PASADENA>>Paseo Colorado is about to a get a makeover.

A ceremony was held Wednesday to mark the beginning of a $70 million project that will bring a six-story, 179-room Hyatt Place hotel, a seven-story, mixed-use building, upgrades to storefronts, walkways, lighting and landscaping, and several new retailers.

An existing pedestrian walkway in the interior of Paseo Colorado also will be extended to the east to connect to Los Robles Avenue, opening a pedestrian linkage that has long been blocked.

The project is expected to be completed with new tenant openings by mid-2017.

Demolition of a 150,000-square-foot space previously occupied by a Macy’s department store is underway to make room for the hotel and mixed-use building.

Pasadena Mayor Terry Tornek and Councilman Steve Madison attended Wednesday’s event, as well as a representative with DDR Corp, the Beachwood, Ohio-based company that owns the 546,095 -square-foot center. DDR will be developing the new mixed-use building and doing the center’s upgrades in addition to bringing in new retailers. They include Victoria’s Secret, Chico’s, Soma, White House/Black Market, West Elm and a new dinner theater concept called The Rose.

Those merchants will compliment Paseo Colorado’s existing mix of retailers and restaurants, which includes ArcLight Cinemas, Tokyo Wako, Equinox, DSW, Coach, Yard House and Tommy Bahama.

The mixed-use building will be situated on the north end of the site along east Colorado Boulevard, with a mix of restaurant and retail space and 71 condos.

“This will make Paseo Colorado more pedestrian-friendly and give it a modern, fresh look and feel that makes it more inviting to shoppers who are increasingly desiring an experience that involves shopping, dining and spending time with family and friends,” DDR spokesman Brandon Glen said.

The Hyatt Hotel will be developed by Ensemble Real Estate Solutions in Long Beach.

“This will become a dynamic kind of center — a real destination spot for people in Pasadena,” Tornek said. “What seems to be the most successful with cities are locations that offer a whole range of different activities. This center will have all of that, and there is also plenty of subterranean parking.”

The shopping center began in 1980 as Plaza Pasadena with J.C. Penney, The Broadway and May Company California as anchor stores. The venue has changed hands over the years but it’s never quite lived up to the city’s expectations, according to Tornek.

“It was originally designed to revitalize that part of town but it was done in a way that offended people because it blocked that pedestrian linkage,” he said. “That was a price the city had to pay to make it happen because JC Penney was an anchor store and they insisted that the area be enclosed. That was thought to be state of the art at the time.”

The center was initially developed by The Hahn Co. at a cost of $115 million. It became Paseo Colorado in 2001 and was sold two years later to DDR for $114 million. Macy’s closed in early 2013 and a Gelson’s supermarket closed that same year.

Tornek said DDR’s improvements will make a huge difference.

“They deserve credit because Macy’s still had a lease on that building they had to buy out and they have to demolish the building to make way for the dramatic changes that will affect the way the whole center will function,” he said.