Guest Opinion | Councilmember-Elect Rick Cole: Is Pasadena Penny Wise and Pound Foolish About Investing in its Neglected Planning Areas?

On Monday, our City Council unanimously approved the Lamanda Park Specific Plan covering part of east Pasadena (roughly between Foothill and Colorado Boulevards on the north and south and Kinneloa and Roosevelt Avenues on the east and west). Kudos to Councilmember Gene Masuda for bringing attention to a neglected area of his district.

The Council’s approval endorsed four of the five recommendations made by the Planning Commission (which I’m a member of until I take my seat on the Council next month).

What was the only proposal the City Council didn’t approve?

The request was exceedingly modest, but vitally important: that the Council set aside $50,000 for a pilot project to actually implement the Specific Plan within the first year.

To the average resident $50,000 sounds like a lot of money – and it is. But compared to what the City spends on consultants, plans and studies, $50,000 is a rounding error in the City’s $1 billion annual budget. Back in 2017, the City authorized $5.78 million just for consulting contracts for the City’s eight Specific Plans. That means the City Council balked at committing less than 1% of the cost of producing these grand plans to the gritty work of making them come to life.

Don’t get me wrong – I believe in planning or I wouldn’t be serving on the Planning Commission. But I believe the purpose of investing millions of dollars into planning is not to make great plans – it’s to make great places.

To be fair, the Council discussed the need to seriously consider public investment — sometime in the future. But when asked about what comes next, the staff talked mostly about finding money to fund more studies.

It isn’t just money for consultants that the City has poured into these elegant plans. The City invested hundreds, if not thousands, of staff hours – not to mention the time of hundreds of citizens who attended workshops and hearings over the last seven years. Yet at the end of the day, the staff and elected officials balk at putting our money where our plans are — relying instead on the hope of “private investment” to jumpstart improvements.

Have we forgotten that public investment has been the foundation for private investment in our city’s most successful districts? South Lake has been a durable regional retail destination because of the creation of a remarkable public-private partnership to provide shared parking for the stores. The Playhouse District’s revival was kicked off by another creative public-private partnership that put the historic theater back into operation as the centerpiece of additional public investment, including a public paseo that lured a movie theater as well as the addition of the first park in Downtown in decades.

The most dramatic example of successful public investment was the City’s massive commitment to revitalize Old Pasadena. The original three parking structures alone represented $93 million in City investment (in today’s dollars) to create the conditions for private investment to thrive. Dedicating 100% of parking meter revenue to area security, maintenance and improvements has been a permanent source of reinvestment in the area’s continuing vitality.

The City also supported the creation of Business Improvement Districts for South Lake, the Playhouse District and Old Pasadena, public mechanisms for maintaining, marketing and enhancing business conditions in those districts.

Councilmembers are right about the need for private investment. But it’s short-sighted not to see the enormous return on investment when the City invests in struggling parts of our city to make them safer, cleaner and more attractive. Public investment not only spurs private investment, it improves livability for surrounding neighborhoods as well.

Smart businesspeople don’t fixate on the initial cost of investing – they focus on the expected returns. Smart cities do the same! Pasadena’s public investments in South Lake, Playhouse District and Old Pasadena are a major source of the revenues that support Pasadena’s billion dollar budget. Those districts employ thousands of local residents and generate countless indirect community benefits.

Given the titanic changes sweeping the office and retail industries, Pasadena should be thinking beyond our existing economic engines. We need to create expanded business-friendly environments for the economy of the future.

Lamanda Park, North Fair Oaks, Lincoln Avenue, and North Lake all have great potential — not to compete with our successful Downtown, but to attract lower-scale neighborhood business services and start-up entrepreneurial ventures.

That’s why my Planning Commission colleagues and I unanimously pushed for that $50,000 “pilot” – to test small-scale investments in underinvested parts of our city to fulfill the glowing promises made in the plans we’re adopting.

It’s not too late. This spring, the City will update its $1.2 billion Capital Improvement Program.  Let’s see if $50,000 can be found to make the millions spent on plans actually produce results in our lifetimes. As a Councilmember, I’ll push to plant the seeds for Pasadena’s future prosperity by expanding attractive places to work, shop, dine and visit.

My grandmother always reminded me, “If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.” I’d add: if a costly plan is worth adopting, it’s worth investing in its success.

Rick Cole served as Mayor and Councilmember during the revitalization of Old Pasadena and will return to the Council next month, representing District 2.