Dear neighbors:

The West Pasadena Residents' Association encourages you to attend a special meeting regarding the stub of the 710 Freeway:

Saturday, October 25

9 a.m. - 12 p.m.

Maranatha High School

169 South Saint John Avenue

(Free parking in garage structure, enter on St. John Ave.)

The Connecting Pasadena Project's (CPP) vision contemplates various connectivity scenarios in the stub area to be worked out by Pasadena residents. For example, a healthful, walkable, mixed used neighborhood, bike and pedestrian paths, parks and ecologically sound buildings. CPP proponents are seeking to create an area with healthy, aesthetic, social and economic advantages for Pasadena.

Ideas for re-envisioning the 710 freeway stub will come from Pasadena citizens who attend the two sequential visioning workshops, to be held on Saturday, October 25 and Saturday, November 8. The CPP workshops will be led by architect and urbanist Stefanos Polyzoides as well as transportation, economic and land use experts who will solicit citizens' ideas on two subjects: During workshop 1, participants will be asked to address the question of what uses could be introduced there to provide economic and social value to Pasadena. During workshop 2 participants will be asked to suggest ideas about what form that development should take in order to create a beautiful new place in the city.

Discussing potential options for the 710 stub, "designing the ditch," will get residents thinking about what that area could be in the future. At the end of the two workshops we will have laid the groundwork for a draft Master Plan that could be included in a Pasadena Preferred Alternative to the Metro 710 tunnel, if deemed appropriate. The CPP's goal is to do what people in Pasadena have talked and wondered about but have never done: design an alternative to the undesirable stub, and create an area of beauty and value for Pasadena. This aesthetically and economically beneficial CPP Vision cannot be realized if Metro builds the SR 710 tunnel.

Background: Fifty years ago, the state seized a large swath of valuable land in Pasadena, demolishing thousands of people's property in order to extend the 710 freeway and connect it to the 210. Unsuccessful in realizing their goal, the State has left Pasadena with the 710 stub, a barren 35 acre area bounded by Union Street to the north, California Street to the south, St. John Avenue to the west and Pasadena Avenue to the east. This empty freeway ditch needlessly divides our city, cutting off the Old Pasadena Business District on the east from the Ambassador Auditorium, Maranatha campus and the rest of West Pasadena.

 

About the CPP initiative: The CPP, a citizen driven initiative, aims to develop a draft Master Plan for this 35 acre strip of land flanking the 710 stub from Union south to California. CPP's goal is to engage our community to determine how best to revitalize and beautify this dead space. The CPP would find a better, more attractive way to manage existing and future traffic than the underused highway stub, for example, an elegant Pasadena boulevard that could become a regular, usable street for Pasadena residents and businesses.

 

WPRA values and supports the work the Connecting Pasadena Project group is doing and encourages all to attend this important meeting and provide input.

 

PLEASE RSVP TO THE EVENT BY CLICKING HERE.

 

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