Dear neighbors:

The West Pasadena Residents' Association encourages you to attend a follow-up workshop regarding the stub of the 710 Freeway:

Saturday, November 8

9 a.m. - 12 p.m.

Maranatha High School

Hall of Administration

300 W. Green St.

(Please note the new location on the Maranatha Campus, Hall of Administration, 300 W. Green St. Free parking is available in the lot off of Green St. in front of the building entrance.)

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 attended the first visioning workshop held on October 25, as well as the upcoming workshop to be held this Saturday, November 8. This CPP workshop will again be led by architect and urbanist Stefanos Polyzoides. Before participants go to the work tables they will be given valuable information to use in shaping their ideas:

• Stefanos Polyzoides will be presenting a range of Pasadena- derived block development options in the low to high development range.

• Transportation Engineer Ian Lockwood will present drawings of two transportation options: ditch filled, ditch maintained.  

• New urbanist Civil Engineer Paul Crabtree will elaborate on engineering considerations in transforming the stub land.

• Landscape Architect Nord Eriksson will enumerate optional for park structures-various land and hardscape possibilities. 

• Economic Consultant Amitabh Barthakur will lay out the economics of land use in the stub area, a prerequisite for the ensuing citizen table work on development forms for the stub land.

These workshops are a first step in transforming the stub land, an opportunity to create a place of beauty and value for the City of Pasadena. At the conclusion of the workshops the groundwork will have been laid for creating a draft Master plan for that area. The CPP will work with the City of Pasadena to determine the most constructive way of using this material going forward. 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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