After acquiring the property, the Agency spent a year assembling grants and other funding sources to complete the rehabilitation project, working with a local architect to determine how to best rehabilitate the buildings, and abating asbestos found in the roof and flooring. In 2002, the Agency — armed with a market feasibility study concluding that affordable senior apartments were feasible for that site — was able to attract an experienced affordable housing developer, LINC Housing, to redevelop the site. LINC Housing, under the terms of a development agreement, agreed to lease the land for $1 a year and purchase the existing improvements for $700,000 cash.

 
For the next three years, the Redevelopment Agency Board, City Council, and staff — working with LINC Housing — devoted countless hours to the project as both the project scope and financing plan evolved. Initially scoped as a rehabilitation project, structural analysis later indicated that replacement, rather than rehabilitation, of two of the six buildings would be more cost effective.

LINC Housing broke ground in February 2004. Immediately, four of the buildings were stripped to the studs with plumbing, electrical, mechanical, and roofing completely replaced. The remaining two buildings were demolished — replacing living units with a manager’s unit, community areas, a kitchen, and laundry facilities.

 
Although the Agency’s cash contribution represented a small portion of the overall financing package, the funding commitment was essential to the success of the project. In addition to leveraging considerable other funding sources, the Agency’s funds were critical during the pre-development phase. Without the Agency’s funding of asbestos abatement, market studies and structural analyses, the project could never have attracted a qualified developer nor successfully competed for grant funding.

In April 2005, after five years of work and more than 40 meetings with the City Council, Redevelopment Agency Board, and Financing Authority, new tenants began moving into the 58-unit Seasons at Los Robles affordable senior apartment project. In celebration of the site’s remarkable transformation, the city of Anderson selected Seasons at Los Robles as the location for its 2005 “National Night Out” festivities.

Seasons at Los Robles has now been fully leased for more than two years and has already sparked private investment in the neighborhood. A new medical office has been constructed on an adjacent parcel, and a professional office complex is currently being developed across the street from Seasons. Investors are no longer afraid to tackle meaningful and substantial redevelopment projects with its limited financial and staffing resources.

From crime-ridden to crime free, from years of disinvestment to a new era of private investment, the Seasons at Los Robles Senior Apartments demonstrates how redevelopment can stimulate economic growth and create affordable housing in California’s smaller cities. Small city redevelopment agencies can accomplish big things in their communities!

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