Sale of Land Paves Way for Shopping Center

The controversial Fair Oaks Renaissance Plaza has cleared an important hurdle with the city’s sale of the land to developer Danny Bakewell for construction of a Vons supermarket shopping center, city officials said.

The city last week sold the land at Fair Oaks Avenue and Orange Grove Boulevard for $1.5 million, about a tenth of the price it paid previous owners of the parcels over the past year.

The city faced a sale deadline to maintain Vons’ commitment to lease a store there. Escrow closed after Bakewell’s construction company obtained a vital $7-million bank loan to build the 50,000-square-foot shopping center.

The center was originally slated to open in December last year, but the start of construction has been subject to a series of delays.

A majority of the City Council has supported what is to be the first full-scale shopping center in economically depressed northwest Pasadena. However, critics, including Councilwoman Ann-Marie Villicana, call the financial arrangement a gift of public funds to Bakewell, who is president of the Brotherhood Crusade, an African American community and civil rights organization.