When Ed Riddle was in high school he watched a bulldozer destroy his home as part of Caltrans’ 710 freeway expansion project that displaced thousands of residents, disproportionately impacting families of color.
In an oral history documentary commissioned by the Reconnecting Communities 710 Advisory Group, Riddle described feeling the ground beneath him shake as the bulldozer rumbled next to him.
On Monday, March 30, Riddle shared a clear message to the Pasadena City Council as it embarked on the next leg of a marathon process meant to heal the physical and emotional scars left in the wake of the failed, discriminatory and exploitative freeway project.
“You guys are pretty young, you weren’t around when this thing started,” Riddle said. “But the ball’s in your court now, so you guys got to get it right.”
On Monday night officials played a clip from the same award-winning oral history documentary, “Amplify,” produced by Allegra Consulting.
“We are hopeful that the city leadership will do the right thing to honor the families who were displaced and impacted by the SR-710 freeway,” Suzanne Madison with Allegra Consulting said.
Riddle spoke at the conclusion of a meeting where consultants, community members and members of city staff passed the proverbial ball to City Council in the form of three years of work to establish vision plans and recommendations for what to do with the 710 stub.
The stub is a 50-acre area that splits Pasadena and was never developed into the 710 freeway connection to the 210 freeway that Caltrans intended.
In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the agency seized hundreds of homes in Pasadena, South Pasadena and El Sereno displacing thousands of residents. Caltrans finally shelved the project in 2018.
Pasadena announced earlier this year that it had sold 13 of the 17 homes that had been seized by Caltrans. The $18.47 million from the sales will be going toward affordable housing projects in the city.
“To this day, when you leave Long Beach the 710 signs say Pasadena,” Councilmember Rick Cole said. “That is a standing insult to this community that undermines any good faith on Caltrans’ part. It doesn’t cost them much to change those signs.”
The City Council-created Reconnecting Communities 710 Advisory Group presented its report that included dozens of recommendations to City Council covering restorative justice and land use and mobility.
Advisory group member and chair of the Restorative Justice Standing Committee Tina Williams described the intentional and systemic racism that defined Pasadena’s history as the context for the freeway project, which selected a path that would harm communities of color.
She highlighted the group’s proposal that a Restorative Justice Community Oversight Committee be created to oversee the project as it continues to move forward.
“Circumstances surrounding the 710 are not unique to Pasadena, but part of a broader design of coordinated systems of oppression that disenfranchised people of color nationwide,” Williams said. “In this instance, the discriminatory tools were the building of the 210 and the partial building of the 710 freeways.”
Advisory group member Wayne Brandt, chaired the Land Use and Mobility Standing Committee. He said the group’s recommendations also include developing 30% affordable housing out of the more than 1,000 units recommended in the stub and that housing be the first phase of the project that is built.
The group’s recommendation is 60% housing and 40% open and commercial space in the 710 stub area. Brandt described advisory group report as building off of the work done by the consultant.
Perkins Eastman, the architectural firm that contracted with the city to create a vision plan presented its research and summarized its nearly 200-page report.
The report covers context, restorative justice, physical reconnection, human connections, resiliency/sustainability concepts and implementation/next steps. Consultants Kate Howe and Vaughan Davies went over potential traffic designs that would reduce the traffic flow in the stub area and multiple options for how to design multiple neighborhoods in the stub with unique features.
City Planning Director Jennifer Paige said that the next step for city officials is to take the visioning work done and begin the process of developing a specific plan for the stub area like the city continues to do in several different areas.
Twelve people spoke during public comment urging the city to take seriously the goal of centering restorative justice and doing the utmost to give back to those who were displaced decades ago robbing them of the generational wealth of home ownership. Others highlighted the importance of affordable housing development in the vision and some voiced concerns about the traffic impacts on surrounding neighborhoods.
Councilmembers held off on substantive debate and diving into more specifics Monday night. That will be taken up at a meeting scheduled for Monday, April 13.
Mayor Victor Gordo voiced his concerns about the potential impact of state housing law SB 79, which helps build more affordable housing near public transit, in addition to requesting more information about infrastructure financing and potential traffic impacts.
“We have to get it right in every aspect because there are no re-dos in this effort,” Gordo said.
Councilmember Steve Madison warned against complacency and urged the city to continue the forward momentum on the project.
“My fear here is that everyone is saying ’20, 30, 40 years, it’s going to take forever,’ so we don’t need to do anything today,” Madison said. “I think we do need to do something today.”
Monday’s meeting was streamed live on the Pasadena Media YouTube channel.