We Get Letters: 99 Cent Store Development

Mayor Victor Gordo and the Pasadena City Council

Gentlepersons:

The Society of Organic Architects is a member organization representing the various apprentices and followers of the Philosophy of Organic Architecture. This Philosophy was first developed by Frank Furness, adopted by Louis Sullivan, then Frank Lloyd Wright and then hundreds of us. Organic Architecture through publication in Europe in 1910 gave rise to the European Modern movement. All “Modernism” as it is sloppily called in the press is a part of Organic Architecture.

Several people locally have asked our President to weigh in on the proposed condominium development on Villa and Los Robles known generally as the 99 Cent store property, previously, Lucky’s market. First let us state that there is no Architectural merit to the present building. 

When we were first contacted about this project and informed the developer planned on building over 280 units on 2.5 acres, our President quipped “What are they building a Soviet Housing block? After seeing the project renderings, we find we have insulted the general by comparison high design standards of Soviet Housing blocks. This is perhaps the most prison like demeaning design for a exterior of a building we have ever seen. The proposal certainly meets NONE of Pasadena’s “City of Gardens” design ordinances. The Balconies rather than being exciting hopeful places thrust into space, are inset, hidden, dreary, dust and dirt traps. Even a Soviet Apartment Block designer who deals with snow loads is human enough to design a small extended pad of exhilaration. Not so here.

The underlaying zoning for this project allows 30 units a acre or roughly 75 units. State law would normally allow the developer to exceed this by 25% by providing 15% affordable housing. This would were they providing affordable housing get the project to 94 units. Here the developer is proposing you approve three times that amount with NO AFFORDABLE HOUSING. Indeed, the developer is branding their Condominiums as Luxury units in a working-class neighborhood. Exactly the kind of housing not needed or desired by the nearby residents but housing that by its very nature poses a direct economic and social threat to the surrounding neighbors. Pasadena desperately needs decent affordable housing for its working-class citizens. The last thing the city needs or has needed for a decade and a half, is more luxury housing catering to people moving in. Since the developer must ask your permission to achieve their greedy goal number of units don’t you think they should be required ot address the needs of your Citizens?

The Developer has marketed this monstrosity as a “Enclave of Modernism.” An enclave, that is a fortress set apart and distinct from its surroundings, it certainly is. The predominant building forms surrounding this property are one and two story homes and businesses. The very high dense nearby PILGRIM TOWER is generally well known in planning textbooks throughout America as a MISTAKE and is cited often as a incompatible invasive hostile use thrust upon a neighborhood and separate from it. Making the same mistake again nearby hardly seems sane, reasonable, or responsible.

The proposed development except perhaps in the meaning of time is NOT modern and it is an insult to real modern Architects to name it so. Modernism always sees the building as a part of the organic whole of the Earth and region where it is. Modernism takes as its primary ordering functionality. This has often been misunderstood by third rate copyists and real estate speculators to include only the mere animal functions of the human being. Real Modernism includes as a function a PRIMARY Function the uplift of the human soul via the built environment. This structure clearly has none of that.

This development seems to not seriously address its impacts on the surrounding physical environment. There seems to be little attention paid to sewerage, electrical grid, water supply and traffic impacts. The City of Pasadena is already well over maximum design capabilities in all of these areas and in spite of recent heroic expenditures still lags behind in maintenance of these critical infrastructures. Concentrating almost 300 units of housing with 2700-3200 additional car trips per day, additional high usage units for electricity, 2730 additional toilet flushes, and such doesn’t seem like a well thought out proposition. More and more frequently we are seeing UPS and AMAZON trucks park taking up a traffic lane while making deliveries. We can reasonably assume these luxury unit dwellers will be high consumers and that their consumption will lead to near failure of the traffic grid in this area.

Finally, if the last year of the Covid 19 crisis has any lessons for us it is the lessons again of the Spanish Influenza epidemic that saw people leaving the dense crowded cities en Mass and heading for suburbia. One hundred years ago and today the best two ways to spread disease are via dense housing and public transportation. Increasing reliance and normality of either is to have disregard and contempt on Human Life for momentary planning fashion and developer’s temporary profit. Their profits will be shortly spent. The suffering, psychological, social, and medical from this project will go on for one hundred years or more after it is built. Shortly it will be a Ghetto, because that is its design.

Send them back to the drawing board and demand they return with a reasonable project that comports with the already very generous zoning for this area.

Sincerely,

Steven S. Lamb
President, Society of Organic Architects

Got something to say, email Managing Editor André Coleman, at andrec@pasadenanowmagazine.com