Old Pasadena’s Act Two
Cindy Olnick 00:00
Today on Save As! We hear a quintessential story of revitalization from someone who saw it firsthand.
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Trudi Sandmeier 00:16
Welcome to Episode Two of Save As, Season Two! I’m Trudi Sandmeier.
Cindy Olnick 00:22
And I’m Cindy Olnick.
Trudi Sandmeier 00:24
And we are the co-hosts of Save As. We’re happy to have you here with us today. And we’re excited to talk to Ingrid Peña.
Cindy Olnick 00:34
Today, we’re going to hear about Old Pasadena, which is, you know, one of these stories of early revitalization of a historic place, sort of the beginnings of the preservation movement in Southern California, what it took to save a really important stretch of a really important town. And we hear it all from Ingrid Peña, who saw it as a kid and a teenager. She spent time there, she saw all this unfold.
Trudi Sandmeier 01:06
I think always a firsthand account makes it so much more interesting. We all live through these various moments in history. And how does that affect us? Is that why Ingrid became involved in heritage conservation? What a good question. Who knows?
Cindy Olnick 01:26
I know. One of the reasons I took on this gig, frankly, is because what I love about USC — not to toot your horn too much — but I love how these students research their passions and their lives. You know, I am hard-pressed to think of a single episode that doesn’t directly tie to somebody’s identity, where they grew up, what industry they were in, what they’re crazy about, or who they are, or where they’re from, and I just think that’s great.
Trudi Sandmeier 02:05
Let’s hear about Ingrid’s story, and the story of Old Town Pasadena,
Cindy Olnick 02:09
As she talks with our producer, Willa Seidenberg.
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Willa Seidenberg 02:15
Hello, Ingrid, thank you for being on the Save As podcast. Could you start by telling us a little bit about you and how you came to the field of heritage conservation?
Ingrid Peña 02:21
I was born in Glendale, California, which is right next to Pasadena. So Pasadena is very near and dear to my heart. And I went to public schools in Pasadena. So, I just had tremendous pride growing up in Pasadena and it just felt like a very special place.
Willa Seidenberg 02:43
How did you find your way to heritage conservation?
Ingrid Peña 02:46
So, I was at a crossroads with my previous job, and I stumbled upon a career counselor. And she helped me unpack why I did my undergraduate degree in art history. We started doing just different assessments. And then she uncovered USC’s Heritage Conservation Program. Long story short, I was accepted into the program, and it was hard, because I had just had a baby, and I was working full time in a very stressful fast-paced field. For some reason this helped ground me, getting into this program and starting this, yep.
Willa Seidenberg 03:38
That’s a lot to take on. Those must have been some interesting years.
Ingrid Peña 03:45
I loved every minute of it.
Willa Seidenberg 03:48
You talk about the beginnings of Pasadena, the Indigenous people that lived there first. But I was really struck by this California Colony of Indiana that you wrote about. Could you tell us about who those people were?
Ingrid Peña 04:05
Even though I grew up here, I didn’t know a lot of the history, and I didn’t really know that Pasadena was created and built by East Coast families. And in a way it’s like they fabricated this new city. And they made it so beautiful to attract other East Coast families to move out, and so, a lot of it was wealthy families, obviously, who could start either a new life, purchase land. Word got out about Pasadena and so there was a group of friends from Indiana who said, Hey, you know, we’re gonna come out and it was after a really hard, harsh winter. I mean, they fell in love with the place because it IS really beautiful, set right against the foothills.
Willa Seidenberg 05:07
And it was this group that gave Pasadena its name.
Ingrid Peña 05:10
Yes, they took four Indian phrases, I think it’s Chippewa, and they basically grouped it together, I mean, they’re words that mean “of the valley,” and they came up with the name Pasadena.
Willa Seidenberg 05:26
So early on in Pasadena’s history it was a tourist attraction. And it also became a real destination for arts and culture. After the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, it sparked a movement called the City Beautiful Movement, and Pasadena picked up on that and built the Pasadena Civic Center. Can you just describe for people who don’t know Pasadena very well, what’s included in the Pasadena Civic Center, and where in the city it is?
