, flower beds and pots.

Still, how cobalt blue became purple is a mystery.

City Manager Rick Cole said a test lamp painted cobalt blue turned nearly black, so officials chose another blue from a sample in a catalog. “We didn’t anticipate the color we got, looking at the paint drop,” he said.

“We’re pleased it’s bringing attention to the downtown,” he added.

The streetscape, Cole said, has lured three new businesses, and a Rite-Aid pharmacy is about to be built on one corner.

He envisions the avenue with restaurants, arts and crafts stores, bookstores and other businesses that appeal to the San Gabriel Valley’s growing Latino middle class. Until recently, Azusa Avenue was a wide road owned by Caltrans, best known as California 39, the route to Angeles National Forest’s “barbecue alley.”

“Ultimately, the success is going to be measured not by the color of the light poles, but whether people keep coming back to the good restaurants and good stores,” Cole said.

A new paint job would cost at least $19,000, so officials say they want to see if locals take a shine to the existing hue before exploring alternatives. “It has generated a huge amount of reaction, mostly negative, but not completely,” Cole said.

Back at the City Cafe, diners say the color is not the only problem. “There are twice as many [street] lights as they needed,” Naranjo said.

Others complain the lights do more for those who are airborne than those at street level.

‘I use to be an aerial photographer and my pilot told me he thought we had a new airport,” Stemrich said. “We’ve started calling it Runway 39.”