A new state law may create unforeseen consequences for the city of Pasadena’s long-awaited project to connect neighborhoods displaced by the now defunct 710 freeway project to the rest of the city, says the city’s mayor.
For more than three years now, the land known as the 710 Stub – couched between Union Street on the north, Columbia Street on the south, St. John Avenue on the west and Pasadena Avenue on the east – has been the focus of city committees and consultants, who have studied its history and garnered input on what to do with it.
Possibilities include plans that incorporate civic, commercial, urban, residential and mixed use areas.
But on Monday, Mayor Victor Gordo asked city officials to study the implications of a recently signed state law SB 79, which allows mid-rise apartments and condo buildings several stories tall to be built near certain public transit stations.
Councilmember Justin Jones brought up the new legislation during a City Council meeting, when he asked Planning Director Jennifer Paige if SB 79 changed the city’s land-use map.
“It does not change our land-use or our zoning, but what it does is it overlays rules that apply that we can’t change,” Paige said. “It allows additional height and densities by law that we can’t change, but it doesn’t change our underlying designations.”
Gordo offered the possibility that the stub is already within half a mile of a transit stop, which could then trigger SB 79 or that the mobility hub included in the 710 stub visioning, meant to connect the stop with local and regional transit, could also trigger the legislation.
“Those neighborhoods are going to be overrun,” Gordo said.
He asked members of city staff to research the potential impacts of the legislation, which he called the worst legislation on land use he’s seen, on the project and come back to the City Council with more information.
SB 79 takes effect July 1, 2026, and applies to urban transit counties like Los Angeles County, with heavier or more frequent transit services. It will establish higher densities, floor area and building heights for certain projects within a quarter and half mile of qualifying transit sites.
Paige said in an email Wednesday that the city can ultimately decide what development will occur in the relinquishment area. Members of city staff will provide information on SB 79 and any potential impacts that could result, if new transit areas are considered that could be subject to the law, Paige said.
“It’s terrible legislation, by the way, supported by our own assemblymember and state senator, which I’m not happy about,” Gordo said.
Danny Parker, chair of the Reconnecting Communities 710 Advisory Group said the task force has not discussed SB 79 in a substantive way yet.
“I anticipate that we will be discussing/addressing it in coming meetings,” Parker said in a text message Wednesday.
This isn’t the first state law around housing policy impacting local control that Gordo has spoken out against. In 2022, Gordo sent a letter to Attorney General Rob Bonta defending Pasadena against the state and SB 9 calling it, “wrongheaded and takes a cookie cutter approach by treating all cities the same.”
SB 9 allows property owners to divide single-family lots and develop two units on each lot. Following an executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Pasadena City Council last month approved an urgency ordinance prohibiting SB 9 applications in high-fire severity zones within the Eaton fire footprint.
The shadow of state and federal legislation and policy is just one of several cast over the 710 project, which city officials provided the annual report on Monday.
City Council members weighed ongoing vision planning against concerns over the project’s timeline.
In 2022, Caltrans relinquished the approximately 50-acre area referred to as the stub, or on Monday by officials and councilmembers, “the ditch”, to the city of Pasadena.
“It’s been referred to as the ditch, but there’s a lot of history behind that ditch,” Pasadena Water and Power General Manager David Reyes said. “Some of it good, most of it bad.”
The project was meant to connect the northern stub of the 710 freeway with the 210 freeway, but was shelved in 2018. However, the shelving came decades after Caltrans seized 460 properties in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, which displaced residents of Pasadena, South Pasadena and El Sereno.
The process so far has involved city officials, consultants and community input going toward a visioning plan for how the stub could be connected to the Pasadena neighborhoods it is surrounded by.
One of the project goals, Transportation Director Joaquin Siques said, is to reduce traffic speeds and change the freeway- to-freeway design of the stub to one that creates on and off ramps into what will eventually be a new community,
That phase is now scheduled to be completed in March when the City Council will be tasked with selecting a direction for moving forward.
On Monday, Councilmember Steve Madison urged his colleagues to provide clear direction to staff about how they’d like to proceed and set deadlines to move the project forward.
“We have this tremendous asset, this tremendous opportunity, and we need to get going,” Madison said.
Gordo countered with caution about making sure the planning process is not rushed given the scale of the undertaking.
“There are no redos in this project,” Gordo said. “Once we put it in place it’ll be in place for generations.”
Councilmembers Jason Lyon and Rick Cole also requested that city officials provide more detail on how the plans for the project will be implemented.
Paige said the visioning plan is not legally binding, but that the potential specific plan that develops out of the vision would be. Paige presented the city’s land-use map, which included a small sliver without color coding representing the stub. She said the visioning process has been undertaken because that area has no general plan land-use designation to go off of.
Members of city staff on Monday posed a series of questions to the City Council, to gather feedback. That feedback will be synthesized into a final set of recommendations prepared next year.
“This is a unique situation in the city where we don’t have anything to start from,” Paige said.