Senior Housing Plans Modified to Add Retail

Recently altered plans will pair a retail component with the 92-unit, two-story senior apartment complex on Foothill Boulevard, city officials said.

The City Council on Tuesday approved a 24-month extension of a $1.8-million loan from the city Housing Department to a public-private group of developers, including the nonprofit Neighborhood Empowerment and Economic Development, Inc. The additional time will enable developers to pursue low-income housing tax credits from the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee.

Those tax credits will be used as incentives to lure retailers, according to Alvin Kusumoto, planning deputy for City Councilman Richard Alarcon, who represents Lake View Terrace.

The residential part of the complex is budgeted at about $8.5 million, but Kusumoto said there is no estimate yet on the commercial portion. Initially, plans called for a residential complex and library. But after consultants and many residents last year suggested commercial development, the plans changed.

“It’s an area of existing commercial use,” Kusumoto said. “Residents didn’t want to stick a purely residential development in there. They also want retail space close by to them. They see that as a benefit.”

The land purchased by American Housing Construction, Inc., that was originally reserved for the library will be turned into retail space. But developers have not yet contacted any prospective tenants.

NEED, which is run by supporters of Alarcon, faced criticism earlier this year when The Times disclosed that the organization had failed to repair six buildings in an area left a ghost town by the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The city housing department had loaned NEED $7 million for those repairs--and $3.5 for two other quake-damaged buildings. Recently the housing department announced that it would never again let such an inexperienced developer take on so much work at once. City officials also agreed to extend new short-term loans to the group to speed renovations.