City Center, Glendale, CA

City Center is downtown Glendale, the stretch around Brand Boulevard that holds the Glendale Galleria, the Americana at Brand and a thick concentration of restaurants, offices and newer apartment towers. It is the most urban neighborhood in the city. Housing here is mostly apartments and condos, including mid-rise buildings on Brand and Central and the residences built into the Americana, which opened in 2008. A few older Craftsman houses and small courts survive on the side streets, but the 1960s apartment boom and later towers replaced most of the early bungalows. Outdoor space is urban. The Green at the Americana works as a town square, and the Artsakh Avenue paseo holds a cultural night market. Brand Park and the Verdugo trails are a short drive north. The Glendale Central Library on Harvard Street is the city's main library and a quiet place to spend an afternoon. Choices here run long. Zhengyalov Hatz on East Broadway makes an herb-stuffed flatbread worth building a lunch around. Porto's on North Brand is the Cuban bakery known for cheese rolls and potato balls, and Regent Coffee, a local roaster, and Urartu Coffee on Artsakh cover coffee. Walking is the main way to live downtown, with Ralphs and Olive Market for groceries and Beeline and Metro buses along Brand and Central. The Glendale Transportation Center in Tropico has Metrolink and Amtrak. The tradeoff is crowds and traffic, especially on weekends and during the holidays when shoppers pack Brand, and noise from late-night venues. City Center feels most like home on weekday mornings, when the shops are still closed and the only line on Brand is the one outside Porto's.