Picnic Protest Against Hotel Development Planned for Park Facing City Hall Saturday

Members and supporters of the Civic Center Coalition, a Pasadena preservationist group, have announced plans for an open-to-the-public peaceful protest picnic Saturday morning on parkland across fron Pasadena City Hall to gather support for opposition to the development of a hotel there.

The Coalition plans a family picnic style event starting at 10 a.m. in the southern Sister Cities Garden, complete with “hula hoops, soccer balls, kazoos, & picnic baskets.”

Have fun but seriously demonstrate against the City’s intention to include part of that parkland in a lease/build deal with Kimpton Hotels which would, organizers said, “erect a 6-story hotel with its REAR facing City Hall.”

Coalition members said they will hand out postcards which picnic-goers can fill out and send to Mayor Tornek and City Councilmembers demanding the hotel plan be modified.

The proposed Kimpton Hotel plan will go before the City Council on August 15 at 7 p.m.

That project involves the rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of the existing 48,260-square-foot YWCA building located at 78 N. Marengo Avenue and the addition of an 87,342-square-foot, six-story building on the project site, which together would become a 127,912-square-foot, approximately 179-room, Kimpton Hotel.

The rear of the hotel on the eastern side of the proposed project would extend into an area of what is now a public park. Several trees in the existing Sister Cities Garden would be removed.

The Coalition opposes including the parkland in the development, the overall height and size of the proposed hotel, and the design of the hotel’s flank facing City Hall.

“These parks are part of the original Civic Center plan from 1923, and were designed by the best planning firm in the country at the time,” said Ann Scheid, a member of the Civic Center Coalition.

Her group hopes to have “the green spaces remain and re-landscaped to the standard of the City Hall courtyard.”

“These parks could be an even greater asset than they are now with a more attractive landscaping plan,” Scheid says.

CCC says they are encouraging residents to “join the fun, bring your hula hoops, soccer balls, kazoos, and picnic baskets,” and be informed about updates “about how we can save the parkland, the YWCA, and our Civic Center.”

Pasadena’s Director of Planning and Community Development David Reyes acknowledged the concerns of the preservationists, saying, “This is a really important project, we’ve had fifteen meetings on it. And there are rules in place for it.”

Reyes said the area is subject to the Central District Specific Plan and that the hotel plan, including the green space-related component, complies with the Central District Specific Plan zoning, the General Plan Land Use designation, and The Bennett Plan, the original 1925 document envisioning the Pasadena civic center.