Group meets to share vision

MONTROSE — The newly formed North Glendale Community Plan Advisory Committee, a collection of 34 stakeholders, is scheduled to meet tonight as part of an ongoing quest to find a vision for Sparr Heights and the north annex.

The meeting at the Montrose-Crescenta Branch Library is the second in a string public gatherings beginning this month and lasting through early November, before recommendations touching on long-running contentious matters are brought to the Planning Commission and later the City Council, said Laura Stotler, principal planner with the city.

Residents — in a series of three dozen meetings with planning officials, homeowner associations, business owners and other groups — by and large favored preserving the area’s small-town feel and on the need for beautification efforts along Foothill and Pennsylvania boulevards and Honolulu Avenue.

Commercial development and potential zoning changes emerged as among the most pressing issues, Stotler said.

“The overall zoning and planning there for most of my life has been a rodeo,” said Councilman John Drayman, whose childhood backyard, a block south of Foothill Boulevard, abutted a citrus orchard plowed by horse. “I almost chuckle when an issue of compatibility comes before me on the City Council.”

The council last August directed planning officials to study the area in response to foothill residents who said they were concerned that the Crescenta Valley’s mountain views were being lost to vertical development. Residents were also concerned about the safety of walkways and street lighting, Stotler said.

Foothill Boulevard has been a tinderbox for projects, including a controversial three-story mixed-use proposal for the former Foothill Builders and Hardware site, eventually denied by the City Council, as well as several iterations of a car dealership project.

Developers and business owners, many of whom view growth as an inevitable outcome, have called guidelines and building restrictions unfair and an impediment to economic growth.

“I think people forget that we are going to have intense density of population,” said advisory committee member Rick Barnes, who argued for lessening bureaucracy and tailoring guidelines to the neighborhood.