Formal Policy for Renaming City Streets Under Consideration

Pasadena’s City Council is exploring a formal policy to address public requests for renaming streets – an issue that often generates significant community interest.

Kris Markarian, the City’s Acting Director of Public Works, outlined the proposal in a memorandum to the Legislative Policy Committee ahead of its meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 1. The move comes as the City is faced with occasional but impactful street renaming requests.

“Establishing a formal policy would create a set of rules from which the City can make case-by-case decisions on street renaming requests,” Markarian said.

Currently, Pasadena’s municipal code provides a structure for naming new streets but is silent on renaming existing ones. According to the memo, the City has changed four street names in the past 30 years: Thurgood Marshall Drive (1993), Kinneloa Avenue (2010), Plotkin Alley (2010), and John K. Van De Kamp Bridge (2017).

The proposed policy would likely include a processing workflow, evaluation criteria, and an implementation plan. Officials reviewed similar policies from Beverly Hills, Burbank, Glendale, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Santa Ana to inform their approach, and found that many cities have a process that includes a request initiated by a community member or organization, followed by a petition signed by affected property owners. Public hearings and final approval by the City Council are typically part of the process.

Evaluation criteria often prohibit duplicate or confusing names and generally disallow honoring living individuals or commercial businesses. Names with historical or cultural significance are given more weight in many jurisdictions.

Some cities, like Santa Ana and Beverly Hills, have adopted honorary street naming policies as an alternative. These add small signs near official street signs without changing property addresses, though this approach is not currently proposed for Pasadena.

After initial discussions on Tuesday, the Department of Public Works plans to return to the Legislative Policy Committee with a draft on the street renaming policy incorporating feedback from this meeting.