Guest Opinion | Erika Foy: Pasadena Is Going to Grow. We Still Have to Get It Right.

Lately, I have had the sense that Pasadena is at a crossroads.

Pasadena is being asked to accommodate more housing, more density and larger buildings — often for understandable reasons. At the same time, the city must protect the very qualities that make people love Pasadena: its scale, its neighborhoods, its historic buildings, its mature trees, its mountain views and the small businesses that give different parts of the city their identity.

Residents also expect their city to work. As Pasadena grows, our streets and infrastructure need to keep pace — including making sure new development does not simply push parking and traffic into surrounding neighborhoods.

That tension was hard to miss Tuesday night.

There was Pie ’n Burger — small, familiar and unmistakably Pasadena — with a proposal for a building more than 60 feet tall and roughly 380 feet long rising directly behind it, a scale so large that owner Michael Osborn told commissioners it would dwarf his iconic diner and make it feel “irrelevant.”

That word stayed with me.

As Pasadena grows, how do we make sure the neighborhoods, places, buildings and businesses that carry our history do not become irrelevant in the process?

The challenge is not to preserve everything exactly as it is. Cities change. They have to. But growth should not erase the visual and cultural context that gives a city its identity.

The proposal at 540 South Lake Avenue is for 71 residential units on six assembled parcels stretching between California Boulevard and Granite Drive. Some people have started calling the site the “octopus” because of the unusual way the separate parcels have been assembled into one development site.

Commissioner Srinivas Rao described the proposed building as “one long monolith.”

He went even further:

“It is the kind of buildings that destroy cities.”

State housing laws, density bonuses and changes to our own specific plans mean Pasadena will continue to grow. The question increasingly isn’t whether Pasadena will change. It is how well we manage that change.

The site sits at an important transition between the South Lake commercial district and surrounding residential neighborhoods. Historic Mentor Court is immediately adjacent, and Madison Heights is currently under consideration for landmark status. This is an area where Pasadena’s commercial, residential and historic character come together — and where the scale of new development matters enormously.

These places are not impediments to Pasadena’s future. They are part of what makes Pasadena worth investing in.

What does this particular corner of Pasadena represent, and how should a project of this scale respond to everything that is already there?

This is not a blank canvas. It is an already-developed corner of Pasadena, with existing businesses, historic resources, established neighborhoods and a complicated collection of parcels being assembled to fit a much larger project. Some buildings will be demolished, but the surrounding context remains. The challenge is not simply fitting 71 units onto the site. It is fitting them into a place that already has an identity.

The question should not simply be whether the building meets the rules or whether its mass can be rearranged. It should also be whether the project, taken as a whole, respects the place it is entering.

The public response reinforces that point. Dozens of people showed up for a preliminary consultation — before there was even a vote to approve or deny anything. That should tell both the City and the developer that people see something here that deserves serious attention.

When residents show up that early in the process, the message should not simply be dismissed as resistance to change. It should be treated as information about the place, the project and the level of concern it is already generating.

Density is a number. City-building is something else entirely.

If we are going to add substantially more density, we have to start by looking at what is already there and asking what is worth protecting. New development should respond to the character of a place, not simply overwhelm it.

Can larger buildings be broken into smaller visual forms? Can height be concentrated where it has less impact on historic neighborhoods? Can new architecture frame our mountains and historic buildings rather than compete with them? Can mature trees become organizing elements of new projects rather than obstacles to be removed? Can we continue to make room for the small, quirky, longtime businesses that give our commercial districts personality?

All of this should be part of the equation. Good design is not simply about the building itself. It is also about how that building relates to its surroundings and the impact it will have on the community around it.

This is not about freezing Pasadena in time. It is about making sure new development adds to the city without diminishing what already makes it special.

There are other issues surrounding the South Lake project that deserve attention as it moves forward — parking, traffic, the meaning and permanence of its 55-plus designation, and the proposed removal of protected trees. Those questions matter, and they should be answered.

But the larger question raised Tuesday night was more fundamental:

How do we accommodate growth without allowing new development to overwhelm the places and character that already define Pasadena?

Our history should not become irrelevant simply because our city is growing. The best new development should make room for Pasadena’s future while respecting the places that gave the city its identity.

Pasadena is going to change. Our responsibility is to make sure that change makes the city better, not simply bigger.

Erika Foy is an active Pasadena resident who lives in the Madison Heights neighborhood.