Parkside at Sycamore in the News!

For promising fresh starts, nothing beats the birth of an affordable apartment complex.

Last week, the Parkside at Sycamore apartment complex opened on West Sacramento's West Capitol Avenue. As the first U-Hauls there skirted around cars loaded with boxes, the 62-unit project stood out as a blaze of fresh color on a street that needed it. Parkside is a new Exhibit A, "the first significant project" in the city's aim to redevelop that stretch of rough-edged West Capitol Avenue, according to the city's redevelopment manager, Les Bowman.

It's not surprising that Parkside leased so quickly. The apartments are spacious. They have dark wood laminate floors and new refrigerators and stoves. Best, for people who work in jobs that often mean run-down apartments or scary neighborhoods, rent starts at $407 a month. It peaks at $1,049 for three bedrooms and two baths.

For Sammy Guardado, a 23-year old Bel Air Markets grocery clerk in Natomas, that makes his first apartment possible. Goodbye, Mom and Dad in Natomas.

"The market is still high," he said after two years of looking at rentals. "At this place, the cost is easy to live with."

Roseville affordable housing developer USA Properties Fund built the region's newest income-qualified project in partnership with Pacific West Communities of Idaho. Together, they financed the $20 million complex with state and federal tax credits, $1.9 million in state housing bonds, $2.6 million in city of West Sacramento redevelopment funds and construction loans from Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp. Parkside rents now to working people and retirees earning $15,000 to $50,000 a year.

"There's a perception that these are welfare tenants. But that's wrong. These are working people," said USA's President Geoff Brown.

Specifically, that's Satnam and Surinder Kaur. The couple, with two children, also moved out of a parent's home in Sacramento.

"We like that it's a new development," said Surinder Kaur. Below the second-story apartment, friends unloaded a U-Haul. "There's an Indian church close by. I love it," she said. "It's the best we've seen in our price range."

Other opening-week tenants told similar stories. A Natomas retiree said the move cut her rent by $217 a month. And for more space and wood laminate floors! A 23-year-old, just out of technical school with a working wife, said his rent is down $50 a month from an apartment complex nearby.

Parkside manager Juana Escalante said many tenants came from close-by apartment complexes and mobile home parks.

"There is plenty of pent-up demand for well-thought-out affordable housing across California," said Brown.

Sacramento apartment industry players say this affordable variety is the only apartment construction happening locally. They say banks won't lend for market-rate apartment construction.

Why? Developers overbuilt during the boom. Vacancy rates are still high. There's no need for new $1,400-a-month apartments when area unemployment stands at 12 percent.

But developers who can layer a complicated maze of subsidies – USA and St. Anton Partners primary among them locally – have no problem finding tenants.

Parkside opened 89 percent leased, said Brown. Judging by the rent and mood of opening week, it won't take long to reach 100.

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Click to link to Jim Wasserman of the Sacramento Bee blog with video of Geoff Brown interviewed on site at Parkside at Sycamore.
        
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VgsN9oKO9k