Sierra Madre Looks to Past as It Invests in Downtown’s Future

Sierra Madre has always been considered a bit of a Southern California anomaly -- an old-fashioned town surrounded by suburbia, a place devoid of stoplights and other signs of modernity.

There is a Starbucks in town -- but here barristas greet customers by name.

So when the City Council considered how to spruce up the civic center and woo shoppers away from nearby communities, Sierra Madre used history as its guidebook. To prepare for its future, Sierra Madre looked to its past.

A $1-million renovation to Sierra Madre’s downtown, centered on the intersection of Sierra Madre Boulevard and Baldwin Avenue, has been getting rave reviews from business owners and customers -- in part because it reflects the city’s personality.

“It was always quaint,” said Karen Keegan, owner of Savor the Flavor, a specialty food store facing the intersection. “Now, it’s charming and quaint. It feels like going back in time, with class.”

A million dollars might not buy much for most city centers. But in Sierra Madre -- all 2.93 square miles of it -- the transformation has been remarkable.

Fifty new traffic lamps along Sierra Madre Boulevard, with their Doric column bases, recall the lanterns that illuminated the city in the 1910s and ‘20s. Custom-designed benches and trash cans, crafted of wood and wrought iron, feature a delicate pattern of leafs and flowers.

The added “bow-outs” -- concrete planters butting out of the sidewalks -- feature native plants and the same types of pepper and sycamore trees planted throughout Sierra Madre.

Although an outsider might suggest that Sierra Madre exuded charm even before its transformation, Mayor Doug Hayes, a 30-year resident, said there had been a worry that the downtown district lacked appeal.

“It was looking pretty stodgy,” he said. “It didn’t have much personality to it.”

The “beautification,” Hayes said, “has that old-timey feel, which is what we were trying to reach for.”

It also has afforded Sierra Madre a chance to do something decidedly modern: bring more tax dollars to the city by driving people into the stores and restaurants that line the civic center.

Sierra Madre, Hayes suggested, offers a refuge from the chaos of mall shopping and the impersonality of online buying.

“There’s a real thrust to go back and to buy things from the community, especially to give to others as gifts,” he said. “It makes it special when it’s from your hometown.”

To build upon that homespun, hometown appeal, the city designed a special holiday wrapping paper and distributed it free to merchants. The paper -- purple with wisteria flowers, the symbol of Sierra Madre -- was introduced at a Dickensian holiday party that the city threw in late November to coincide with the completion of the downtown upgrade.

And it has been a big hit.

“Even though it’s purple, people are coming in, asking for it,” said Savor the Flavor owner Keegan. “We have the red and green, but nine times out of 10, they want the one that says Sierra Madre.”

The wrapping paper, combined with the civic improvements, have helped create “a real sense of place,” said City Manager Tammy Gates. “It’s made it the kind of place where people could park their cars, and get out and walk.... We see people utilizing all the new benches during the week and on the weekends.”

The only setback so far for the new downtown has been the pepper tree controversy: a small brouhaha over the multi-trunked trees chosen for many of the bow-outs. At a recent City Council meeting, some merchants complained that tree branches would hide signs above local businesses. Local papers carried stories about the trunks.

Hayes dismissed the hubbub as just another aspect of small-town life in Sierra Madre, population 10,000. “You can’t blow your nose here without having a controversy,” he said. The city has promised to trim the trees regularly to avoid any problems.

Kim Sperling, an employee at Leonora Moss, a florist and gift shop along Baldwin Avenue, said she likes the changes, pepper trees and all.

“It’s definitely an improvement,” she said. “It lends itself to lingering in the downtown.”

But for Bruce Gill, a retired acting teacher, the city’s subtle changes were perhaps a little too subtle. As he sipped a Starbucks atop a newly added wooden bench, he wondered what all the fuss was about. “It hasn’t changed at all,” he said at first.

But what about the bench he was sitting on, or the newly landscaped bow-out nearby?

Gill acquiesced a bit. “There are little things,” he admitted.

What he appreciated most, Gill said, was the freshly painted crosswalk nearby.