Transit Village as Wave of Future

Developer Michael Dieden is creating a village at the Blue Line station in South Pasadena, even though the first train won’t pull in for three more years. At the depot site on Mission Street he plans to build a market and cafe, condos, artists’ lofts and scads of parking for commuters and shoppers.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has pledged $2.6-million to build a garage. The state of California has promised $1.5 million for the project and the city of South Pasadena would kick in $500,000.

Dieden’s projected village is one of a growing number of commercial and residential projects planned for sites near Metro Rail, Metrolink and bus stations. With at least 17 projects in Los Angeles County completed, under construction or planned, these transit villages may become a fact of life in urban Southern California.

The MTA, says project manager Art Cueto, wants to make transit more accessible, increase ridership and reduce automobile use. That’s why the authority is partnering with trackside developers to build neighborhood-sized projects that will house hundreds of residents.

Dieden, who is developing a transit village in Oakland with Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. and competing for other projects in North Hollywood, describes his company, Creative Housing Associates, as “socially and environmentally responsible” because its projects promote transit use and high-density housing. “We have an obligation to get as many of us out of cars and into mass transit as possible.”

The MTA owns or controls land near most of the Red Line and Blue Line stations, and is seeking to team up with developers who can turn empty plazas into vibrant villages.

The county’s transit authority has provided land or financial assistance to at least four projects: the MTA headquarters near Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, the Long Beach Blue Line Willow Station, an affordable apartment complex at Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue and the Hollywood and Highland entertainment and retail complex now under construction.

The MTA is asking for proposals from developers, or reviewing proposals, on 11 other sites, including Metro Rail stops in Hollywood, Universal City and North Hollywood.

Already in business are Holly Street Village in downtown Pasadena, a combination of a few stores and 374 apartments; Pacific Court in Long Beach, with 142 apartments situated above retail space; and Village Green in Sylmar, with 300 houses near a Metrolink station.

The South Pasadena proposal by Dieden’s company, and its partners in the Mission Meridian project--Jeffrey Graham, Henry Lambert and Michael Gray--is to build 6,584 square feet of stores and restaurants, 49 condominiums, 18 artists’ lofts and 309 parking spaces (nearly half of which are set aside for Blue Line commuters) on a site surrounded by Craftsman houses and historic commercial buildings.

The basic ingredients for a successful transit village are a mix of property types--housing, retail, and such community facilities as parks and libraries--within a quarter of a mile of transit stations, says MTA’s Cueto.

Combining apartments and a public rail station poses special design challenges, said Jan Van Tilburg, the Santa Monica-based architect who designed Holly Street Village in Pasadena.

Noise and vibration are minimal with modern trains and do not represent a big problem, Van Tilburg said. “The noisiest thing about the light rail is the bell that announces it” when the train approaches the station.

The real design challenge, he said, was to separate the public nature of a train station with the very private nature of housing. “Security and privacy for residents are issues that you can’t ignore.”

Beyond design, developers may have to persuade neighbors that transit villages will not threaten their way of life, despite their high density. Recalled Dieden: “We had to prove the case [both] for our project and the coming light-rail system.”

For Dieden and his partners, the concept of a transit village is “about building community, not just housing units.”

For the project architect, Stefanos Polyzoides, the goal is to “introduce urbanity into a neighborhood without destroying it. That’s a huge challenge.”

Polyzoides said the Mission Meridian project benefits from its location in a neighborhood with walkable streets and an active social life, rather than in an unfriendly, isolated part of town.

The retail portion near Mission Street is a flat, brick-faced building that closely resembles historic buildings on that street.

Farther north, where the project borders a residential neighborhood of Craftsman houses, Polyzoides has provided 49 apartments arranged around courtyards; on the street, the front entrances of the apartment buildings resemble the facades of single-family homes.

In another step to preserve the neighborhood character, Dieden said he will attempt to lease space to local retailers only, rather than such national chains as Starbucks, even though the strong credit of national retailers would make the project easier to finance.

“If you are going to build a community,” he said, “you have to be incredibly sensitive to the type of retail [shops that will operate in the development] and the type of people who will operate them.”

One potential operator is South Pasadena-born Renee Richards, who is negotiating with the developer to open a 5,000-square-foot community market and cafe in the project that would also include a newsstand and a flower shop.

Richards said she is aware of the potential impact of both the Blue Line station and the new housing-and-retail project in the Mission Street commercial corridor. Richards and her two sisters run Buster’s, where neighbors gather to shoot the breeze over morning coffee.

Life in laid-back South Pasadena will change irrevocably with the coming of the Blue Line, she said. New businesses will spring up when the train brings unaccustomed crowds of people, especially at peak hours.

“The whole town is going to change when the train comes through. It will be hard for some people,” she acknowledged. For others, however, “it will be great.”

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Along the Rail Lines

A look at existing and future joint developments on MTA property at rail stations as of September 2000 (shown in red on the map). Here are details on some of them:

Source: Times research