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The Ratkovich Company in the News DOWNTOWN TO GET FACELIFT So Pasadena Planning Makeover for Business Center Pasadena Star News – July 12, 2002 By Jamie McClintock, Correspondent South Pasadena – The city’s downtown business center soon may enjoy a cosmetic face-lift complete with some civic-supported Botox shots thanks to City Hall’s endorsement of a plan to create a new town square. If the development comes to fruition, South Pasadena would join other local cities including Arcadia, Alhambra, Azusa, Covina, La Verne, Monrovia, Pasadena, and Whittier that have invested millions of dollars in capital improvement projects to spruce up their deteriorating downtown shopping districts. “We’re doing some infield development that will bring more business and more people to the area,” said Gay Forbes, assistant city manager for South Pasadena. “It will help businesses there and have more places for residents to shop.” The project is still in preliminary planning stages and is being developed by the Los Angeles-based Ratkovich Co., a firm that specializes in urban infill and historical preservation. The company most recently developed a 45-acre office campus on Freemont Avenue in Alhambra known as The Alhambra. The proposed site of the new South Pasadena town square is a four-block area bounded by Fair Oaks and Fremont avenues, and Mission and Oxley streets. South Pasadena city officials declined to provide a specific dollar amount of the town square project, saying negotiations were ongoing. The city of Covina, however, has participated in a similar redevelopment plan for its downtown business district. Michael A. Marquez, the city’s community development director, said a street landscape project, combined with a renovation and expansion of City Hall, cost Covina about $8.5 million. He said Covina has invested another $500,000 over the past 10 years in a fund-matching project to improve the facades of individual businesses. When project plans in South Pasadena are finalized, however, new establishments will include restaurant and boutique-type stores, according to a spokesperson for The Ratkovich Co. South Pasadena officials said they hope the new town center will blend with the buildings that currently make up the business district. “We are hoping to see low-scale buildings that would compliment the existing historic buildings that are there,” Forbes said. Ideally, the city would like to have restaurants and retail shops on the ground level of the complex, and office or resident spaces on the second level. Some business owners who already have their roots in the South Pasadena business district are looking at the redevelopment effort with a positive eye. Ellen Daigle, who has owned Ellen’s Silk Screening in South Pasadena for about 20 years equates the proposed the proposed town center to a shopping mall. “You have anchor stores, and not too many stores of the same kind,” she said. Daigle said that the project sounds wonderful as long as there is enough parking provided for patrons. Despite the revitalization of the downtown business district, Forbes maintains that the city is not looking to have a shopping area that matches their neighbor big-brother neighbor to the north, Pasadena. “We’re not talking about… a downtown (Old) Pasadena,” she said. “We have a small-town atmosphere here, and we want to replicate that.” ‹‹ back |