Guest Opinion | Julianna Delgado: Invest in Pasadena By Looking Northward

Imagine going to North Lake Avenue not because you have to but because you want to. On Wednesday, May 8th, the Planning Commission will continue studying the North Lake Specific Plan (NLSP) Update that will guide the area’s future. The City’s draft recommendations have been mostly limited to zoning, aimed at managing growth and development of private property. But half measures avail us nothing. An Update that changes zoning entitlements (permitted density, land uses, development standards) but overlooks the public realm, placemaking, and the streetscape itself in terms of urban design will not magically transform an ugly, lifeless traffic corridor into a great street. A limited approach does nothing substantive other than proving to be yet another waste of City resources.

Instead of tinkering with North Lake Avenue—South Lake’s unattractive northern sister—through a narrow zoning exercise, we have an opportunity to explore and propose ways to improve its character and encourage economic growth and vitality. Since the 1920’s, when the City widened sleepy, residential Lake Vineyard Avenue to accommodate the automobile, and zoning demanded commercial-only development, the street scene has steadily declined in terms of goods and services, walkability, and aesthetics. Haphazard, inconsistent, piecemeal growth, with a steady proliferation and mish-mash of drive-thru businesses has not been conducive to creating a great place. To move forward in a positive way, the impacts of Lake Avenue’s initial street widening need to be reversed and coherence restored. But without a vision for doing so and the City’s commitment and investment in transforming North Lake in a holistic way, nothing will change. There is no need then to spend another dime on yet another inconsequential, updated Specific Plan.

The purpose of the Update is to ensure Pasadena’s Specific Plans are consistent with the latest, 2015 version of our General Plan, the result of a citywide effort. Its Land Use Element (chapter) clearly states that the City’s vision for the NLSP is…

…to transform its automobile-oriented character with pockets of commercial and residential uses into a well-designed and attractive corridor supporting multiple travel modes including transit, bicycling, and walking with clusters of distinctive places for shopping, dining, and living. These will serve and be accessible to residents of adjoining neighborhoods….
[Pasadena 2015 General Plan Land Use Element, page 35]

No one willingly strolls for any distance anywhere along North Lake Avenue. People walk and gather along visually-interesting streets where they feel comfortable, safe from crime and traffic, protected by other people and from the elements. They go to Monrovia’s Myrtle Avenue, LA’s Larchmont Village, our own South Lake, or any part of Old Pasadena. North Lake Avenue, on the other hand, is a barren and perilous route, especially to the Metro station, that makes one feel isolated and vulnerable. There is no sense of human scale or enclosure because of poor urban design, a street width out of scale with the height of surrounding buildings, lack of consistent architecture oriented toward the street, and virtually nothing green. There are no shopkeepers or residents to provide needed ‘eyes on the street.’ There is no enjoyment in walking for recreation, health, or discovery due to the growth of auto-oriented destinations, curb cuts that accommodate parking lots and drive-thrus, and little protection from the traffic, noise, and noxious fumes. A poor choice of deciduous street trees does little to enhance the view or protect against the beating sun.

Sadly, the intersection at Lake Avenue and Washington Blvd. once marked a thriving, village-like hub for nearby residents. It had a movie theater, ice cream parlor (now the site of Ralph’s gas station), and shops and eateries along both sides of the street. The western side was lost when the Food for Less strip mall was built with its giant parking lot fronting Lake Avenue.

Conversely, the Central District Specific Plan area that includes Old Pasadena, South Lake, and the Playhouse District, with their “well-designed and attractive” pedestrian-oriented hubs, has benefited greatly from City and business investment. North Lake – like the other parts of Pasadena north of the 210 Freeway – has been woefully neglected and needs help. We must reimagine an area centered around seven lanes of asphalt (wide enough to land a plane), focus on creating a “Great Street” that supports human activity, attracts people to gather and stay, and looks like it belongs in Pasadena. This is the vision consistent with the 2015 General Plan. In calling for transforming North Lake’s character, it also echoes its Mobility Element, and in accordance with California’s Complete Streets Act (AB 1358), says Lake Avenue and Washington Blvd. should be complete streets “that accommodate transit, bicycle, and pedestrian use….[and include] wider sidewalks, public plazas, parks and parklets, bike lanes, and bicycle parking.” (General Plan Policy 36.6 Accessibility.)

