North Bay Business Journal

SAN RAFAEL — EAH Housing today said it received a $40,000 grant from the JPMorgan Chase Foundation that will help preserve affordable housing in Marin County and 10 other Northern California counties.

PETALUMA — Vintage Chateau II, featuring 68 affordable housing units in a community designed for seniors 55 and older on low or fixed incomes, was opened for occupancy in September.

GUERNEVILLE — An effort to bring long-term affordable and assisted housing to western Sonoma County came to a close in March, as Luther Burbank Housing and its development partners cut the ribbon on the 48-unit Fife Creek Commons project in Guerneville.

NOVATO — Marin Community Foundation today said it is seeking a developer to build affordable housing on filmmaker George Lucas’s Grady Ranch, a property north of San Rafael once pegged for a sizable state-of-the-art digital movie studio.

NOVATO — Blu Homes, a Vallejo and Massachusetts-based manufacturer of energy efficient, prefabricated homes, has entered into an agreement with Homeward Bound of Marin to construct a $4 million affordable and supportive housing project in Novato.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development today announced more than $700,000 in grants to eight North Bay housing and low-income assistance programs, money that will help hire new staff and support various support services for HUD-assisted families.

Local recipients were Housing Authority of the county of Marin, Napa Housing Authority, Sonoma County Community Development Commission, Vallejo Housing Authority, the city of Santa Rosa and Lake County Housing Commission.

The Burbank Housing Development Corporation has four affordable ownership and rental communities in various predevelopment and final construction stages in Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol and Windsor.

PETALUMA — Phase 2 of the Vintage Chateau affordable housing community for seniors 55 and older is set for occupancy this month.

SANTA ROSA — Construction of a 52-unit, $12.8 million affordable housing and commercial project in Downtown Santa Rosa is expected to go forward this September, funded by new financing and credits after project developers were unable to obtain highly sought-after affordable housing funds to begin construction in 2010.

NOVATO – Homeward Bound of Marin, the Novato-based provider of shelter and services for homeless individuals and families in Marin County, announced today that it will develop a cluster of small homes for low-income working families on a .75-acre parcel in Southern Novato.

SONOMA COUNTY – Sonoma County is set to add a number of new affordable housing units to its roster, with last Friday’s groundbreaking for Burbank Housing’s 66-unit Logan Place in Petaluma the latest in a number of developments occurring around the county’s Affordable Housing Week.

NOVATO — Lucasfilm has partnered with the Marin Community Foundation to explore options for building affordable housing on the Grady Ranch property near San Rafael that George Lucas originally planned for a sizable digital-movie studio.

SANTA ROSA — Habitat for Humanity of Sonoma County has brought in a retailing veteran to increase the fund-raising potential of its ReStore home-improvement thrift store in northwest Santa Rosa.

SAN RAFAEL — Union Bank N.A. donated $100,000 to the Marin Workforce Housing Trust to help support affordable workforce housing in Marin County.

Imagine this proposal coming to your city’s leaders in today’s awful economic environment: Build a privately financed, state-of-the-art health club near downtown and adjacent to a rising heritage neighborhood with three stories of affordable senior housing on top.

Impossible?

Well, there is such a proposal surrounding Santa Rosa’s long-delayed Railroad Square SMART project. And it should be warmly and emphatically welcomed.

SONOMA VALLEY – A planned 52-home development north of the city of Sonoma has been redesigned to include more environmentally friendly features while significantly lowering anticipated sale prices.

Construction of Sonoma State University’s newest campus housing facility, Tuscany Village, continues on schedule with a planned August opening date.

Affordable housing first in four major funding initiatives MARIN COUNTY – After close to two years of strategic planning, the Marin Community Foundation commenced July 1 a completely redesigned funding model, shifting for the first time a majority of discretionary dollars to original projects jointly created by the organization in four primary focus areas. The [...]

NORTH BAY – Funding, the primary obstacle of the mixed-use Railroad Square project in Santa Rosa, no longer stands in the way.

The project was approved to receive $15 million in state bond and federal stimulus funds.

MARIN COUNTY – The Marin Community Foundation will fund $10 million in affordable housing projects over the next five years, it was announced today.

The initiative developed with local affordable housing developers will benefit projects for low-income families, seniors and other individuals in Marin.