REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Approve $5 Million Bridge Loan to MidPen Housing for Edwina Benner Plaza, located at 460 Persian Drive, and Adopt a Resolution to Approve a Joint Application for Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) Grant for Edwina Benner Plaza and Associated Sustainable Transportation Improvement (STI) Project
Report
BACKGROUND
Project
On February 2014, the Housing Division released an RFP for new affordable housing projects to be funded with the City's Housing Mitigation Fund. In January 2015, MidPen Housing submitted a proposal requesting $5 million for a proposed new 66 unit affordable rental housing project at 460 Persian Drive in Sunnyvale. A brief summary of the project is provided in Attachment 1. In March 2015, Council awarded MidPen a conditional commitment of $5 million in Housing Mitigation funds (HMF) for the project in the form of a bridge loan to be converted to a permanent loan at completion (RTC 15-0091). The project has since been named Edwina Benner Plaza ("Benner Plaza"), in honor of former Sunnyvale Mayor Edwina Benner, first elected in 1924, who was the first female mayor of a California city.
The term sheet approved by Council last March conditioned the bridge loan on MidPen obtaining full site control of the property and all required entitlements. MidPen acquired the project site in April 2015 and obtained entitlements at the Planning Commission hearing on January 25, 2016 (RTC 15-0987).
The total project cost is currently estimated at slightly over $41 million. MidPen has updated its financing plan for the project since submitting the original proposal last March. The current financing plan is included as Attachment 2 to this report. The changes to the financing plan are discussed further in the Discussion section of this report. The project recently received a conditional commitment of 33 project-based Section 8 vouchers from the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Clara (HACSC)...
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