Pasadena’s Paseo Colorado: Shopping for Reality, in Vain
Paseo Colorado, the $130-million TrizecHahn retail development in downtown Pasadena, is yet another example of the now familiar formula: mixed-use urban malls that seek to replicate the experience of a real city.
Designed--again--by Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects, this one is cloaked in a veneer of Spanish colonial imagery. But its essential features are indistinguishable from Hollywood & Highland: a multiplex theater, chain restaurants and rows and rows of shops. The one major difference is the addition of 387 units of housing.
The result is still a soulless space, a prefabricated complex whose generic forms and predictable lineup of shops and restaurants have nothing in common with the kind of incremental growth that takes place in real cities over decades, and sometimes centuries.
Covering three full city blocks along Colorado Boulevard, the development is conceived as an extension of Pasadena’s historic civic core. Its main pedestrian corridor, Garfield Promenade, runs along the axis that connects Myron Hunt’s 1927 Spanish revival public library building to the civic auditorium, an elegant Renaissance-inspired structure designed in 1932 by Bergstrom, Bennett & Haskell. And the main entry to the cinemas opens directly onto the ornate domed facade of the old post office building.
These gestures give the project a strong visual connection to the city’s historical fabric. What is more, the ratio of public space to shops is unusually generous. Lined with tables, benches and pushcarts selling tourist trinkets, Garfield Promenade is designed at the scale of a real, traditional plaza. And the entry court that leads to the cinemas, framed by two grand staircases, is clearly modeled on the forecourts of the old Hollywood theaters--cozy public rooms that buzzed with social activity. Smaller, pedestrian walkways--some partially covered--crisscross the complex, linking it to the surrounding street grid.
But this clearly is not St. Mark’s Square. The project’s gargantuan form is anchored by a department store at one end--in this case, Macy’s--and a parking structure at the other. The restaurants and shops are the typical national chains. And the architecture’s faux mission style is as bland as the piped-in music that is virtually impossible to escape. In the end, despite the potted plants and hanging lanterns, you could be standing in virtually any airport terminal in America.
The project’s greatest value, in fact, may be that it’s only a 10-minute walk from Old Town Pasadena. As such, it offers a contrast between two very different development formulas. Beginning in the late 1980s, Old Town underwent a transformation from skid row to vibrant commercial strip. The formula was simple: Invest in the existing historic fabric, make room for both large-and small-scale businesses, and build lots of parking. The result is a genuine and varied urban mix.
Paseo Colorado, by comparison, is a picture of sterility. Safe, sanitized and ultimately manipulative, the development is a product of our new global culture. Its design has less to do with community than with consumption.
Purged of any signs of decay and poverty, lacking in complexity, its aim is to keep us intently focused on the task at hand: shopping. As such, it is a testament to the death of the historic city, not its salvation.
