HUNTINGTON PARK : Construction Begins on Senior Housing

It has taken six years to get off the ground, but construction has begun on a 183-unit senior citizen housing complex in the heart of the city’s business district.

The Rugby Plaza Senior Apartments, an $18-million project one block from bustling Pacific Boulevard, will provide housing and a health services center for low-income seniors.

The project will be built by Cordial Housing Inc. and the Bedford Group, both private developers. Construction should be completed by fall, 1996.

Located on Rugby Avenue between Clarendon and Gage avenues at the site of a parking lot, the six-story complex will contain a small library, a chapel, community service room, arts and crafts room, kitchen facilities, a dining room area and open-air courtyards.

Under federal guidelines, senior citizens with an income of $27,950 or less would qualify as a tenant for a single unit. A two-person household with an income of $31,900 or less would qualify for a two-bedroom apartment.

It was designed as a self-contained structure for security purposes, developers said. In addition, there will be an emergency call system in every unit, which will be wired into the manager’s apartment.

But the showcase of the complex, which will have 46 two-bedroom units and 137 one-bedroom apartments, is the health center, which will be run by East Los Angeles-based AltaMed Health Services Corp.

Neither the 224-unit Seville Senior Housing building on Randolph Street nor the 164-unit Concord Building at Seville and Saturn avenues has an on-site health care provider.

AltaMed, a 26-year-old nonprofit organization, offers rehabilitation services such as physical and speech therapy, medical and nursing services, as well as nutritional services and transportation.

“We help people to achieve as much independence as possible so that they can have independent living and not institutional living,” said Marie Torres, AltaMed vice president of long-term care. “They all get counseling and for people that have mental health problems--like depression, anxiety or speech disabilities--we will provide psychiatric social work.”

Residents from surrounding communities may use the center, one of only 14 in the county, Torres said. The center also will offer adult day care for families who look after people with physical or mental disabilities at home, Torres said.

The managing general partner for the project is the nonprofit Community Housing Development Organization Inc., a grass-roots group formed to help find the developers and the funds necessary to make the project come to fruition.

“We are the little people that lessen the burden on government,” said Becky Avila, president of the 2-year-old group.

Financing came from the Mercy Loan Fund, Fannie Mae, the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, Local Initiatives Managed Assets Corp. and the city’s redevelopment agency. Home Savings Bank of America will oversee the funds.

Officials at the groundbreaking ceremony last week said the project was delayed six years while officials put together the mix of funding. They lauded the effort as an example of government and the private sector working together.

“This is an example of how federal, state and local government work together to finance a project,” said Craig Cordial, vice president of the Orange County-based Cordial Inc. “It’s the quintessential project that the government hopes to get done.”

Mayor Thomas E. Jackson, who has been with the City Council for 27 years, said the city has been working on projects such as this one since the early 1970s, but amid a statewide recession, financiers and government agencies have been more cautious in putting such projects together.

A 146-space parking structure, financed through a 20-year federal loan, will be built by November to compensate for the 100-space parking lot lost to the development.