The Fresno Bee
By Sanford Nax | October 2, 2008
Developer selects southwest Fresno for 230-unit project.
Fresno, CA — A Marin County developer of affordable housing plans to try something new – and the company wants to do it in southwest Fresno.
The Fresno City Council has selected EAH Housing to develop a 230-unit specially designed project at Elm and Annadale avenues that would feature apartments for families and senior citizens.
It would be the first multigenerational development by EAH, which owns and manages three other affordable housing communities in Fresno and Selma.
The development would be the latest in a string of affordable-housing projects in the Fresno area, which has a strong demand for such homes. Sequoia Village would help meet two objectives: housing for low-income families and seniors.
It comes on the heels of announcements for Garden View Terrace, a senior housing complex proposed for Minnewawa and Barstow avenues in Clovis, and Bastian Court, a five-story, 60-unit affordable complex in downtown Fresno.
As proposed, Sequoia Village will have a two-story structure of 100 apartments with up to four bedrooms each for families, and 130 units for seniors in a three-story building. The configuration would enable generations of the same family to live near one another on a single 7.4-acre plot.
“There are so many ways interaction can occur inside the community or within the neighborhood,” said Lamar Turner, senior project manager. “You can have seniors help mentor or educate the students. And as seniors grow more frail, you can have the family side helping to provide personal care.”
EAH calls it a model for a “multigenerational healthy living community.”
Sequoia Village will be across the street from two schools and a community center, and next door to a Sequoia Community Health Centers clinic. The apartments and clinic will be connected with sidewalks, and a public gathering area accessible to all residents and clinic caregivers will be constructed, Turner said.
Each apartment complex is to have its own clubhouse staffed with resources tailored to residents. The senior center would have services for that age group, while the family center would have after-school programs and the like, said Chad Wakefield, project manager for the Fresno Redevelopment Agency, which solicited the project.
Turner said everything will be integrated.
“It’s a simple matter to walk between the units and buildings and complexes,” he said. “It is intended by design to function as a single unit.”
The $38 million project will be financed with tax credits and could be open for business in summer 2011.
EAH is not yet accepting reservations. Its Web site is www.eahhousing.org.
EAH was one of seven companies that responded to the Fresno Redevelopment Agency’s development request. “Theirs was the most unique,” Wakefield said.