Ingrid Peña 06:02
So, it’s this axis where they built the Central Library. You could walk from the library, traveling south, and on your east side, on the left side, would be the beautiful City Hall. And if you continued straight, you would hit the Civic Center. So, it was a very organized, structured plan. Its location was a little bit east of Old Pasadena, and the plan was much wider to accommodate the automobile. There was booster literature touting Pasadena as a paradise and a Garden of Eden that circulated all across the country. The reason why there’s such beautiful architecture in old Pasadena is when they were building the town up, they wanted the architecture to be distinctive and to stand out as a way to attract more people to move to Pasadena.
Willa Seidenberg 07:09
And, the area that we know as Millionaires Row was part of that as well, because these wealthy people were coming and building architecturally beautiful homes.
Ingrid Peña 07:20
Yes, exactly. Orange Grove Boulevard was a row, or a street, full of mansions, and one of the mansions is still there, and it’s used as the Tournament of Roses house, which is the Wrigley Mansion — Wrigley for Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum, right? So that just shows you the magnitude of wealth that was coming to Pasadena. During the Depression, or after the Depression, a lot of these families, they couldn’t maintain them anymore, unfortunately. So, a lot of them were demolished. There’s still quite a bit of beautiful architecture along Orange Grove Boulevard, a lot of them were turned into garden apartments. But it’s still beautiful. And that actually is part of the Rose Parade route.
Willa Seidenberg 08:09
Around this time after the Depression, we get to World War II, and Pasadena is realizing it can’t maybe just rely on wealthy residents and tourism, and they start to feel the need to attract more business or industry.
Ingrid Peña 08:27
Yeah, exactly. World War II helped stimulate some of that economy again, and then with FDR’s Works Progress Administration, putting people back to work to help build some of these major structures really helped that with Pasadena. And so, we mentioned earlier that the whole City Beautiful Movement started the eastward trend of businesses moving further east and south of Pasadena, which created a new shopping district called South Lake Avenue. And it really catered to the automobile lifestyle that was developing at the time. And that just contributed further to Old Pasadena’s decline. And then by the ’50s into the ’60s is when Old Pasadena was really starting to struggle, and that just brought attention to, What can we do to stimulate Pasadena and the economy, specifically Old Pasadena.
Willa Seidenberg 09:41
That led to a report that they commissioned that was released, I think it was 1959, an economic study of the city called the Oliver Report. What were the conclusions of that report?
Ingrid Peña 9:56
It was a very in-depth study on the economics of the city of Pasadena. It highlighted, obviously, that there was a lot of wealthy families, the various types of industries that were in Pasadena, like banking, finance, insurance, retail. It also highlighted some of the things that were deterrents to economic growth. One of the things that it highlighted is that there was a concentration of old structures in Old Pasadena, which was the heart of the city.
Willa Seidenberg 10:33
So that report comes amid urban renewal that’s happening all over the country and spurs the city to want to take on some of this kind of redevelopment.
Ingrid Peña 10:49
Yes. Jumping on the bandwagon. Yep. The Pasadena Redevelopment Agency was established coming off the heels of the results of this report in 1960. This particular agency identified that there were two main objectives to really pull Pasadena out of this, which is conserving Pasadena’s position as a desirable residential community, and then obviously, to increase economic activity so they had a solid financial base for the future. And specifically, it emphasized the need for development in Old Pasadena.
Willa Seidenberg 11:31
But yet, the business owners in Old Pasadena, and I guess some residents, were having none of it, and they sort of rose up and fought this effort.
Ingrid Peña 11:45
Yeah. So, during this redevelopment phase, they were able to keep the redevelopment out of Old Pasadena, which obviously further contributed to the decline of Old Pasadena, but at the same time, it preserved all of that beautiful architecture. So, when all of this redevelopment was going on, Old Pasadena was left alone at the time. And they focused the redevelopment efforts further east, which is when they did tear down the Pasadena Athletic Club, that beautiful, beautiful structure, to put in the Plaza Pasadena, which, growing up as a teenager, I actually spent a lot of time in that mall. [laughs]
Willa Seidenberg 12:43
And probably had no idea what it got rid of in order to have that.
Ingrid Peña 12:48
No, I had no idea. That particular part of Old Pasadena was spared from this urban renewal development. It’s not like they were villains trying to destroy Pasadena, it was, How do we reignite the economy? They call it the Headquarters Strategy, which they were trying to attract large corporations to Pasadena to open up a headquarters office or a big hub. And one of them was the Ralph M. Parsons Corporation, which was a big engineering and construction company. And they did build a headquarters in Old Pasadena, but it was just north of the main street, Colorado Boulevard. But that did take down historic structures also.
