Pasadena Lands a GM Studio and Korean Beauty Powerhouse Olive Young in 48 Hours

Pasadena landed two major corporate openings in 48 hours late last week — a new General Motors design campus on Thursday and the first U.S. store from South Korea’s leading beauty retailer on Friday — and city officials cast the pairing as proof of a deliberate strategy.

The two openings came a day and a few miles apart, and they handed Mayor Victor Gordo a ready talking point.

At the Olive Young opening on Colorado Boulevard, Gordo placed the Korean retailer in the same breath as the institutions the city most likes to name — the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech and Art Center College of Design — and the GM design center.

“Yesterday, just yesterday, we opened the GM Design Center,” he said.

Indeed General Motors officially opened its advanced design studio Thursday, on Sierra Madre Villa Avenue — a 148,000-square-foot campus across three buildings that the company calls the latest chapter in nearly 40 years of GM design work in Southern California.

About 100 people work there, across design, sculpting, fabrication and artisan disciplines. GM marked the day by revealing a pair of electric GMC Hummer X concepts, and announced the more than $71 million campus in 2021.

The Pasadena studio joins GM’s design network in Detroit, Britain and Shanghai, and the company has tied its West Coast presence to talent near Art Center and Caltech. “Southern California isn’t just a place where we work, it’s a place of unfiltered inspiration,” said Bryan Nesbitt, GM’s vice president of global design and an Art Center graduate.

The next day, Olive Young opened its first brick-and-mortar store in the United States, an 8,647-square-foot space at 58 W. Colorado Blvd., and launched a U.S. online store the same morning.

Shoppers lined up around the block, some camping overnight. The company said the store carries about 400 brands; its next U.S. location is set for Westfield Century City in June.

Olive Young’s arrival tracks rising Korean beauty sales in the United States, and the retailer has framed the Pasadena store as part of a broader U.S. push linking its physical stores and online shopping.

At the opening, Gaeun Kwon, the chief executive of Olive Young USA, said the company was “especially grateful to Mayor Victor Gordo and Councilmember Madison for their leadership and support,” and thanked the city’s economic development director, David Klug, for helping make the opening possible.

City officials framed both openings as gains for jobs and retail foot traffic (which spurs sales tax dollars).

Councilmember Tyron Hampton, who chairs the city’s economic development committee, called the store “an anchor location for Old Pasadena” and said it had hired 50 employees, most of them Pasadena residents.

Councilmember Steve Madison, whose district takes in Old Pasadena, said he was “thrilled with this investment.”

Gordo thanked the company executives for “picking Pasadena” and called it “a brand that Pasadena wants to be associated with.”

Olive Young says its next U.S. store will open in June, in Century City.