Makeover of a Legendary Boulevard Gets Into Gear

Martie MacKidd remembers the cruisin’ years of her youth in the 1960s, when exuberant teenagers hanging out of the windows of muscle cars tooled down Whittier Boulevard while downing cherry Cokes and gravy-smothered fries from Bob’s Big Boy.

“It was good, clean fun,” chuckled 57-year-old MacKidd, now an estate-planning attorney whose office overlooks the same street where she spent so many giddy hours. “It turned Whittier Boulevard into a parking lot.”

Decades later, another driving force is about to take over the thoroughfare that in 1965 spawned the Top 40 radio tune “Whittier Blvd.” Whittier city leaders are intent on redeveloping the long-neglected strip stuck in the Jiffy Pop era with snazzy new buildings, art-decorated walkways and new apartments and condos.

They even want traffic back -- but this time around, they’d like pedestrian traffic.

“Time has overtaken Whittier Boulevard,” said Jeff Collier, the city’s director of community development. “Through the years it has evolved slowly, and it hasn’t changed a lot.”

The weekend cruising ritual spanned more than a decade, drawing youths from Downey, Covina, Fullerton and beyond.

During daylight hours, the boulevard, which also stretches west to East Los Angeles and east into Orange County, was the town’s busy commercial corridor, with office buildings, doctors’ offices, restaurants and car dealerships.

But business owners complained about the cruising ruckus and the mess brought on by the weekly onslaught of teenagers. Whittier police finally cracked down by extinguishing the broad thoroughfare’s bright street lights and setting up barricades on Friday and Saturday nights.

By the late 1970s, the cruisers had headed elsewhere. Over the years, the boulevard became a mishmash of clashing architectural styles, cluttered signage, tired storefronts and unrelieved expanses of concrete.

Following communities such as Pasadena, Glendale and San Gabriel, the Whittier City Council unanimously approved a revitalization plan June 21 that imposes strict design standards on new construction and seeks to remake its commercial district into a pedestrian-friendly venue.

In Whittier, the key element clears the way for vacant or underutilized commercial land to be used for high-density housing.

If people live in the area, the council reasoned, they will walk, shop and spend leisure time there, returning an allure and vitality to what is now a busy but sterile streetscape. The plan also addresses a dire need in the city for more housing.

Longtime resident Bill Church, 50, a design engineer for Northrop Grumman, is among the supporters. “If you can get some more housing in here, you inject some life and money into the neighborhood,” he said. “They’re going to spend money within the community.”

Expectations are high. “The business community is salivating about the good things that can come of this,” said Joseph Price, president of the 700-member Whittier Area Chamber of Commerce. “Basically what we hope is that people who are driving through will say, ‘Wow, this looks nice -- I think I’ll come back here’ because it’s inviting.”

The plan, which will play out over the next two decades, envisions six distinct districts along the boulevard’s seven-mile Whittier portion, stretching from the 605 Freeway east to La Habra. The city gateway area near the freeway will be a mix of residential and commercial uses, leading into a workplace district of office and light-manufacturing buildings.

Two other zones, placed like bookends around an auto dealership and car service district, will provide retail shopping. The east, previously designated commercial, will be for housing.

The plan controls myriad details, including design features such as signs, parking, roof slope and even the width of porches. Benches, fountains, tile work, sculptures and artistic street lamps will be built into projects and public spaces.

“A lot of it is stylistic. A lot of it is dressing up,” said Councilman Bob Henderson. “Residential will be accentuated by large trees and setbacks” of buildings from the street. “There will be less clutter for the car dealers, with slender palm trees so their wares and signs won’t be obscured.”

The estimated cost of $2 million a mile for public improvements will come largely from taxes generated within the boulevard’s existing redevelopment zone.

Founded by Quakers in 1887, Whittier was first known as a sleepy farm town of walnut and citrus groves. After World War II, many families were attracted to the city as a semi-rural bedroom community for Los Angeles.

The town boasts diverse historical roots. Pio Pico, the last Mexico-appointed governor of California, made his home there, and his adobe still stands. Whittier was the stamping ground of young Richard Nixon, whose parents owned a grocery store on Whittier Boulevard.

Starting in the 1950s, two new shopping centers -- the first for miles around -- propelled Whittier Boulevard toward fame as a place to hang out. “Whittier Blvd.” by Thee Midniters became a cruising anthem and shared top-10 status on then-rock ‘n’ roll station KRLA’s charts with the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.”

Although the 2005 vision for the boulevard received broad support from city business interests as the best way to fix its stuck-in-time image, not everyone in town is pleased.

Regina Phelan, 85, a lifelong resident of Whittier and its environs, complains that the boulevard’s last vestige of character disappeared when the ornate Whittier Theatre, damaged in the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake, was razed in 1991.

“On the ceiling were clouds, and the clouds moved,” she recalled. “We would walk to the theater when I was young, about 10 blocks. People just don’t do that anymore.”

She lamented another change. “Whittier had mainly independent shops, and now we have a lot of absentee owners,” she said.

Attorney MacKidd likes the idea of an overhaul but also sees drawbacks. Her office building has absentee landlords and “looks terrible because they don’t care.” She has been unable to find better quarters and fears that the new plan won’t adequately address that need.

“I think it’s a mistake to put residential along Whittier Boulevard,” she added. “People will go for it. But it will just further congest traffic.”

City officials said the housing component appears to be the easiest to address, and they have already begun negotiating with developers interested in “in-fill” property along the boulevard.

“There’s a lot of history here,” city official Collier said. “We’re excited about the next chapter in the life of this boulevard.”