Willa Seidenberg 13:49
Before you go on, could you just describe what Plaza Pasadena, what that development was?
Ingrid Peña 13:57
So, at the time, malls were seen as the answer to all of this economic decline, and attracting people to new, and shiny, and retail, and this whole new way of shopping. The type of architecture that they chose was Brutalistic architecture, very big and cold and sterile. I mean, it had three anchor department stores, took down three blocks of historic structures. The blessing in all of that though, is that that is what woke up the community.
Willa Seidenberg 14:44
Besides John Merritt, who was hired by the City and organized the first architectural survey of the city, a woman named Claire Bogaard comes on the scene. Can you tell us about her story and how she came to play such a pivotal role?
Ingrid Peña 15:02
Sure, yeah. So, she moved to Pasadena in the early 1970s. She, at the time, was a stay-at-home mom and was suggested by a friend, a way to meet new people was to join the Junior League of Pasadena, which is still in existence today. Within that particular organization, there were several committees; she chose the Cultural Heritage Committee. And that’s where she met Katie Harp, who also plays a pivotal role. And they’re the two that actually start, along with others, they’re the two main folks who started Pasadena Heritage.
Willa Seidenberg 15:45
And got the ball rolling on creating what has become a very strong and vibrant and important part of the Pasadena community.
Ingrid Peña 15:55
Yeah. So, the Cultural Heritage Commission, which is part of the City, was formed in 1976. And it was just two people, Bob Winter and Miv Schaaf. So, they were positioned strategically in the city, but they had very little power to make things happen in the area of preservation because the real power was with the Board of Directors, the Redevelopment Agency, the Board of Realtors, so anyone involved in redevelopment, they had the power. But at least they had an ear inside. So, they developed relationships with Claire and Katie, and they actually encouraged Katie and Claire to form an organization outside of the City, because they believed that a private organization could take on more overt and impactful action against City Hall than the Cultural Heritage Commission could internally, and that’s the idea that conceived Pasadena Heritage.
Willa Seidenberg 17:10
And I thought it was interesting, some of the strategies that they used to develop interest in Old Pasadena, which many people at the time were a bit wary of because it had become derelict, and it was kind of a part of town that you didn’t really feel safe going [to]. And they had to sort of mount a PR campaign to make people interested in the area and its potential. Can you talk about some of the things that they did to do that?
Ingrid Peña 17:41
Yeah. So as a teen growing up during that time, my memory of Old Pasadena was, I mean, my parents, everyone said you stay away from that area. That’s where prostitutes are, the drug dealers are, the home– I mean it was described as a very unsafe area. So, to learn about this from Claire, that there was an artist colony, that there were a lot of the original settlers and their businesses were still there, and Pasadena Heritage, they set up their office in Old Pasadena. And that’s actually how they started to learn about what was really there. And it revealed that it’s not as unsafe and scary as it was painted to be, right? So, they started to invite people into Old Pasadena.
Willa Seidenberg 18:42
I thought the idea of doing these walking tours, and you know, going for drinks that one of the bars that people thought they had to stay away from, was such a great way to make it more accessible and to also probably, in the process, they were able to connect with business owners who could see that they were responsible for maybe bringing people into the neighborhood who wouldn’t have come otherwise, to at least visit.
Ingrid Peña 19:10
Yeah, I think when they formed Pasadena Heritage, I think what was surprising to them is that they had — for the first walking tour of one of the neighborhoods, they had 500 people come. It revealed to them like, okay, there are a lot of people who care about Pasadena, and our organization is going to play a huge role.
Willa Seidenberg 19:35
And over this time as they’re working, it sounds like we started to see more elected officials in Pasadena who were sympathetic to this idea of preservation.
Ingrid Peña 19:48
I think with the Cultural Heritage Commission in place and Pasadena Heritage in place, they were able to work together to start to build a foundation around preservation in Pasadena. And then there was the Tax Reform Act that was passed in 1976, which were tax incentives to help encourage preservation of historic structures. So, that was also a key component in convincing the City because the City was all about, the Board of Directors, it was all about money, revenue, just improving the economic state of Pasadena. They really wanted to keep the government out of Old Pasadena.
