City Council Vote Tonight on Kimpton Hotel Project Likely Won’t Quell Controversy

Tonight’s Pasadena City Council vote considering approval of the final, years-in-the-making Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for a proposed Kimpton Hotel across from City Hall in Pasadena’s Civic Center could set the stage for a legal showdown between the city and preservationists.

The development project pits a small but determined group of preservationists against the city’s plans for a 179-room hotel in and adjacent to a restored version of the historic 1927 Julia Morgan-designed YWCA building at 78 North Marengo Avenue, between Union and Holly Streets.

In fact, two members of the group — which calls itself the Civic Center Coalition (CCC) — said Friday that they are prepared to sue the city to stop the development should the final EIR be approved tonight, as they believe it will.

“Unless the City Council does something unexpected, I guess that’s probably the only course that can happen,” said preservationist Ann Scheid, CCC member and curator of the Greene and Greene Archives for the Gamble House.

According to Scheid, the group’s legal counsel has already submitted documents to both the Planning Commission and the City Council to oppose the project on grounds that it violates the California Environmental Quality Act (SEQA).

Scheid emphasized, however, that a suit has not been filed yet.

“We’re hoping that the Council will take (our) environmental questions seriously, and takes the process seriously, along with all of the questions that have been raised,” she said.

At the heart of the matter, the historic YWCA building was essentially abandoned and neglected after the YWCA left in 1997. The City ultimately bought the vacant property through eminent domain in April, 2012 for $8.3 million.

Following a Request for Proposals which was issued in July 2012 for concepts to restore the YWCA building and preserve it, the City assembled an internal advisory panel to review the submissions and assist the City in selecting an optimal resolution.

The panel included a number of city officials from a variety of city departments along with one non-government representative. In a nod to the historical significance of both the YWCA building and the city’s civic center, Sue Mossman of Pasadena Heritage was asked to sit on the panel.

As the name implied, the group would have no decision-making authority, and the decision reached during those meetings would be publicly revealed at subsequent City Council meetings.

The result of the panel’s deliberations was selection of a proposal by Kimpton Hotels to lease the property, restore the YWCA building with an adaptive reuse plan and to build out an abutting hotel to the east.

The City executed an Exclusive Negotiation Agreement between the City and the hotel chain, which was signed by the staff on May 1, 2013, and then entered into specific negotiations in regards to plans for the property.

According to a City Planning report, the 48,260-square-foot YWCA building will be fully rehabilitated by Kimpton, which will also add an additional 87,342-square-foot, six-story building at the location to create a new 127,912-square-foot, 60-foot high hotel.

CCC members have expressed concerns over what they call “secret meetings” between the City and Kimpton, as well as their claim that the City refuses to reveal the names of other competitors for the development site.

“Confidential negotiations are allowed to protect City finances and negotiating ability,” according to Pasadena Public Information Officer William Boyer.

In addition, said Boyer, “Each [Request for Proposal] is different, there is no ‘common practice,’ but general paths that are followed. The City issues RFPs all the time for variety of goods and services and projects. Most are simply opened and announced on the date specified to anyone who is there when bids are received and opened.”

“In some instances, such as with the YWCA project,” Boyer added, “where a long-term lease and other large project details and agreements need to be negotiated, the negotiation is done in confidence in order to give the City appropriate protections of its fiscal resources and negotiating strategy, especially if it has to stop contract negotiations with one responder to the RFP and begin anew with another, for whatever reason.

“Ultimately,’ said Boyer, “the project, the lease and contract terms, budget, project details, staff recommendations, a staff report and other information about the other project responses and bids are all taken before Council in full disclosure with opportunity for public comment and public participation.”

Following the negotiations, the city agreed to a “long-term lease” of the land to the Kimpton for the development.

According to City Manager Steve Mermell, the city also held a series of at least 15 meetings beginning in June of 2012 through March 9 of this year, to discuss the project.

