Bisected by a one mile north to south stretch of Lincoln Avenue, northwest Pasadena has long been this city’s neglected corner where obsolete and fragmented industrial land uses intermingle with aging homes and underutilized storefronts. John Kaliski Architects, working with Urban Futures and Hogle Ireland, Inc. collaborated with the community, stakeholders, City staff, and the local Council office to develop for this strip a vision including flexible and mixed-use commercial and residential land uses to replace manufacturing, streetscape improvements to establish identity and greening, and design guidelines to foster building quality and pedestrian orientation on a project by project basis.

Key standards direct the creation of sidewalk-oriented storefronts, limit intrusion of “big” boxes to incentivize local retailing, and lower densities to encourage townhouse style development in keeping with the Pasadena’s multi-family “City of Gardens” zoning. Design standards and guidelines respectively establish transitions to adjacent single-family houses and build upon identifiable Pasadena architecture traditions. At the same time, a strategic streetscape improvement program provides for enhanced gateways to the area, calms traffic, and identifies crosswalk improvements to knit the neighborhood east and west across the travel corridor. Long suspicious of the City’s commitment to attend to their area, the Lincoln Avenue Specific Plan in its formation and adoption became a tool for community consensus building, and is now the basis for emerging parcel-by-parcel renewal efforts.

Client: Hogle Ireland, Inc. for the City of Pasadena
Scope: Design standards and guidelines and streetscape improvement plan for a specific plan
Cost: $75,000 for urban design component