So, one of their efforts was hiring a consultant team to assess the potential of rehabilitating and revitalizing Old Pasadena. And the key words are rehabilitating and revitalizing, versus clearance. So, this report created interest and it was a springboard for, there were two architects coming from the East Coast, who were already strong advocates for historic preservation. So they basically took this report, and they built off of it. And they made it a full-blown comprehensive review of, If we rehabilitate Pasadena, this is what can happen. It started to put numbers on paper saying this can be done, this is how it can be done, and these are the numbers that we can see coming out of it.
Willa Seidenberg 21:36
You can see that this starts to have an effect because you write about a Mexican restaurant on Colorado Boulevard that was sort of a pivotal point in this process.
Ingrid Peña 21:52
There was a Mexican restaurant in Old Pasadena that wanted to take down historic buildings so it could put in more parking. And that created a stir with the community, specifically Pasadena Heritage, who went in and said, “No, you can’t do this.” So, this was a huge victory for preservation at the time because the City agreed not to demolish that historic building to build parking. And after this particular incident, the Landmark District Ordinance was approved in 1977.
Willa Seidenberg 22:29
And the City actually hires Linda Dishman, who a lot of local preservationists know as the head of the LA Conservancy now, but at the time, she was hired to sort of help facilitate this. And she began working with developers and other people to get this plan really in action.
Ingrid Peña 22:55
Yeah, so the City hired Linda Dishman, and she had come from the State Historic Preservation Office. So, she’d come from the roots of preservation. So, this, again, just showed the City evolving to being more open to preservation and listening to the community. And so, Linda played a pivotal role because she worked with, internally, the permit department, and she worked with developers, and so she helped expedite projects to happen.
One of the first investors who got wind of Old Pasadena and what could possibly be done was a man named Tony Canzoneri, who’s a lawyer, who worked with developers in both public and private sectors. Because he was already so knowledgeable, it made sense for him to come in and leverage that opportunity. So, the Marks Historical Rehabilitation Act of 1976, it gave cities and counties and redevelopment agencies the authority to issue tax-exempt revenue bonds to finance the rehabilitation of significant historic buildings. So, it becomes very financial, which is key in all of this, because people who are going to invest, there needs to be a financial return for them.
A facade easement is when a property owner gives the face, the front of their building, to another person or organization for limited use. The easement holder becomes the responsible party, so if the owner decides to make any changes to the front of their building, they need to get approval from the easement holder. And the benefit to the owner is that they will get a tax deduction if they do this — specifically if the facade easement is granted to a nonprofit organization — and it’s perpetual.
Willa Seidenberg 25:08
And, I thought it was striking that Pasadena Heritage today holds some 34 easements out of all the contributing buildings in the historic district.
Ingrid Peña 25:20
And that was one of their objectives was, How many easements, we want to get as many easements as we can given to us, so we have more control. I do want to point out that part of saving Old Pasadena involved getting it on the National Register, making it a historic district. And then huge retailers started coming in. Restaurants were coming in the time — it was the Cheesecake Factory, Louise’s Trattoria, J.Crew, which — the only J.Crew at the time in Southern California was the one in Woodland Hills. So, for J.Crew to be opening a brick and mortar store in Old Pasadena, again, just signaled that this is the place to be. And it also became a nightlife destination; there were a lot of bars and nightclubs opening up. And I remember this all firsthand, because I was there when Old Pasadena became the place to be.
Willa Seidenberg 26:26
And one of the things that made it a success, the parking plan was kind of key.
Ingrid Peña 26:34
When all of this redevelopment or revitalization and rehabilitation was happening, they had to consider parking. And at the time, they were thinking of putting in parking structures, but the City was worried about who was gonna pay for this, and how do we know that this revitalization is going to be successful enough where we can pay for parking?
So, there was two gentlemen, Terry Tornek, who is the former mayor of Pasadena, he was working in the Planning Department as the Planning Director. And he got together with Tony Canzoneri to design a really creative plan for parking that involved the retail owners and getting them to pay for parking that they potentially couldn’t provide. So if they were going to open up a new business, rehabilitate the structure, they had to provide parking, and if they couldn’t provide parking, then they could basically rent out parking spaces in the new parking structure that was going to be built. If they couldn’t pay the fee for the parking, then there would be a lien put on their business. And that was only if there wasn’t enough retail sales tax and property tax increments, if there wasn’t enough generated, but because there was more than enough generated, nobody had to pay a fee for the parking, and no one had to put a lien on their business, and Old Pasadena was just generating gobs and gobs of money.
