A Regional Destination Point

For more than three decades, Huntington Crossing – where the 210 Freeway crosses Huntington Drive at the Monrovia/Arcadia border – has been a hotel, dining, retail, office and entertainment center serving both foothill communities.

A regional destination point for shoppers, a convenient base of operations for business travelers and a family-oriented restaurant row on one of the valley’s busiest boulevards, it has a growing regional significance.

Nearly unnoticed to the casual shopper or visitor, though, are the Monrovia residential neighborhoods that flank the business district, both north and south of Huntington.

Those residences may soon be much more visible, and Huntington Crossing many now be changing into more or a “neighborhood” than has been evident in the past.

The City of Monrovia is working now with developers on a plan to put mixed-use housing at the eastern end of Huntington Crossing, right at Huntington Drive and Fifth Avenue. Lofts, flats and condos above and adjacent to retail shops and offices are in the offing.

With home sales and financing both moving slowly, actual work on the project is still probably two years off. But planning and preliminary work are progressing.

With funding from a federal grant, the Monrovia will soon be covering over a flood control channel that bi-sects part of the development property, preparing it for the new uses that are to come.

It is just one of several locations in Monrovia where new development is either underway or getting ready to begin. The Colorado Commons mixed-use development in Old Town is open and new residents are moving in; the Courtyards at Old Town mixed-use apartment complex is under construction and work should begin in the fall on a new Class A office at the corner of Huntington and Myrtle Avenue, to house a bank, a restaurant and offices.

The future mixed-use development along Huntington Drive will bring the region full circle – the Huntington Crossing neighborhood was a mix of commercial and single-family residential when Monrovia began its renewal process in the 1970s.

Then, as the 210 Freeway was constructed and its intersection with Huntington Drive created, it was apparent that the area needed a lot of help. Much of that stretch of old Route 66 had become blighted. The area was a mix of residential and commercial properties, auto dealerships and bars.

Redevelopment efforts by both Monrovia and Arcadia over the next 30 years transformed the street. It is now home the a Doubletree Hotel, a Courtyards by Marriott and an Embassy Suites, in addition to several other smaller business and long-term-stay hotels, the Huntington Oaks Shopping Center, office and restaurant developments in both communities and such business-services retailers as Office Depot.

In recent years, hotel development actually tripled the number of available rooms in the district to nearly 1,200.

The Expo Design Center in Monrovia, just east of the intersection, up-scaled the retail customers now being drawn to the area. Soon, Henry’s Market, an up-scale food store, will be opening across the street.

In the 1990s, the redevelopment of a former mobile home park behind what is now the Doubletree Hotel brought in a new headquarters for Xerox Special Information Systems, with 200 well-paid workers providing a growing customer base for the two-dozen restaurants within walking distance.

Now, adding a few hundreds residents to that mix – particularly residents who are seeking a more urban lifestyle – will also add to the customer base and continue to provide a sustainable economic foundation.

Cooperation between Huntington Crossing’s two communities, Monrovia and Arcadia, has been a key ingredient in both creating and marketing the area. Working closely with hotel and restaurant managers, representatives of both city governments and both Chambers of Commerce were instrumental inputting together the foundations of a Huntington Crossing marketing group.

Actually, marketing the area wasn’t all that difficult. Travelers find that the Huntington Crossing hotels offer all the amenities of Pasadena and Los Angeles hotels, with the convenience of nearby restaurants and shopping, in a safe community with little of the traffic, noise and parking problems of larger cities.

And the advantages continue to grow. Monrovia has for the past four years fun a free vintage-style trolley from Huntington Crossing to the community’s Old Town shopping, dining and entertainment district on weekend night’s typing together the two regional attractions and making a stay at Huntington Crossing all that more attractive.

Now, adding more residential to the mix just seems to make sense.

For additional information visit: www.ci.monrovia.ca.us