Since then, much of the CCC’s concern is over the City’s designation of a portion the leased property proposal as “surplus property,” the possible destruction of trees and parkland in the area directly across from City Hall in an area designated as the “Sister Cities Garden,” and the footprint of the new hotel design which would place the “rear end” of the building facing City Hall.

“These parks are a part of the original civic center plan from 1923, which was designed by the best planning firm in the country at the time and these are what are being essentially given away to the developer, free,” said Scheid.

“As we understand it, there’s no cost to the developer for this land, what they would be paying really is the cost of the purchase by the City of the YWCA, which happened a few years ago to save it from destruction.”

“I would like to see the parks remain and be re-landscaped to the standards of the city hall courtyard,” Scheid continued. “And I would like to see the YWCA preserved and have the building completed, it’s only an L shaped building now and there are drawings that show the building completed with a courtyard in the center, with a height limit of no more than four stories. Six stories in this location is just really not appropriate, even though the code says you can do it.”

Local activist and CCC member Marsha Rood also claims that then-Assistant City Manager Steve Mermell told a City Planning Commission meeting in March of 2105 that “the open space parkland to the east of the YWCA was ‘thrown in to sweeten the deal.’”

Many of the CCC’s contentions and arguments center around a document known as the “Bennett Plan.” Opponents of the Kimpton hotel project argue the project would violate the vision of the Plan, which the City agreed in staff documents is an “important, lasting vision for … Pasadena.”

In 1923, Pasadena voters passed a bond measure to finance the construction of a civic center that was written into a larger blueprint for the city’s overall development known as the “Bennett Plan.”

In an email sent Saturday, CCC member Jonathan Edewards, president of the Downtown Pasadena Neighborhood Association, said “The citizens of Pasadena voted in 1923 for the bond measure that purchased the land upon which to build the Civic Center, including the public open spaces that form the garden-like setting of City Hall. Subsequent plans … cannot replace the plan that the voters approved that was published in the newspaper in 1923 as an exhibit describing what the citizens wanted and were told they were getting.”

A city review of the matter suggests the Bennett Plan was intended more as a guideline than as a strict planning document from which there could be no variation.

As Mayor Tornek commented recently, “These kinds of plans get changed and updated all the time.”

CCC member Jonathan Edewards, president of the Downtown Pasadena Neighborhood Association, emphasizes that his group of preservationists is not completely opposed to the concept of building a hotel. They believe that the restoration of the YWCA building is important, but disagree with the Planning Department as to its execution.

Edewards will present an alternative plan to the Council for them to consider instead of the proposed EIR on Monday.

The CCC, according to their website and video, will ask the City Council to approve plan “Alternative 2E,” a smaller project at only 107 rooms which preserves the gardens, the Sister City trees, and presents what they believe is far more aesthestically pleasing design for the rear of the building towards City Hall.

“‘Alternative 2E’ is the alternative that is the environmentally superior alternative,” said Edewards.

City Planning Director David Reyes recently acknowledged the concern 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.”

The area is subject to the Central District Specific Plan, according to Reyes, and so far, the hotel plan, including the green space, complies with the Central District Specific Plan zoning, the General Plan Land Use designation, and The Bennett Plan but, says Reyes, there is no actual plan in place for what he referred as the North Parcel, which would include the Kimpton/YWCA project.

“What we hope to have, with whatever the planning commission or ultimately, the City Council decides, is symmetry, so that both parcels on either side of (Holly) have some symmetry in terms of landscaping and green space. In other words, whatever footprint is eventually built out by the Kimpton project should be matched by the southern parcel which holds Centennial Park,” said Reyes.

Meanwhile, activist Rood, a former city development official, would like the city to take a different tack this time.

“I would like them to re-convene a civic center implementation task force,” said Rood. “I established that in 1998. So it’s been updated a couple times in 2003 and in 2007. That is a group that represents the community, business, land owners and specific communities and commissions that this project has to go through.”