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Altadena Chamber Names Monica Hubbard, El Patron as Altadena’s Best for 2014

Chamber of Commerce names the community activist and the popular restaurant as Citizen and Business of the Year

Published on Tuesday, January 27, 2015 | 3:30 pm
 
Altadena's citizen Of the Year Monica Hubbard, and Business Of The Year, El Patron, Owner Alex Cortex

The Altadena Chamber of Commerce has named local activist Monica Hubbard as its 2014 Citizen of the Year. El Patron Mexican Restaurant, a popular eatery with two locations, was named 2014 Business of the Year.

Citizen of the Year Monica Hubbard

Monica Hubbard has spent her career putting disparate things together to make a greater whole. From 1966 through 1999 she conducted choirs in academic, church and community settings. When Caltech first admitted women undergraduates, she taught voice and conducted choirs there from 1972-1999, as well as conducting choirs for public and private schools. She was the national repertoire and standards chair for the American Chorale Directors Association and was instrumental in getting ACDA to have a national women’s honor choir perform at a national convention, as well as working to develop and commission new choral works. She also started the first database of repertoire composed specifically for women’s voices, and repertoire for upper voices by women composers.

After 27 years at Caltech, she left conducting to open a consulting practice for arts and social services nonprofits with a focus on board development and capacity-building. Her clients have included the Pasadena Playhouse, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the AIDS Service Center, and Occidental College. Her foremost tool has been her computer: “Caltech gave me my very first computer,” she said, and she quickly mastered its possibilities in terms of research, communication, and creating databases, and carried this into her consulting work. Along the way, she created “Wired Women,” a weekly email newsletter that covered women’s issues and events in the greater Pasadena area.

But as an Altadena resident, she said she also wanted to connect “the people who were doing positive things” closer to home, and created a second newsletter, the “Altadena Women’s Network.” She also began to work more closely with and cultivated relationships in the Altadena community, serving as a neighborhood watch co-captain, joining the Sheriff’s Community Advisory Committee and serving on the town council’s Public Education Committee. She is a member of multiple community groups, including Altadena Heritage, the Altadena Historical Society, and Friends of the Altadena Libraries, among many others. She is a founding member and/or board member of Invest in PUSD Kids, Pasadena Village, and the Pasadena Educational Foundation. She was also a member of the Altadena Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors from 2007-2009.

More recently, she has been involved in founding two organizations: the Altadena Library Alliance, which recently succeeded in passing Measure A, assuring funding of the Altadena Library District through a special parcel tax for the next ten years; and Neighbors Building a Better Altadena. A group that was started to raise concerns about a Walmart Neighborhood Market opening in Altadena, NBBA is now working on making Altadena’s business districts more “walkable” and art-filled. NBBA models working with other organizations, such as the Altadena Town Council and Chamber of Commerce, to cooperatively make concrete things happen to improve the community.

“I really like connecting people with resources,” Hubbard said. “When I see people do good, I like to help them in any way possible.”

As for being named Citizen of the Year, “I’m surprised and delighted,” Hubbard said. “It’s an honor. When I look at some of the people who received it in the past, it’s a little humbling.”

Business of the Year: El Patron Mexican Restaurant

For a relatively new business — it will be five years old in May — El Patron Mexican Restaurant has already made a big splash in Altadena. Not only has it gotten a reputation for good, hearty food and excellent service — and has opened a second location — but you can count on the restaurant helping out at local events, fundraisers, and other gatherings, giving back to the community that brought it success.

All this in a location that has seen many restaurants come and go over the years. El Patron is here to stay.

Owner-founder Alex Cortes comes from a family in the restaurant business, and always wanted to have a restaurant of his own. He was working for an Irwindale-based candy distributor ten years ago when he opened his first restaurant with his brother at an Irwindale location. They sold that business after a year, and Cortes continued working for the candy distributor. When his employer announced it was moving to El Segundo, farther from home, Cortes began looking for another opportunity to open his own restaurant. An amateur boxer, Cortes said that he went to his gym one evening, found it closed, and decided to drive around a bit in the late night. In Altadena, he came across a “For Rent” sign at a wedge-shaped Googie-style building almost on the corner of Lake Avenue and Altadena Drive, a site where many restaurants were born and died over the years.

He called the landlord, took a tour of the building, and decided it was what he was looking for. While he and his wife Margarita had saved money for a down-payment on a home, she encouraged him to invest their money in the restaurant he always wanted. Cortes said that, when the landlord called to offer him the building, they were in the hospital, with Margarita in labor. That day, his son was born, and the next day, he had a restaurant.

Cortes started out with just basic restaurant equipment and skeleton crew, but “the community gave us a good welcome,” he said. The restaurant’s kitchen is still being upgraded and improved, but the business was good enough that “most of my family works here,” Cortes said — including two brothers and two sisters.

While the original location at 2555 N. Lake Avenue is a full sit-down restaurant, they opened another location at Lincoln Crossing, 2234 Lincoln Avenue, that emphasizes take-out Mexican food. El Patron has also branched out to help the community in many ways. Once a month, the restaurant holds a fundraiser where 15 percent of the proceeds go to a local organization.

Beneficiaries have included the Altadena Relay for Life, the Altadena Library Alliance, and the St. Mark’s Church Haiti fund.

El Patron’s pop-up tent also shows up at community events, including the Farnsworth Park summer concert series, the Altadena Community Center 10th Anniversary Celebration, the North Lake Pole Holiday Festival and Sidewalk Sale, and it has been part of last year’s “Taste of Altadena” at the Chamber of Commerce annual meeting.

“I feel good — it’s exciting,” Cortes said about the Chamber’s honor. “I wasn’t expecting to be Business of the Year. It’s an accomplishment for me and my team.”

El Patron Mexican Restaurant and Monica Hubbard will be honored at the Altadena Chamber’s installation of officers and “Taste of Altadena” dinner at the Altadena Town & Country Club on Feb. 6, 2015.

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