Willa Seidenberg 28:19
Was there anything, as you were writing the thesis and after you finished it, that surprised you?
Ingrid Peña 28:28
I didn’t realize that Old Pasadena was set to be demolished. That was a big learning piece for me. But then I also didn’t realize I didn’t know how much was involved in devising a plan for Old Pasadena. And the number of people, the relationships, the advocacy, it was a major multifaceted effort. If you look back on it, it looks like it was a very well-engineered plan. But it all happened organically. The financial piece of it was also eye opening. No matter how passionate you are about saving a building, you have to have that financial component. The commercial aspect of things always seems to be the disconnect between those who are passionate advocates, and then the developers, because the developers are trying to make money, and the passionate advocates are trying to save — so the more we preservationist advocates can understand the commercial and the business aspects of it, I think the more armed we’ll be in having productive and successful and effective discussions around preservation.
Willa Seidenberg 29:49
Having grown up going to Pasadena as a kid and a teenager, what do you feel when you go there now, and you see Old Pasadena?
Ingrid Peña 30:01
It’s actually in transition. So I’m curious to see how Old Pasadena is going to come out of this transition. So, it was such a huge success, the owners, they jacked up the rent so high, so a lot of these small business owners, restaurant owners, a lot of them had to leave. A lot of the leases are up. So, a lot of businesses have moved out. It doesn’t seem as vibrant as before. I mean, it’s still I think, a destination, people are still going there. But it’s, it’s in transition.
Willa Seidenberg 30:41
So, it needs to have an Act Two.
Ingrid Peña 30:44
It does.
Willa Seidenberg 30:45
Or maybe it’s Act Three.
Ingrid Peña 30:47
Yeah, Act Three. Thankfully, the provisions are in place. It’s a historic district, it’s on the National Register. The City of Pasadena has a preservation department, people in place. So, preservation is in place. It’s just again, with a city that relies so much on retail, and tourism, and then some of the corporations that had headquarters there have moved out.
Willa Seidenberg 31:16
So, it’s been kind of an interesting, 40-year journey, but it built a movement. And Pasadena is recognized as having a very strong preservation presence. And the City now takes pride in it. So I guess we can all hope that moving forward that will sustain all of these efforts so that it doesn’t lose its character.
Ingrid Peña 31:47
Yes, yes.
Willa Seidenberg 31:46
So can you talk a little bit about what you’re doing now?
Ingrid Peña 31:49
So, I work for the Department of Transportation, also known as Caltrans, for the State of California. And I’m in the Environmental Planning Department as an architectural historian. The role of an architectural historian is to review the transportation plans that have been designed. So, I look at what those projects could potentially do to the built environment. So, if there are any potentially historic structures that are in the project footprint, that’s my responsibility, is to flag it, and maybe evaluate it.
So, one of the projects I’m working on is in Oakland, and it’s an old pedestrian bridge crossing over a highway. And it was built, I think, in the ’40s, so not ADA compliant, Americans with Disabilities Act compliant. It’s falling apart, it’s not stable, so they want to remove it. But it happens to be right next to a park and a recreation center that was built by the Works Progress Administration during the FDR presidency. And then just up the street is a historic Hansel and Gretel house. They’re not on the National Register, they’re not on the California Register. So, it’s my job to flag it and evaluate that and write about them, and potentially get them nominated and put on the register.
Willa Seidenberg 33:27
Well, thank you so much for this tour of Old Pasadena, and what it’s become and what it might become in the future. Thanks so much.
Ingrid Peña 33:37
No, thank you for inviting me to share!
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Cindy Olnick 33:44
Well, what a great conversation, and it just underscores that the care and feeding of historic places never really ends.
Trudi Sandmeier 33:52
It takes a village to get things like Old Pasadena put together. So, kudos to everyone who made that happen.
Cindy Olnick 34:01
Yeah, and please do it again. Thank you.
Trudi Sandmeier 34:02
This is one of those stories that comes full circle, because our former boss Linda Dishman was part of this story too, and was part of the original efforts to save Old Town Pasadena.
