VENTURA ARTISTS PROJECT APPROVED

By Kevin Clerici, kclerici@VenturaCountyStar.com
November 22, 2006

The Ventura City Council entered into a landmark development deal Monday to bring permanently affordable space to downtown for artists to live and work and long-awaited supportive housing for an entrenched homeless population.

By a 6-0 vote, the council addressed two of Ventura's most underserved groups: working artists who struggle to afford the city's rising rents and homeless individuals determined to end their homelessness.

The $57 million project includes 54 affordable live-work spaces for artists and their families, as well as a communal theater, gallery, parking and arts-friendly commercial shops.

It will also offer 15 units of supportive housing for homeless, and often disabled, individuals in an integrated facility to be managed by the local nonprofit group, Project Understanding.

"We have been working for nearly a decade to create a project to serve this population," said Rick Pearson, Project Understanding's director.

Under the deal, the city will sell 1.6 acres of city land at Ventura Avenue and Garden Street for #1.3 million, the price the city paid for the land.

In total, the city will spend more than $2 million in redevelopment dollars, money specially earmarked for affordable housing and development aimed at rehabilitating blighted or underutilized city properties, not from its general fund. The total is made up of start-up money, affordable housing loans and service contracts since 2004.

Officials said it was money well spent.

The nonprofit organization People Linking Arts, Culture & Environment Inc., or PLACE, will construct the housing complex being called the Warking Artists Ventura or "wave" for short.

PLACE will construct 13 market-rate condominiums on the site to help cover a financial gap in the pricey affordable-housing project. Much of the remaining cost of the project would be covered by state and federal affordable housing dollars and loans.

Financial advising from Keyser Marston Associates, hired by the city to evaluate the financial package, found the deal fiscally sound, city staff said.

The affordable units will have to be leased to and occupied by people and families with very low and low incomes. The units will range from studios up to four bedrooms.

Monday's development deal ends what's been a turbulent effort.

Last year, the council threatened to use eminent domain to acquire small property needed for the project. The owners of the house ultimately agreed to sell.

In February, the council dissolved its relationship with Artspace Projects Inc. after city staff and the Minneapolis-based nonprofit group had come to an "insurmountable difference of opinion" of how the project should proceed. Within days, the council handed to the project to PLACE, which is headed by a former Artspace employee.

Since March, the project has been redesigned to add parking, green space and create supportive housing rather than a 40-bed transitional living center. PLACE Director Chris Velasco said supportive housing was something the community called for during public forums.

"We listened to the community," Velasco said, adding that homeless individuals would be "moving out of their cars and off the streets and remaining housed."

Construction should begin by December of next year.

Local developer Mike Merewether said it is practically impossible in Ventura to build rental housing. "This project wouldn't be possible without the teamwork" that has been involved, he said. "I'm excitied about the economic impacts this could bring."