Council OKs Glendale Strategic Plan

After three years of preparation, an ambitious plan to chart growth in both the heart of the city and outlying neighborhoods over the next 20 years was approved Tuesday by the City Council.

The vote was 4-1.

City officials say the Greater Downtown Strategic Plan is a blueprint for an array of projects designed to enhance the economy and quality of living, from a new town center in the heart of the city and a huge new retail development to the creation of neighborhood centers designed to bring retail and recreational opportunities into residential areas.

“A city that doesn’t have a vision for its future is not going anywhere,” said Councilman Larry Zarian. “Whether we actually can and will build everything in the plan, only the future will tell. But this provides a road map for us and future city councils to follow.”

The strategic plan is the result of an unusual partnership forged three years ago between the city and a group of high-profile business leaders, who in 1993 contributed $125,000 toward the $350,000 cost of a planning study by Alex Cooper, a renowned urban planner.

Cooper’s report, which focused on revitalizing not only downtown proper but also the interconnected neighborhoods around it, formed the basis for the strategic plan, which has been hammered out by various committees for the past two years.

Although the plan has received relatively little opposition during scores of public meetings and hearings held over the past two years, some critics have expressed concern that it leaves too many questions unanswered.

Because the plan is more of a “position paper” than an actual planning document, it does not contain hard information on the design, exact location or cost of many projects it envisions. Some critics have also charged that the plan could be reinterpreted to allow rampant growth in the future.

But city officials argue that the plan gives them the power to control growth.

“We know that growth will occur. Our challenge is to manage that growth, to have it occur on our terms rather than as the result of individual, piecemeal business decisions,” City Manager David Ramsay said.

The major projects are the town center, the development of neighborhood centers and a new midtown district on north Brand Boulevard.

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The town center, a pedestrian-oriented commercial and civic center to be located at Brand Boulevard and Harvard Street, is considered the focal point of the entire strategic plan. With public improvements costing an estimated $154 million, it would include a large public square, a 2-acre civic park and “Centennial Hall,” a convention and meeting building that the city hopes to build by 2006, Glendale’s 100th anniversary.

The first of several planned neighborhood centers proposed to be built under the plan is in the Pacific Park/Edison Elementary School area, a predominantly lower-middle-class part of southwestern Glendale where an estimated $50 million in improvements are envisioned.

The proposed midtown district would be located on Brand between Lexington Avenue and Broadway, an area where city planners hope to establish a hub of pedestrian activity and night life.