A supportive housing development that broke ground last year across the street from Mariachi Plaza was approved last month for $19.1 million in bond funding.
Dubbed La Guadalupe, the five-story, 44-unit building at the southeast corner of First and Boyle was one of six affordable housing projects approved for bond funding at the Oct. 20 City Council meeting.
The vote for La Guadalupe was approved unanimously by the council –including CD-14 member Kevin de León, who attended his first meeting after being sworn into the city’s governing body days earlier. Urbanize LA reported that six projects approved for bond funding at that meeting will bring 500 new homes to sites across the city that are either occupied by surface parking or vacant commercial buildings.
The former is the case for La Guadalupe, which rises above a makeshift parking lot at the site of a former gas station that was razed for the construction of the Gold Line Mariachi Plaza station.
Developers Azure Development and Manny Mansions broke ground on La Guadalupe in Oct. 2019 and expect to complete the project in 2021. Budgeted at $34 million, the project is partially funded with $9.46 million from voter-approved Measure HHH bond. In partnership with the school district, 20 of the project’s 44 units will be set aside for homeless families who will be selected through the county’s coordinated entry system. Two of the apartments will be reserved for on-site case managers.
Named after the developer’s grandmother, La Guadalupe will have a parking garage and 8,000 feet of ground-floor commercial space –to be shared by three retail outlets. A communal area will include a computer lab, event spaces and a courtyard for barbecues, according to Curbed LA.
Azure is a for-profit developer founded in 2016 by Boyle Heights native Vanessa Delgado. She told Curbed the building is named after her grandmother, Guadalupe Arévalos.
La Guadalupe is the third of four affordable housing projects completed or contemplated for the Boyle Heights corner of First and Boyle. The historic Boyle Hotel at the northwest corner was developed by the East LA Community Corporation (ELACC) and opened to tenants in 2012. At the southwest corner, the Santa Cecilia Apartments developed by McCormick Baron Salazar opened in 2017. A fourth affordable housing development is being proposed by ELACC for Metro owned land behind the Mariachi Plaza station, which is at the northeast corner.
