Foothill Boulevard

Janine Marnien LA CRESCENTA -- The Crescenta Valley Town Council will tackle the visual quality -- or lack thereof -- of the La Crescenta portion of Foothill Boulevard at its May meeting. Richard Toyon, a former landscape architect and a longtime resident of La Crescenta, will make a presentation about the aesthetic problems on the boulevard and options for improving them. "The visuals of La Crescenta are severely lacking, and they're going downhill in a hurry," Toyon said.

Robert Chacon It was a banner night for Descanso Gardens and the city. The City Council voted unanimously Monday to allow Descanso Gardens officials to hang 50 banners along Foothill Boulevard to advertise the Gardens' upcoming Spring Festival of Flowers. The council would not allow Descanso officials to hang 20 more banners on light poles along Verdugo Boulevard, opting instead to study whether to amend a policy that prohibits such banners unless the city has sponsored the event.

Glendale police are searching for the person or people responsible for tagging several La Crescenta businesses on and around Foothill Boulevard. According to a report, the owner of Lloyd's Auto in La Crescenta called police April 27 to report his building had been spray-painted overnight. The report states several other businesses also were targeted, including Shakey's Pizza, the former McDonald's building, Just Tires, Crescenta-Cañada Pet Hospital, La Crescenta Montessori School, Crescenta Valley Lock & Key, Eagle Allstate Auto and Subway.

Drivers who want to park overnight will have to look somewhere other than Foothill Boulevard under a plan approved last week by the Crescenta Valley Town Council. The council at its Thursday meeting asked Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich to direct the county Public Works Department to ban parking on Foothill Boulevard between 2 and 6 a.m. The change is an effort to end the practice of parking cars for sale on the heavily traveled commercial street. "We received some phone calls from some concerned residents that there were too many for sale cars parked on Foothill," said Grace Andrus, spokesman for the CVTC.

The L.A. County Department of Regional Planning, with the Crescenta Valley Town Council, is hosting a community information meeting regarding the establishment of a Community Standards District for Foothill Boulevard. The meeting is taking place from 7 to 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 13 at Rosemont Middle School. The Town Council has been working on this project for the past five years and the meeting is an important step in deciding what the community desires in the design La Crescenta?

Two major construction projects along Foothill Boulevard will change the look and function of the city's major thoroughfare in 2006, city officials said Friday. The City Council will vote on an agreement today that would allow the city to be reimbursed by Caltrans for major reconstruction work on Foothill between Cypress Drive and La Canada Boulevard. That work will include resurfacing Foothill with an asphalt-rubber mix, replacement of concrete curbs and gutters, installation of median islands with landscaping and irrigation, and in-pavement lighted crosswalks at three locations.

Recently it was said that we don't want La Crescenta's Foothill Boulevard to look like Tujunga. This was in response to Unique Glass and Woodworks' front-porch display of merchandise on Foothill Boulevard west of Ralphs. Comparisons to Laguna Beach could have been made by larger minds. In contrast to having to remove the display, I have heard cries from shop owners, from our residential community at large, and the Town Council officially that we want the boulevard to be pedestrian friendly and vibrant, including outdoor cafes, merchants with colorful displays, arts and crafts and great variety of appealing merchandise, places to walk outside, muse, sit, reflect and spend.

It?s a bit easier to tell when you enter La Crescenta now thanks to a sign recently installed at the corner of Foothill Boulevard and Briggs Avenue. The sign ? which welcomes folks to La Crescenta and displays the name of the county pocket, or spot, park where it?s located ? is one of four signs that eventually will mark out the borders of the town. Grace Andrus, president of the Crescenta Valley Town Council said she was pleased to see the Pickens Canyon Park, Welcome to La Crescenta sign displayed last week.

In the year since the La Crescenta Pavilion — a 12-tenant shopping center on Foothill Boulevard — was finished, the shopping center has become a bustling retail hub along a commercial corridor that area business leaders say has cleaned up its act with a new, modern look. Built and owned by Glendale-based Turian Properties, and designed by architect Alen Malekian, the center stands out among the surrounding retail and commercial mix on Foothill Boulevard for its contemporary design and spotless appearance, said Howard Hakes, president of the Crescenta Valley Chamber of Commerce.

A parole agent shot Wednesday in Lake View Terrace was hit in the face. Police continued to search for the gunman, who was considered armed and dangerous. The officer's injury was not life threatening, police sources said, and the shooting appears to have occurred at a residence on Foothill Boulevard. The L.A. County Sheriff's Department was handling the investigation. The shooting, sometime after 1 p.m., caused officials to close the 210 Freeway in both directions as they searched for the gunman.

