Posted on: March 23, 2007
Public housing rebuild replaces longtime eyesore
BY AMANDA BISHOP, San Francisco Business Times Contributor
Source: San Francisco Business Times
For decades, the giant concrete public housing structures on Valencia Street provided meeting space – for the wrong kinds of meetings.
The buildings’ interior corridors were the sites of drug deals, gang activity and even murder. By the late 1990s, paint was peeling off the wall and rodents were overrunning the 1943 building.
With the availability of federal HOPE VI funding in 1992, city leaders and the housing authority saw the opportunity to turn the project around. The U.S. Housing and Urban Development HOPE program allows cities to rebuild severely distressed properties.
The housing authority selected Mission Housing Development Corp., which had offices near the public housing structure, for the project.
At first, the developers considered renovating the existing structure, but they soon realized that the enclosed corridors and lack of community gathering space were contributing to crime levels.
“It outlived its usefulness and needed to be tom down,” said Bob Nibbi, president of Nibbi Brothers Construction, the contractor for the project architects Fred Pollack and David Brown created a radically different design than the mammoth exist-ing structure. The $66 million Valencia Gardens now has 260 public housing units and 14 affordable housing units in 16 buildings. It includes 60 senior housing units. All open onto the outside world.
The most remarkable feature of the new development is that it no longer screams public housing.
“It looks like some of the nicest buildings in the neighborhood,” Nibbi said. “Tenants really have a pride and interest in keeping it maintained because it looks so nice to begin with .”
There are still places where people gather at Valencia Gardens, but now they are used for building community. Among the new gathering places at Valencia Gardens are a day-care center, a community room, computer lab and a lounge for seniors. Rotating artwork by local artists adorns the walls of the community space. Mission Housing also has a program that connects residents with neighborhood organizations that provide such services as driving senior citizens to doctor’s appointments and offering tutoring for teens.
When Valencia Gardens opened in September, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom hailed the project as a vehicle to help transform “community blight into engines of community renewal.”
Federal, state and city money helped fund Valencia Gardens, which was completed In 18 months. One major challenge to the project was its dizzying array of financial backers, each with its own requirements.
“What is very unusual is that a project this complicated was finished ahead of schedule and under budget,” said Larry Del Carlo, president and CEO of Mission Housing,
The project used many funding sources to create a varied community, Del Carlo said. Some funding was used for senior housing, while other funding paid for Section 8 housing or for people receiving a housing tax credit
“We wanted a project more typical of a regular community,” he said. “There is such a great need for affordable housing and the need Is among diverse groups of people.”
VALENCIA GARDENS
Location: 390 Valencia St., San Francisco.
Estimated value: $66 million.
Size of project: 16 buildings on 4.9 acres for a total of 288,700 square feet.
Developer: Mission Housing Development Corp.
Contractor: Nibbi Brothers.
Architect: Fred Pollack and David Brown of Van Meter Williams Pollack.
Financial partner: Citibank West FSB, Alliance Capital ltd., U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, San Francisco Housing Authority, Federal Home Loan Bank, California Department of Housing and Community Development.
Source: San Francisco Business Times
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