City Committee to Review Ending Early Council Presentations on Major Projects

Pasadena’s Housing, Homelessness and Planning Committee is scheduled to review a proposal Wednesday, Oct. 14, that would eliminate a procedure allowing a Councilmember or the city’s planning director to request a separate City Council informational presentation on certain major development proposals during the early planning process.

The proposal concerns Pasadena’s Predevelopment Plan Review process, an early consultation in which applicants receive coordinated comments from city departments before pursuing formal development approvals. A report from the Planning and Community Development Department says the process is intended to improve projects before applicants invest heavily in detailed plans. It does not constitute a formal application or an approval or denial of construction.

Under the existing process, a city case manager routes preliminary plans to departments, collects their comments and sends the combined response to an applicant. The applicant may then use the feedback to prepare a formal filing. City staff may also hold internal meetings, and applicants may request a meeting with department representatives to discuss the written comments.

Projects categorized as being of communitywide significance receive additional attention. The existing guidelines cover nonresidential projects, including the nonresidential portion of mixed-use developments, with more than 75,000 square feet of gross floor area and a discretionary action; residential-only projects with more than 75 units if a review is required by the planning director; and other proposals the director determines to be of major importance to Pasadena.

The current rules also direct staff to forward a summary of such projects to City Council members through the City Manager’s Weekly Newsletter within 30 days after staff comments are sent to the applicant. That notification requirement would remain under the proposed guidelines. What would disappear is the provision allowing a Councilmember or the Planning and Community Development Director to request a separate informational presentation at a future City Council meeting.

In explaining the change, staff points to Senate Bill 330, a 2019 state law that limits a city to five public meetings to consider a housing development that meets the applicable objective general plan and zoning standards when its application is deemed complete. Staff says a requested Council presentation about an individual project during preliminary review would count toward that limit.

Instead, planning officials propose giving the Housing, Homelessness and Planning Committee broader informational presentations, as needed, on recently submitted developments across Pasadena. Those updates could include projects of communitywide significance, but because they would address developments generally rather than a single proposal, staff says they would not count against an individual project’s five-meeting limit.

The existing review process was updated in 2024 to make preliminary consultation optional for most multifamily proposals, revise the categories for projects of communitywide significance and change how those projects were brought to the City Council’s attention. In 2025, the City Council amended Zoning Code Section 17.60.040.C to incorporate many of those revisions, according to the report.

The new proposal would amend that same zoning code section and the corresponding administrative guidelines. It would not eliminate the early consultation process itself, change the listed size thresholds for communitywide significance or stop written project summaries from reaching the Council, according to the proposed language accompanying the report.

The committee is scheduled to receive the report and provide direction. If committee members support the changes, staff plans to take the proposed zoning code amendment to the Planning Commission for a recommendation before seeking City Council consideration. The planning director would separately finalize the administrative guidelines, the staff report says.

The Housing, Homelessness and Planning Committee is scheduled to meet at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 14, in the City Council Chamber, Room S249, at Pasadena City Hall, 100 N. Garfield Ave., in Pasadena. For more information call (626) 744-7311 or visit https://www.cityofpasadena.net/commissions/agendas/.