South Pasadena Hopes to Create Town Square

With its still-working corner soda fountain, historic Craftsman homes and “festival of balloons” parade on the Fourth of July, South Pasadena has always been a quaint, cozy suburb.

But one thing has always been missing from the city snuggled at the western end of the San Gabriel Valley: a town square.

Plans are underway, however, to transform land in downtown South Pasadena into a sort of central piazza.

The district, bounded by Fair Oaks Avenue, Mission Street, Mound Avenue and Oxley Street, was included in a larger redevelopment zone created in the late 1970s.

Since then, the city of 25,000 has floated a number of proposals for the district--including one that would have involved razing the entire area and another that would have built a 150-room hotel on the site. But none has taken off.

City officials hope that, this time, things will be different.

They have hired the Ratkovich Co., a Los Angeles-based urban design firm. With Ratkovich’s “reputation for urban renewal, we are hoping that we can get something going here,” said Mayor Harry Knapp.

The Ratkovich Co. envisions transforming the area, now a series of open-air parking lots bordered by different styles and types of businesses, into something akin to the One Colorado development in Old Pasadena.

But don’t expect South Pasadena to become a teeming destination for out-of-towners.

“This is a development which is intended to primarily serve the citizens of South Pasadena, not a regional attraction like Old Pasadena,” said Wayne Ratkovich. “It will be focused on South Pasadena.” The new area, he said, will be “the village center for South Pasadena ... a kind of core and heart to the city.”

The project is in the first of three phases. Still to come are a feasibility analysis and a final plan. The project would be financed by bond money and tax revenue from the redevelopment area.

One goal is to safeguard the city’s past, and historic structures within the redevelopment zone would be preserved or restored. Eminent domain--the government condemnation of private property for the public good--will not be used, Knapp said. Businesses would decide whether to participate in the redevelopment.

“We are going to leave as many of the existing structures as possible,” Ratkovich said, “and focus on areas where open space can be converted to a village or courtyard area.”

The Ratkovich Co. hopes that the village would include retail, residential and office spaces. “It would be like the corner of Main and Main,” said Ratkovich Vice President Clare De Briere. “Something that would be a community meeting place and would provide services and product that aren’t there now: things like restaurants, a men’s haberdashery, an upgraded movie theater. A great bookstore.”

The developers said they would listen carefully to the needs and expectations of the city.

At a June meeting, City Council members expressed concerns about the density of the development and the kind of parking proposed by the company. A four-level structure with three levels above ground, one councilman said, was not in keeping with the small-town character of South Pasadena.