Guest Opinion | Councilmember Rick Cole | Part Two: Safeguarding Pasadena’s Economic Future

Securing our economic future starts with learning from our past.

Our vital services and community quality of life are at risk (outlined in Part One). It takes $1.5 billion in annual spending to support the City’s current way of doing business. Plus we face $2 billion in deferred maintenance and needed infrastructure modernization.

Unfortunately, the drivers of our local economy have reached the point of diminishing returns.

For decades, Pasadena successfully pursued a strategy of promoting (and even subsidizing) office and retail development. Now remote work and online shopping have accelerated office vacancies and empty storefronts. The scope and quality of City services, including police, fire, parks, libraries and community health are at risk.

It’s time to now focus on sustainable economic development.

That starts with making it easier to build and do business in Pasadena.

Such talk can trigger fears of lowering Pasadena’s notoriously high standards. The concern is legitimate — but misplaced. Pasadema should maintain high standards. But we should also reform the often byzantine processes that add time and costs to commerce — while adding little (and sometimes detracting from) our quality of life and environment.

Our zoning code, for example, is more than 289,000 words. That’s almost 50% longer than the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Much of that verbiage is obsolete, repetitive, contradictory or counterproductive. Simple, clear rules are much easier to enforce than the murky provisions of decades of code-writing that bears little relevance to a 21st Century economy.

Fortunately, some relief is in the works. The new Objective Design Standards for high-density housing projects unanimously adopted by the Planning Commission will both simplify rules and raise the quality of new projects. We need more of that!

But streamlining bureaucracy won’t solve the magnitude of our fiscal challenge. Pasadena needs a bold, long-term strategy for a prosperous 21st century economy.

The City has made a smart bet on bio-medicine, especially near Huntington Hospital. We encourage engineering and tech business development in our commercial districts. As the home of Caltech and a skilled workforce, that makes sense. But while science, engineering and technology are valuable sectors, on their own they can’t support a $1.5 billion operating budget — and the huge capital investment needs to maintain and modernize our aging infrastructure.

We actually have the right strategy right under our nose. The phenomenal success of Old Pasadena’s revival is a nationally-recognized case study in smart economic development. Surprisingly, while other cities have copied our approach, Pasadena has largely ignored the lessons learned.

The key to our economic future is to reclaim our past. The revival of Old Pasadena definitively demonstrated the power of place.

From a virtual ghost town of dive bars, porn shops and antique stores, Old Pasadena became one of the most popular dining, shopping and entertainment districts in Southern California. But that’s not all – it’s been a magnet for thousands of adjacent office jobs and thousands of residents looking to new condo and apartments within walking distance.

When the car was king, Old Pasadena faded into obscurity. American society forgot the timeless lesson of successful cities. It is place making – creating vibrant, walkable, diverse and dynamic urban environments. These are the seedbeds of innovation, entrepreneurship and shared prosperity.

Rediscovering that vital lesson meant reclaiming Old Pasadena by making it again clean, safe and attractive. That commitment continues to pay tax revenue dividends.

In the 21st Century, commerce is remarkably mobile. It’s not just many workers who can operate remotely – many businesses can as well. The idea of industry “clusters” was once proclaimed the secret to civic and regional prosperity. High tech in the Silicon Valley. Entertainment in Hollywood. Banking and finance in NY. Biotech in La Jolla.

There are still workforce advantages for businesses to cluster. But to take a painful example – Hollywood production has dramatically expanded its geographic reach. The largest media production facilities in America are now located in Georgia and Texas.

Industries are evolving so rapidly that picking winners is a fool’s errand.  The most sustainably prosperous places in history (and around the world today) are the ones where people want to be. The rest follows.

Last year, when Wedbush Securities relocated from Downtown LA to Pasadena, they captured the formula for attracting and retaining commerce and jobs.  “The amenities on Lake Avenue are fantastic,” President Gary Wedbush said at the time. “Casual restaurants to really fine dining, fitness centers — it just had everything.”

Placemaking is deliberate focus on the elements that make a place. Wide sidewalks; outdoor dining; greenery, fountains and shade; interesting architecture; doors and windows instead of blank walls; public art; unique local businesses; street vendors. music and food trucks; a mix of uses – and the distinctive touches that reflect the history and diversity of a particular place.

All these contributed to the spectacular comeback of Old Pasadena. All these are envisioned in the various Specific Plans the City has been adopting in recent years for North and South Fair Oaks, Lincoln Avenue, East Colorado and soon North Lake.

But what’s been missing is a citywide commitment to actual investment in bringing those visions to life.

Investments can be small. Interventions as modest as painting the utility boxes in the Playhouse District or creating bulb-outs at intersections to make East Washington Village make pedestrian-friendly have been catalytic.

Why not aggressively pursue making our other commercial corridors as lively, beautiful, safe, clean and attractive as Old Pasadena and South Lake – each in its own unique way, scaled to their surroundings?

There is no magic formula for ensuring Pasadena will continue to prosper in the decades ahead. But hard work and investment pay off – look no further than Old Pasadena and South Lake to see the success of placemaking.

They say the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago – and today. The same goes for investing in our future economic wellbeing. Let’s build a sustainable future by building on the timeless lessons of the past.

Rick Cole is District 2 Councilmember. He previously served as a Councilmember and Mayor during the revitalization of Old Pasadena and later served as Executive Director of the Congress for New Urbanism, as well as City Manager of the cities of Azusa, Ventura and Santa Monica.