The 50-year-old hexagon-shaped former Parsons Corporate Headquarters building at 100 West Walnut Street in Old Pasadena could be torn down and replaced with 975 housing units on a nearly 10-acre site, in what would represent a dramatic shift from the property’s original approved use as office space, city planning staff told the Planning Commission on Wednesday night.
The proposed Phase 2 of the Parsons site redevelopment would include 170 affordable units with a modest density bonus — a significant departure from the project’s first phase, which included no onsite affordable housing, according to a presentation by Jason Mikaelian, AICP, Pasadena’s Deputy Director of Planning & Community Development.
The plan calls for demolishing the iconic hexagon-shaped office towers on Old Pasadena’s northwest edge and the surrounding parking lots, and replacing them with housing.
The project has completed pre-development plan review at the staff level but has not yet been heard and reviewed by the Design Commission.
“I was stunned when he said tearing down the [hexagon] building,” said Planning Commission Chair Carol Hunt Hernandez during the presentation.
The 12-story office tower was built in the late 1970s and has stood for 52 years. It served as the world headquarters of the Ralph M. Parsons Company — one of the largest engineering and construction firms in the world. Colloquially known for its distinctive hexagonal floor plan, the tower stands at 193 feet and anchors a 22.7-acre campus on the northern edge of Old Pasadena.
After Parsons Corporation relocated its headquarters to Virginia in 2019, the building and surrounding campus have undergone a significant mixed-use redevelopment, transforming surface parking lots into residential, office, and retail space while the original tower remains standing.
Mikaelian explained that the original plan called for Parsons to remain as a business with the office towers staying occupied and new office space built around them. But circumstances shifted dramatically.
“Obviously since then COVID has happened and the office market has been depleted,” Mikaelian said. “The housing demand has gone through the roof and Parsons has left.”
City staff said the project would be presented to the full City Council as an informational item and would go through at least the Design Commission review process. The developers are exploring the use of various state housing bills, and staff said they are still determining the project’s approval pathway. Detailed renderings are not yet available.
The Parsons site was one of 19 major housing projects of 70 or more units presented to the commission Tuesday as part of a citywide overview. Across all phases, the city has approximately 2,000 units in preliminary development, nearly 800 in design review and roughly 500 in plan check or construction — totaling more than 3,200 units in the pipeline.
Mikaelian noted that more large housing projects are now moving forward outside the Central District, and developers are increasingly utilizing higher percentages of density bonus, including several 100% affordable projects — a trend he called “dramatically different” from what the city would have seen a decade ago.
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