City Council Schedules Several Important Public Hearings for October

Several important issues are headed back to the City Council in October.

On Monday the council is scheduled to conduct a public hearing on the submittal of the Public Housing Agency Five-Year Plan (2020-2025) and the Annual Plan (2020) to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The PHA Five-Year Plan is a planning document which describes the mission of the city and the housing department in serving the housing-related needs of low-income, very low-income, and extremely low-income rental assistance program participants.

The plan outlines the city’s long-range goals and objectives for achieving the mission over the five-year period. The PHA Annual Plan (2020) describes the current operations, assesses housing assistance needs, housing stock conditions, and rental housing subsidy needs of lower-income households for the upcoming fiscal year.

Also that night, the council will conduct a public hearing on the long-vacant Julia Morgan YWCA building on North Marengo Avenue and a vacant lot in Centennial Square, across the street from City Hall, as surplus property.

On Sept. 21, the Planning Commission found the declaration of both sites as surplus property consistent with the city’s General Plan.

“The city of Pasadena is negotiating in good faith with certain developers regarding the disposition and development of the properties at 78 N. Marengo Ave., 255 E. Union Street, 95 N. Garfield Ave. [the Pasadena YWCA building, parking lot and landscaped area adjacent and east of it] and 280 Ramona St. [a landscaped area and dirt lot east of the Pasadena YMCA, now Centennial Place], including rehabilitation of the historic YWCA building.”

The Planning Commission’s support came one day after five developers presented proposals during a Zoom meeting.
Last week, Pasadena Now reported that the original owner is claiming that the city has lost its right to sell the property to a developer because it has gone 10 years without reauthorizing its plans for the location.

There is no meeting on Oct, 12, but on Oct. 19 a public hearing is scheduled on a zoning code amendment aimed at combating mansionization.

The amendment would address the size and compatibility of new construction of single-family homes based on public input, The commission recommended that proposed discretionary review for projects exceeding new construction above 35 percent of the median house size within a 500 foot radius be applied citywide and to historic districts.

The Planning Commission on Wednesday supported a staff recommendation for a zoning code amendment to address mansionization.

Local residents have for years been calling for an end to mansionization. Many times homeowners remodeling their homes creates structures that were out of scale, ill-proportioned, or out of character with its surrounding neighborhood.

Serious discussions about mansionization at the city level began in 2015. when the Planning and Community Development Department held citywide community meetings focused on single-family home neighborhood issues.

Other meetings were also held focusing on Lower Hastings Ranch and on Hillside Overlay District areas, which helped the department learn of neighborhood concerns about mansionization from a wider cross-section of the community.

The meetings led to design guidelines that could eventually cover all other single-family home residential zones in the city.

In 2018, the department submitted a draft of “single-family residential design” guidelines that were the result of those community and consultation meetings. The guidelines were intended to provide enough guidance for homeowners and applicants for new housing construction to ensure that their projects, new or accessory, were appropriate for the surrounding neighborhood.