Last week, Affordable Housing Finance announced the 10 winners of its annual Readers’ Choice Awards - and Alta Madrone won out in the Rural category!
“The 48-unit Alta Madrone in Sonoma, California, is meeting the pressing need for affordable housing in the popular wine region that has seen escalating housing costs and devastating wildfires in recent years,” AHF noted in its project feature. Satellite Affordable Housing Associates led project development, working with PYATOK, stakeholders, and neighbors to successfully introduce a multifamily community to a single-family neighborhood. The approach has received local praise and wider consideration for replicability.
Each year the Readers’ Choice Awards celebrates affordable housing developers and the innovative strategies that deliver much-needed, impactful housing across the United States. Recent challenges have exacerbated the difficulty of this task. “Amid soaring development costs and extraordinary obstacles brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, developers have continued to create inspiring communities,” AHF reminds us.
The awards program sought not only project photos and a concise overview, but also details on the units, rental rates, and depth of affordability; development costs and cost effectiveness; funding sources and subsidies; and narratives on the local housing need, design and construction innovation, on-site resident services, resident and community impact, and community support. Magazine and e-news subscribers voted on 10 categories featuring 36 finalists, as well as an overall winner. (The top prize this year went to the Mary D. Stone Apartments adaptive reuse of an historic school building in Auburn, Massachusetts.)
This year, PYATOK had tangential involvement in two other Awards finalists:
- San Bernardino Arrowhead Grove Phase 3 (Family category) by RRM. PYATOK previously conducted master planning for the overall, 38-acre Arrohead Grove (then known as Waterman Gardens) for the Housing Authority of San Bernardino County.
- Clifton Hall (Special Needs category), a Homekey project by the City of Oakland and SAHA. PYATOK Senior Associate Gary Struthers spearheaded the adaptive reuse design for this former college dorm in his free time.
Congratulations to all the winners and finalists for your important work designing exemplary affordable housing!
Image by Patrik Argast
