The Downtown Specific Plan (DSP) is based on a community-driven vision that seeks to leverage downtown’s built, natural, and socio-economic assets and partnerships to generate transformative, responsive, and resilient reinvestment in Downtown.
Following extensive discovery process to understand existing conditions and trends, the community came together for a three-day virtual charrette to listen, learn, review, discuss, and develop an ambitious long-term vision while proposing pragmatic, immediate, and short-term actions in downtown.
Baldwin Park identified the need to tackle the city’s fiscal and affordable housing crisis with a binding commitment to address the challenges related to climate and racial inequity. The DSP provides a cogent answer to address all of these challenges. The DSP seeks to direct growth and reinvestment to the economic and cultural heart of the community where public, civic, and transit infrastructure exists in a walkable environment and reinvestment is desirable. The DSP provide a framework for preservation, growth, and reinvestment in three focus areas:
- Making Great Places: The DSP seeks to activate unused public and private space attracting people and creating a critical mass of activity that supports economic development and creates a dynamic downtown with bustling destinations.
- Inclusive Prosperity: The plan outlines clear strategies and incentives to nurture and grow existing and new small scale manufacturers and budding entrepreneurs on their journey from conception to brick-and-mortar.
- Accessible Downtown: The DSP aims to transform the area to include vibrant, attractive, and revitalized streets that provide safe, accessible, and connected mobility options for all users.
Objective Standards: Community preferences and directions throughout the visioning process guided the crafting of clear and precise standards carefully calibrated for flexibility and predictability.
The Downtown Core allows the highest intensity. Outside the Downtown Core, a continuous building frontage will provide definition and enclosure to the Ramona Boulevard and Maine Avenue public realm. Taller buildings line up along the wide stretch of street frontage with building heights stepping down in the rear where the building meets the residential neighborhoods
Phased Implementation: The economic and fiscal state necessitates a small-scale, grassroots approach to revitalization. The DSP features small, low-cost improvements that can take place immediately. This will build trust and generate momentum to take on other short- and long-term public infrastructure projects that would be phased as private development occurs. Smaller-scale projects can be paid for by individual building owners or neighborhood developers, which is a more community-driven process.