NORTHWEST : STANTON : Mom Sparks Builder of Senior Units
Al Marshall calls himself a developer by trade and a senior citizen aficionado by family orientation.
For the last two years Marshall, executive vice president of Newport Pacific Development Corp. in Newport Beach, has been the driving force behind four high-density, low-cost senior housing projects that have been built or planned in Anaheim, Downey, Orange and Stanton.
And for the last 13 years, he has shared his home with his 83-year-old mother, Olive. The way Marshall sees it, it’s only natural that he’s developed his private concerns into a professional mission to provide affordable housing for seniors.
“It’s my bailiwick,” Marshall said of his latest projects, which range from an 80-unit Anaheim senior housing complex to the firm’s most ambitious project, a 335-unit housing complex in Stanton.
Sitting among the antique furnishings of his ninth-floor office is a framed newspaper clipping announcing the Stanton City Council’s initial approval of the development proposal that is now in final financing stages.
Marshall first consolidated the family quarters while living in Texas, when he bought an old Victorian house and converted its first-floor livery stable into an apartment for his mother.
“I used to joke that I keep my mom in the stables,” Marshall said. When he joined Newport Pacific two years ago, he found nearby property with a garage apartment in which his mother now lives.
“But how many seniors have that luxury?” Marshall asked, adding that too many seniors living on fixed incomes have been priced out of the escalating housing market in Orange County.
It shouldn’t have to happen, according to Marshall, who said the question isn’t whether, but how to produce affordable attached housing in an unaffordable climate.
Cooperation between city governments and private enterprise is the key, he said. Rents start as low as $365 at some of the senior housing projects Marshall has spearheaded. But to keep rents down and development economically feasible, Marshall said his firm relies on high-density designs that often require zoning variances.
In the Stanton project, cooperation between the public and private sectors went beyond an exception to zoning regulations.
According to Marshall, Stanton city officials contributed to the design of the Senior Housing Complex after touring 37 senior projects in other cities and submitting 17 recommendations--from levered door handles to heated wading pools--that Newport Pacific incorporated into its development proposal.
The complex the first phase of a proposed $61-million Stanton Civic Center project that also includes plans for a new city hall and recreation center, and a 100,000-square-foot retail/commercial development.
The three-phase, 24-acre project on Katella Avenue south of Beach Boulevard, would build out the vacant property surrounding Midwood Community Hospital, the Stanton Police Department and the Boys and Girls clubs.
In the first phase, the Stanton Redevelopment Agency will use redevelopment funds to buy land for the senior center. Then, according to an agreement with Newport Pacific., the Stanton agency will in turn re-sell land to Newport Pacific at an estimated profit of $1 million to $1.5 million.
That money would pay for design and construction of the new civic center and recreation facility. The city currently occupies half of the former Mary Perez Elementary School, which it leases from the Savanna School District. But that lease expires in 1991, according to Mike Bouvier, the city’s planning manager.
Marshall said he is shooting for a November ground-breaking for the Stanton Senior Housing Complex, with apartment occupancies planned 13 months after construction begins.
