Doing A-OK With SROs
When architects try to justify poor designs by pointing to low budgets, they should be exiled for a night to either of two single-room occupancy hotels (SROs) designed by architect Rob Quigley.
These downtown buildings, the just-opened J Street Inn and the 4-year-old Baltic Inn, were done on a shoestring budget, $6.8 million, and provide sub-apartment-size rooms to low- and moderate-income folks, most of whom live and work downtown. And the projects succeed with a special flair usually reserved for pricier projects.
At the Baltic, which opened in 1986, Quigley used standard low-budget construction methods to shape a building to manipulate light and space in interesting ways.
Two light wells cut through the 209-unit structure, giving interior rooms plenty of natural light. Extra money and design time were dedicated to the entry, with its tall arch, neon lettering and colorful tile patterns. Only two front units have small balconies, but these add scale and texture to what otherwise would have been a flat stucco facade.
The front of the Baltic is best known for its attractive, bargain-basement graphic: a large wedge of natural-color stucco that points to the entry.
Rooms at the Baltic--which was the first SRO to be built in the United States in 50 years and the first in California since 1914--are 10 by 12 feet, and include basic kitchens with small refrigerators and microwaves, and bathrooms with toilets only. Showers are down the hall.
The J Street Inn is Quigley’s second downtown SRO for a partnership including developers Chris Mortenson and Bud Fischer. The 221-room building, which took in its first tenants last week, is a step up from the Baltic, with larger (230 to 308 square feet), better-equipped rooms.
Known as “living units,” the rooms are “somewhere between an SRO and a small studio apartment,” Quigley said. They include full bathrooms.
Rents at the Baltic start at $275 a month, while at the J Street Inn, the least expensive rooms are the 22 at $340 a month set aside for people earning less than $15,918 a year. Twenty-two additional rooms at $397 a month are reserved for those making less than $18,571, 88 for those making less than $26,500 and the rest for those making less than $31,836. Room rents are determined by income levels.
In exchange for a $900,000 loan at 1 point over prime from the city’s Redevelopment Agency, the developers agreed to rent to these low- and moderate-income groups for the 30-year life of the loan. If they comply, the loan and interest will be forgiven at the end of the term.
The agency also asked for on-site parking. The J Street Inn has 92 underground spaces, which added nearly $1 million to the project’s cost. Mortenson figures the new SRO’s tenants are more likely to own cars than those at the lower-rent Baltic, which has 30 spaces on a nearby lot, but none on site.
New SROs seem to have a strong market. So far, 88 of the J Street Inn’s rooms have been rented. At the Baltic, occupancy averages about 85%, according to Joe Miller, a manager there.
Where Quigley had little more than wood and stucco to work with at the Baltic, the J Street Inn’s budget afforded more perks. Landscape architects Martin Poirier, Laura Burnett and Andy Spurlock of The Spurlock Office made the interior light wells into art events.
The Baltic’s light wells double as leisure space for the tenants, but, as it turns out, socializing tenants create a din that bothers other tenants who want quiet.
Mortenson told his designers that the interior light well at the J Street Inn shouldn’t be usable or conventionally landscaped--water causes problems when it seeps through to underground parking.
To add a calming effect while giving tenants something to look at, The Spurlock Office designed two large but inexpensive art pieces for the light well.
One is a fountain consisting of water coursing down a 50-foot length of galvanized storm drain pipe. The other is a diagonal concrete beam that disappears into the ground, tethered by stainless steel cables.
Interior landscaping consists of crushed granite and seven stands of bamboo. Overall, the effect is of a low-budget Japanese Zen garden, and the attempt at serenity succeeds.
Like the Baltic’s, much of the J Street Inn’s budget went toward the entry, with a tower extending on a diagonal to beckon you in from the corner of 2nd Avenue and J Street. The lobby is much larger than the Baltic’s. First-floor ceilings are extra high, adding a sense of richness considering the budget. Colorful tiles help liven things up near the entry.
Also like the Baltic, the J Street project uses a limited number of balconies to break up the building’s exterior walls. Window awnings help, too.
With the completion of the J Street Inn in the heart of the city’s redevelopment area--next to luxury housing such as One Harbor Drive, an expensive condominium project about to break ground across the street--the city’s redevelopment program shows encouraging signs of meeting diverse housing needs.
The new Convention Center and several new downtown hotels require scores of blue-collar workers. The Quigley-designed SROs and several others recently completed or nearing completion offer clean, affordable living.
But even with abundant new housing ranging from SRO rooms to luxury condos, downtown redevelopment isn’t covering all the bases.
As a variety of new redevelopment projects, including housing, have spread through the Marina Redevelopment Area south of Broadway and west of the Gaslamp Quarter, several older, very inexpensive SROs have been lost.
This could well be the reason for the escalating presence of the homeless downtown, especially in Centre City East, a few blocks from the core of the Marina area.
Two new SROs scheduled to open on 13th Street in August with monthly rents in the low $200s could help the situation.
While SROs seem to be the predominant new building type in Centre City East at the moment, City Architect Mike Stepner doesn’t feel they are being overdone.
“To my mind, they are an improvement over vacant lots and abandoned buildings. I feel strongly that they can coexist with other forms of development.
“There are lots of problem areas, but we’re getting new development beyond SROs in Centre City East--apartments, new commercial, the new Fine Art Store. Little things are happening that are slowly changing the area.”
Some people wonder whether more SROs should have parking, but Stepner doesn’t believe the lowest-cost ones need it. Most of their tenants don’t own cars. Only three of the 30 spaces in the Baltic’s lot are rented by tenants, Mortenson said.
“If there’s a need for parking downtown in the future, it will be met by private-sector providers,” Stepner said.
Although many of the new SROs, including the Baltic and the J Street Inn, are large, they have only one entrance and offer no uses other than residential. So they contribute only marginally to the kinds of street activity that can revitalize neighborhoods.
New SROs designed by Quigley for sites on Island Avenue and on India Street will break that trend with ground-floor retail and restaurant uses.
Such mixed-use SROs would generate pedestrian traffic, which would help naturally buffer the impact of street people in places such as Centre City East. Veteran planners know that an intelligent blend of well-designed projects does a lot more than a beefed-up police force to make an urban core secure.