LA CRESCENTA — A dump truck overturned Tuesday morning on Foothill Boulevard and spilled about four tons of dirt and rocks excavated from a local debris basin, police said. A Los Angeles County firefighter driving the truck sustained an cut on his forearm but wasn't seriously injured, Glendale Police Officer Jay Katska said. But the Fire Department dump truck was destroyed when it overturned on Foothill Boulevard and Boston Avenue. Glendale police investigators were looking into the crash, but Katska said "there may be a brake adjustment issue with the truck.

Volunteers young and old worked for nearly three hours Saturday morning to help clean up Foothill Boulevard. In a collaborative effort between a number of city and community organizations, including Glendale Neighborhood Services, Committee for a Clean and Beautiful Glendale and Crescenta Valley Chamber of Commerce, more than 300 volunteers showed up at Dunsmore Park for the 17th annual Foothill Clean-up Day. Volunteers helped with everything...

SOUTHEAST GLENDALE — The Glendale YMCA Quarterback Club, in its 68th year, meets Tuesdays at the Elk's Lodge. The following are odds and ends from the first meeting of the year. BOULEVARD BATTLE COMING SOON The annual "Battle of Foothill Boulevard" contest between St. Francis High and Crescenta Valley will take place at 7 p.m. Friday at Glendale High's Moyse Field. Crescenta Valley Coach Paul Schilling and St. Francis Coach Jim Bonds have already begun making preparations for a game that the Golden Knights have won eight consecutive times.

LA CRESCENTA — Residents have mobilized to save a 100-year-old tree along Foothill Boulevard that they say could be irreparably harmed by a planned mixed-use office building. Several dozen residents gathered Tuesday evening in front of the massive Moreton Bay Fig tree in the 2600 block of Foothill Boulevard to protest a planned three-story retail and office building on the adjacent vacant lot. Residents say they are concerned that the excavation will result in extensive damage to the tree's root systems, in addition to the many branches that will have to be cut. When a previous development was planned for the site, an arborist warned that damage to the roots could kill the tree, stakeholders said.

A police pursuit Saturday that started in Los Angeles ended in La Cañada Flintridge after police used a beanbag gun to shoot out the window of the driver's car on a dead-end street just off Ocean View Boulevard, officials said. The pursuit began about 9 p.m. when Los Angeles police officers responded to a call regarding a suspicious person in a vehicle in the 5200 block of College View Avenue, just off Colorado Boulevard, said LAPD Sgt. Fernando Carrasco. "We got a call regarding somebody with a car at the location," Carrasco said.

I served on the Crescenta Valley Town Council for seven years through 2008. In 2001, local resident Richard Toyon came to the council with a slide presentation asking us to envision Foothill Boulevard in the future. Did we want Foothill to be filled with cookie-cutter fast food and retail chain stores, or did we want to have a commercial district that was unique and in character with our neighborhoods? The council was overwhelmingly in favor of the latter, and the Foothill Design Committee was formed, with myself and Toyon as the co-chairs.

LA CRESCENTA — Design plans for a 15,520-square-foot shopping center at the corner of Foothill Boulevard and Sunset Avenue were pitched to a skeptical public Thursday. The center is the last project to be exempt from new design standards for Foothill Boulevard adopted last year by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors after years of discussion. Los Angeles-based Group Architects presented plans for the project to several dozen people at the Crescenta Valley Town Council meeting to mixed results.

LA CRESCENTA — The glut of after-school tutors lining Foothill Boulevard did little to deter Tariq and Saddia Rana from launching a learning center of their own. "Each center offers a very different service," Tariq Rana said Saturday at the grand opening of his Kumon Math and Reading Center. "For us, everything is one-on-one, independent and individualized." The center, which on Tuesdays and Fridays serves roughly 120 students between the ages of 2 and 16, opened last month with support from the Crescenta Valley Chamber of Commerce.

CITY HALL — City officials this week moved closer to a set of development guidelines for the North Glendale annex of the Crescenta Valley. The City Council on Tuesday gave city planners direction to proceed with drafting the North Glendale Community Plan, which would serve as a "constitution" to guide other policy documents and potential zoning changes. The move is a milestone in a process that started in 2008 when the City Council directed the Planning Department to respond to concerns from residents who wanted to preserve their area's rural feel and mountain views from encroaching development.