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How a Big Party Once Saved a Very Big Bridge

Pasadena Heritage's Bridge Party has a lot of history

By EDDIE RIVERA | Photography by PAUL TAKIZAWA
Published on Monday, July 21, 2025 | 6:37 am
 

On Saturday night, under a dazzling blue sky, nearly 5,000 guests turned out for one of Pasadena’s most cherished civic traditions: the Pasadena Heritage Bridge Party. Formerly known as the Colorado Street Bridge Party, the biennial fundraiser transformed the iconic 1913 bridge into a lively pedestrian promenade of food, music, and celebration.

But for a handful of dedicated Pasadena supporters, the bridge might have been gone forever. The sell-out event capped a remarkable turnaround for the structure itself. 

Nearly four decades ago, the Beaux-Arts span, stretching high above the Arroyo Seco, faced an uncertain future, threatened with demolition after years of neglect and seismic instability. Pasadena Heritage, a preservation nonprofit founded in 1977, was created in part to save the historic bridge from being torn down.

As former Chair and Marketing Director of Pasadena Heritage Suzanne Marks explained, “This bridge was saved. It was going to be demolished, like so many other things back then.” 

“People like Claire [Bogaard] saw the architecture, and how beautiful the city is, even though it had a lot of dirt on it,” she said in an interview before Saturday’s event. “So the idea was simple: throw a party, and raise both money and awareness.”

The 80s were a difficult time for sections of Pasadena, said Marks, especially Old Pasadena—the gateway to and from the Colorado Street bridge. 

“The area was filled with needles and condoms, and everything you can imagine, a basic big city skid row,” she said, but a group of people including Marks, noted architect William Ellinger, Claire Bogaard, and City Development Administrator Marsha Rood, saw value in the older buildings on West Colorado that were beginning to be torn down at an increasing pace.

But as Rood herself has said in her historic presentations to various groups, “No one person was responsible for the revitalization of Old Pasadena. What is remarkable is that so many were.”

Rood, who served as the Development Administrator for the City of Pasadena from 1982 to 2000, explained that “when Old Pasadena was ‘rebirthed,’ the City policy at the time was to demolish and rebuild to better compete with suburbs.” 

It was all about using Eminent Domain to put together large land parcels and then tearing down the aged buildings to build corporate and office retail, she said.

That policy required enormous public subsidies in the form of redevelopment taxes, and simply created “islands on the land, buildings that turn their backs on the area to create safe spaces so that they look like the suburbs,” said Rood.

Rood explained that in the 1970s, the City’s newly formed Pasadena Redevelopment Agency (PRA) set out to make findings of “blight” in the area, in order to begin the urban renewal process, which Rood said was “easy to do.”

From those efforts, Pasadena Heritage was formed, and one of their first (now spectacular) acts was to create the Bridge Party. Pasadena had never seen anything like it 

What began as a modest grassroots fundraiser in the late 1970s has since evolved into one of Pasadena’s most anticipated summer events, drawing residents from across the San Gabriel Valley and beyond. The historic bridge’s broad deck, once filled with traffic, now plays host every two years to live music, pop-up bars, rows of local food vendors, and thousands of guests who come to stroll, dance, and toast the city’s architectural gem.

Saturday’s gathering was no exception.

“We were very fortunate to have great leadership with Michael Robleto and our committee, as well as excellent weather, sponsors, music, and most of all, an army of fantastic volunteers,” Pasadena Heritage Executive Director Zoot Velasco said in a statement following the event. “Thanks to our collective efforts, we were very close to breaking 5,000 in attendance and breaking many records for the event. We are still getting numbers, but it looks to have been a very profitable event for our mission and our programs.”

Those profits help fund Pasadena Heritage’s ongoing work, from historic home tours to preservation advocacy. But for many in attendance, the night was less about fundraising and more about community.

From the bridge’s Orange Grove entrance to its far western overlook near Linda Vista and San Rafael, multiple music stages kept guests moving, while food vendors dished up everything from tacos to ribs. Illuminated by the warm glow of Pasadena’s skyline, the bridge itself stood as both backdrop and centerpiece—its arches lit softly as the night deepened.

What once was nearly lost has instead become Pasadena’s most elegant block party. Every party should have such importance, and every city should have such a community.

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