Mercy Housing and the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency celebrated the official dedication and opening of the St. Clare at Capitol Park conversion at 1125 9th Street in Downtown Sacramento. The joint venture worked together to convert the historic hotel into permanent supportive housing for formerly homeless people.
The former Capitol Park Hotel was built in 1912 as two separate hotels with an Italian Renaissance Revival design by Seadler & Hoen. From September 2019 through October 2020, the building operated as a temporary homeless shelter for the city. After the shelter closed, Mercy Housing started the estimated $76 million work to rehabilitate the structure. The team received $23 million in gap funding from SHRA.
St. Clare at Capitol Park construction progress circa October 2022, image via Google Street View
Speaking at the event, SHRA Executive Director La Shelle Dozier shared, “The transformation of this iconic building in the heart of Sacramento’s downtown was a clarion call to address the dire need for permanent supportive housing.” The new St. Clare facility includes 134 studios, 2,600 square feet of ground-level commercial space, and residential supportive services office space.
James Vossoughi, Executive Director of Community Development Banking at JPMorgan Chase, added during the event, “We are immensely proud to support Mercy Housing and know these homes will be an invaluable asset to the community, offering not only essential amenities but also onsite supportive services.”
The project is the second hotel-to-housing conversion in Downtown Sacramento in recent years. In late December last year, Danco Group finished converting the former Best Western Plus at 1114 H Street into 93 units of permanent supportive housing.
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If you assume that $76 million is the final cost and divide it by 134 living units, that makes it over half a million for each unit. These are very rough numbers: you’d have to back out the commercial space and other amenities. However, even if you make the adjustments, these units are very expensive on a cost per unit basis . Why? Is anyone looking at the numbers and why they are so high?
Exactly my thoughts, and this was for conversion of a hotel, something that you’d think would be a LOT less expensive. I guess when new construction for “affordable” housing is running close to $800,000 a unit it’s an improvement but not by much. I’d much rather spend the money on locked mental institutions for all the crazies I see wandering around than rewarding miscreants for their bad behavior with free housing.
i am glad to see these kind of projects –but you have to find a way to make them cost effective –you had to kick the people that where living there before out to rerenovate –to move in the homeless??23 million and how many people do you “help” in the end.
Yes, the nearby park has seen ALL the benefits!
I read an article in the Sacramento Bee that the hotel was converted into “studios” at a cost of around $547,000 thousand dollars per unit, for a studio! Outrageous, how many contractors and politicians were at the “trough” on this one?