Civic Center/Mid-Town District Design

The Civic Center/Mid-Town District Design project restored and beautified the most unique and significant part of Pasadena – where the City’s commercial and civic corridors, Colorado Boulevard and Garfield Avenue respectively, meet.  Site of a 1920’s City Beautiful Plan, the Civic Center District has the Beaux-Arts Pasadena City Hall, Myron Hunt-designed Pasadena Central Library and Pasadena Civic Auditorium, as its anchors; however, a 1970’s enclosed mall, the Plaza Pasadena, had cut off the Garfield Avenue corridor. The Arroyo Group worked with the City of Pasadena and the mall developer to replace the Plaza Pasadena with a new outdoor shopping mall and mixed-use development which restored the Garfield Avenue corridor. With a multidisciplinary team we designed paving, lighting, street trees and other public realm elements that beautified both City Beautiful corridors and were implemented by a Metro grant.