Six-story building with affordable apartments planned for downtown Santa Maria moves forward
Dave Alley
SANTA MARIA, Calif. – The proposed six-story Perlman Apartment building that is being planned for the busy corner of Broadway and Main Street in Santa Maria continues to approval process.
The Vernon Group has been working on the project for more than a year, the latest in a handful of developments the Santa Barbara-based company has proposed in the downtown area.
The Perlman Apartments was recently discussed at the Santa Maria Planning Commission and was given an approval for a Downtown Permit by the planning commissioners.
Now, the project will move on to Santa Maria City Council, which will review the project early next month and vote on final approval.
“We’re taking this project in front of City Council August 5th,” said Brett Vernon, The Vernon Group President. “We’re really excited to present this project to the council and hopefully get it approved and move forward on the next steps to get that much closer to breaking ground on this project.”
The project is planned for what is currently Perlman Park, a lightly-used 1.12-acre site that is located in the northeast corner of Broadway and Main Street.
“It’s 150 units,” said Vernon. “It’s affordable housing and six stories tall. The ground floor is going to be all parking and all residential above that and we’re going to have a private kind of central outdoor area on the second floor.”
The overall size of the complex will be 197,000 square-feet, and according to city documents, will include 15 studio units with average area of 411 square feet, 53 one-bedroom units with average area of 583 square feet, 38 two-bedroom units with average area of 778 square feet, and 44 three-bedroomunits with average area of 1,105 square feet.
The developer and city also state the rental units would be 100 percent affordable (except for a market-rate manager’s unit), with an overall affordability of 60-percent Area Median Income (AMI).
“Once we get it approved, we have to then take that project and try to get financing for the affordable housing development,” said Vernon. “Once we once we do get financing, from state and federal agencies, we’re then going to move forward on construction documents, which will take about a year, and then at that point in time, we know we have the funds lined up. We have construction drawings and permits ready and we will then break ground.”
Vernon believes a realistic goal to break ground on the project should everything line up is approximately 18 months.
Another project with a much sooner timeline is the long-planned Heritage Walk Lofts that are being planned in the old building that was the former longtime home of Mervyn’s, and most recently, Fallas.
“We are hoping to break ground in the next month,” said Vernon. “I’m really excited. We’ve been working on this for about five years, and so to finally break ground and finally see something coming out of the ground, that to me is really exciting. I mean, this is what we work for. We’re going to start to build our community there. We’re going to reactivate downtown.”
Another six-story housing development being planned by The Vernon Group is the Alvin Newton Apartments that are proposed for the southeast corner of Broadway and Main Street, adjacent to Bank of America and the Santa Maria Town Center mall north parking structure.
“We are pretty much permit ready on the Newton Apartments,” said Vernon. “We’re securing financing for that. We’re kind of working through that. Hopefully within six months we’re breaking ground on Alvin Newton Apartments.”