Commission Weighs Design of Six-Story Hotel Building to be Built on East Colorado Boulevard

The Design Commission will consider on Tuesday the proposed design for a six-story hotel building to be built at 550-566 E. Colorado Blvd.

The site was originally intended for the construction of a five-story medical office building that would have been home to Crown City Medical Plaza. That concept was approved in April 2015.

But in September 2020, the applicant Welcome Pasadena, LLC, requested that the site be used instead for the construction of a six-story hotel with ground-level commercial space.

The design is a substantially different design than was previously approved.

In October last year, the Planning Commission approved a conditional use permit to allow the site to be used for hotel operations.

The proposed 109,231 square foot, 85-foot tall hotel includes 195 rooms, 6,000 square foot of dining and bar area, 1,050 square foot of meeting rooms, 2,840 square foot roof terrace, and 5,000 square foot of ground floor retail space.

The project involves the construction of 102 total parking spaces with as many as 16 on-site and no less than 86 off-site parking spaces at an adjacent existing parking structure.

The commission provided preliminary feedback on the design in its meeting last June.

It recommended further study on the location of the hotel’s entrance from the street to address the hotel’s street presence and avoid confusion with the current entrance location at the bar as well as to study refinements or further differentiation of the east facade to have a unique character from the north facade, among others.

The upcoming meeting of the Design Commission will take place on January 11 at 4:30 p.m.