Design Commission OKs 133-Unit Affordable Housing Project Over Neighborhood Opposition

The Pasadena Design Commission voted Tuesday night to approve a 133-unit, 100 percent affordable housing project at 600 N. Rosemead Blvd. over the objections of dozens of nearby residents who packed a recreation center meeting room to raise concerns about parking, building scale, and wildfire evacuation safety.

The Commission, meeting in special session at Robinson Park Recreation Center, voted to approve the application for consolidated design review subject to conditions of approval as amended during the hearing. The motion was made by Vice Chair Marie-Claude Fares, who described herself as reluctant, and seconded by Commissioner Rob Tyler, who also said “reluctantly.” The motion passed.

“The Design Commission’s authority in this matter is very limited,” Chair Delgado said at the opening of the hearing. “The Commission serves as the City’s architectural review board and can solely review, comment on, recommend, and require physical changes to projects involving their aesthetic quality, their architectural and landscaping characteristics.”

The project, proposed by applicant Elysian Housing, LLC, would convert an existing two-story, 56,828-square-foot office building into 51 residential units and construct a new five-story, 110,593-square-foot building with 82 units on the 93,759-square-foot site on the east side of Rosemead Boulevard, between Green Hill Road and Sierra Madre Avenue. Of the 133 total units, 131 would be affordable and two would be manager units. The project includes 55 parking spaces.

The project is utilizing state density bonus law, which applies to projects proposing 100 percent affordable housing that are located within a half mile of a major transit stop. Under City zoning, the site could accommodate up to 103 units. The state density bonus law removes the maximum density cap, allows building heights up to 71 feet instead of the local limit of 38 feet, and eliminates any minimum parking requirement. The proposed building would be 68 feet tall. The City’s zoning code would have required 215 parking spaces.

The Commission received more than 50 letters about the project and heard from more than two dozen speakers during public comment. Opponents focused primarily on the reduction in parking from the zoning-required 215 spaces to 55 spaces, the building’s height and scale relative to the surrounding neighborhood, and concerns about whether Rosemead Boulevard could serve as an adequate evacuation route in the event of a wildfire.

The applicant representative, who identified himself as Greg Comanor of Elysian Housing, said the project prioritizes income-qualifying Eaton Fire victims and Pasadena residents, and serves households earning up to approximately $120,000 depending on household size. He noted that a nearby comparable project, Rosetown Apartments at 170 Halsted, had 48 units and was 100 percent occupied before it was completed, with a significant waiting list, demonstrating demand for affordable housing on the east side of the City.

Residents from the Lower Hastings Ranch neighborhood, whose homes abut the project site to the east, raised objections about the project’s height, rooftop mechanical noise, slope stability, and the transit distance measurement used to qualify the project for state density bonus. Several speakers disputed whether the nearest bus stops are genuinely within a half mile of the site as required by state law. City staff said state law requires the measurement to be taken in a straight line, not along pedestrian paths, and that the site falls within a half mile of two qualifying major transit stops at the intersections of Foothill Boulevard and Sierra Madre Villa Avenue and Foothill Boulevard and Rosemead Boulevard.

During Commission deliberations, Commissioner Tyler asked whether the City’s Department of Transportation had weighed in on the evacuation route concerns. A Department of Transportation representative said the City has an evacuation plan developed by the fire department, which reviewed the project. Chair Delgado noted that the fire department’s requirements are among the project’s 86 conditions of approval.

Commissioner Fares noted that the subcommittee that had been working with the applicant since January would continue to monitor the project through the plan check process, given that some design details — including the building lighting plan and certain facade details — were not fully resolved at the time of the hearing.

“This is the fourth project of this scale,” Delgado said, “and there are two more coming that we know that are coming down the pike.”

Staff said the next Design Commission meeting is scheduled for April 28 at the same location to hear a project at 2155 East Colorado Blvd. The City’s new objective design standards take effect May 4.