The year is drawing to a close and 2024 looms. Those who have been paying attention to the new housing projects sprouting up in downtown Santa Cruz might remember that this particular turn in the calendar was mentioned in the early projections for when some of these new buildings would be finished and ready for new occupants.
How are we looking as we near the end of 2023?
Let’s focus on the three housing projects closest to opening:
Cedar Street Family Apartments
The new affordable-housing project at 525 Cedar St. next to Calvary Episcopal Church is nearing completion, with the first residents expected to move in in February. The 65-unit apartment building will consist of one-, two- and three-bedroom units, all qualified as “affordable” with rates set at 30 to 60% of area median income. (As of 2022, Santa Cruz County’s area median income is $119,300.) Rents will range from $1,457 for a one-bedroom unit up to $2,415 for a three-bedroom.
There will be two ground-floor retail spaces yet to be leased. And the property will also include a landscaped “paseo” pedestrian pathway connecting Cedar and Center streets. Rental applications for the project are now closed. The project’s co-developers are Bay Area-based Pacific Union Partners and Milestone Housing Group.
Anton Pacific
The massive Anton Pacific apartment building sits between Pacific Avenue and Front Street at Laurel Street. It consists of five floors of market-rate rental apartments, 207 units in total, with two levels of parking.
Garrett Borges, development manager of the project’s Sacramento-based developer Anton DevCo, said that his company is aiming for the first move-ins to come before the end of February. “That’s what we’re really pushing hard for,” he said.
The market-rate rentals will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. Borges said he expects pre-leasing on the Anton apartments to begin toward the end of December. The project’s website is collecting information from prospective tenants and will contact anyone interested with updates on the process.
The building will also have up to 11,000 square feet available for ground-floor retail. Borges said the building’s design is keeping maximum flexibility in those spaces for the sake of attracting retail tenants, especially a high-profile restaurant.
“From our point of view, having a great restaurant there is also a great amenity for our residents, so it’s a huge priority on our end to try and get some really good-quality restaurateurs in there,” he said, adding that his brokers are “working hard” to find a good prospective tenant.
The fencing around the building will likely stay up for security reasons for a few more weeks, but, said Borges, it should be coming down in late December or early January.
Pacific Station South
The affordable housing project known as Pacific Station South will be a neighbor to Anton Pacific and will straddle the block between Front Street and Pacific Avenue. The project includes 85 units of affordable rental apartments, with a mix of studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments.
Pacific Station South is not as close to completion as 525 Cedar and Anton Pacific. Jim Rendler of the project’s developer, San Jose-based For the Future Housing Inc., said the building’s opening is “realistically probably May for initial occupancies, and that might slip into June.”
Rendler said that the application process for the new units is not yet open, but that the company’s plan is to launch a leasing website sometime in December. He also said that he anticipates that applicants will be chosen by lottery. The project is classified “affordable,” meaning rents will be capped at between 30 and 60% of area median income.
The second floor of the building is to be the new home of the Women’s Health Center, sharing the space with the dentist offices of Dientes Community Dental Care. There will also be a 30-foot-wide Maple Paseo, providing a pedestrian pathway between Pacific and Front.
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