The NLSP Update is neither consistent with the General Plan nor furthers the current 2007 Amended Specific Plan. The General Plan also says Lake Avenue should reflect and serve the surrounding neighborhoods, most of which are lovely historic districts with modest bungalows along narrow, tree-lined streets. Instead of bringing them together, however, North Lake divides them like an ugly scar. The Community Design Chapter of the 2007 Amended NLSP, still in effect but which the Update eliminates, calls for bridging the public and private realms by creating a neighborhood gathering place, replacing a “lifeless commercial strip” with a “vital urban village,” “memorable places where one returns as often as one can to reconnect with one’s friends and sense of community” (“Community Design,” 2007 Amended North Lake Specific Plan, p. D-11).

To date, the Update fails to address North Lake’s bleak character. It is not just silent on it but provides no alternative. Equally ineffective is the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) “North Lake Avenue Traffic and Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Plan” – estimated to cost $10 million to install, the same spent on the questionable and unsightly Union Street bikeway. Despite the participation of the Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition and neighborhood groups in outreach efforts, the DOT Plan is a traffic engineer’s answer to an urban design problem. Installed, it will do little to create complete streets or a pedestrian-oriented greenstreet that will reduce the environmental impacts of excessive asphalt and stormwater run-off or make it beautiful. Curiously, it calls for token sidewalk-widening, particularly from Orange Grove Blvd. to Mountain Street, a section flanked by drive-thrus (who walks to a drive-thru?), and bulb-outs and greater zebra-crossings at the Orange Grove/Lake Avenue intersection (who walks to the gas station?).

Ultimately, the Community must decide what it wants. It needs to learn about the possibilities, which the City has never attempted to show.

City planners have looked back at what made streets great before the advent of automobile domination. Jane Jacobs, neo-traditional, and New-Urbanist principles have taught us about form-based codes, walkability, context-sensitive design, and how to repair places that have emphasized cars over community, with unique versions realized all over the country giving us plenty of inspiring examples. Take a look at Downtown Lancaster Blvd., designed by Pasadena firm Moule & Polyzoides; LA County’s complete street improvements for Rosemead Blvd./SR19; the City of LA’s streetscapes for Van Nuys Blvd. in Panorama City and Hollywood Blvd’s Walk of Fame. Or, the form-based specific plans for Downtown Glendale and Whittier; La Jolla Blvd.’s transformation in San Diego; Santa Monica Blvd.’s in West Hollywood; and further afield, Portland’s North and South Park Blocks; Madison Road in Cincinnati; Lower Greenville in Texas, the Downtown Great Streets Master Plan for Austin; New York City’s Streetscapes for Wellness initiative, and so on.

Do we want North Lake Avenue to linger on as a blighted, high-speed car-dominated corridor or be a lively, multi-modal neighborhood core that promotes wellness through walking and biking and a sense of community and delight? The two are incompatible.

If the latter, we have the tools and the talent in Pasadena. We can design in a comprehensive way, a better public realm that through public and private development will provide quality housing and community-serving uses, generate jobs, and result in a healthy return on investment. We can achieve the right formalistic mix of mobility, streetscape, land use, street-oriented architecture, and spaces between buildings, featuring a ground plane punctuated with gathering places, with plazas, courtyards, and village greens. We can differentiate imaginatively between the corridor’s unique segments while reducing its carbon footprint. We can find the means to realize physically a change in North Lake Avenue’s space and scale. We can reduce the width of traffic lanes, eliminate on-street parking (especially in front of drive-thrus), erase center turning lanes, lengthen and widen the medians and repurpose them as community space, and consider countless possibilities – like we have in the privileged Pasadena lands south of the 210.

As first steps, imagine and think creatively about what to include in a comprehensive approach to transforming North Lake Ave: a complete street, greenstreet, streetscape and beautification concept. Call for and craft the needed goals, objectives, and policies in the “Public Realm” section of the NLSP to ensure the transformation goes forward and helps us qualify for outside funding. Make our voices heard at the May 8th Planning Commission Study Session and stand up for North Lake.

Julianna Delgado, MArch, PhD, FAICP

Dr. Delgado was trained as an architect, is a Professor Emerita of Urban and Regional Planning, and Fellow of the American institute of Certified Planners. She serves on the City’s Planning Commission, chairs the Design Commission, and formerly chaired the Transportation Advisory Commission. She is a Past President of the Bungalow Heaven Neighborhood Association and lives within walking distance of North Lake Avenue.