Senior facility gets green light to convert to apartments

Following a unanimous vote by the planning commission in February to approve variances and a conditional use permit so that a former assisted living facility in the southeast part of town can reopen as apartments for seniors, the city council finalized that approval as part of its consent agenda Tuesday.

Opened in 1999 as Homestead, an assisted living facility (AKA nursing home), the building has been sitting empty for a number of years and was purchased by the Bascom Group in April of last year. Bascom is a developer and property manager based in Irvine, Calif. that owns multi-family apartment projects across the country. According to their website, they own more than 350 communities with a value of greater than $22 billion.

The building lies within a zone that already allows for use as multi-family residential, so there was no change in zoning. But developers did have to get a conditional use permit and variances to allow them to rent apartments smaller than the 600-square-foot minimum set under city code.

This is not a case of apartments that are a little bit smaller than current code allows. Two studio plans account for half of the 120 planned units. One is slightly more than half the current minimum at 315 square feet, and the other is relatively spacious but still 30% under code at 426 square feet.

A one-bedroom plan accounts for that vast majority of the remaining units is 494 square feet or 51% of code and the deluxe two-bedroom unit is 737 square feet. Only three units, or 4% of the total, are the larger two-bedroom plans. The small studio units account for half of the total units.

Slated to be ‘affordable’

Aubrey Powell, legal counsel for Bascom, presented drawings and made the new owner’s case for the requested exceptions to city code at the February meeting.

“The master plan does identify that a goal for the city is to provide housing options for senior citizens that’s affordable,” she said. “When we’re talking about our senior citizens, you know, typically they’re going to be on fixed incomes and you know that really limits housing options when we’re living in a world where it seems like rent costs just continue to go up. Boulder City in particular, which I’m sure you all know, you guys live there, it attracts the older population. Nearly 30% of the city’s total population is 65 years and older which is double the rest of Nevada.”

Powell continued, “What my client wants to bring online is take this building that’s been sitting there a little bit run down and revitalizing it, breathing some new life into it and bringing something to the community that is desperately needed.”

Powell said that the unique condition justifying exceptions to city code isn’t the conversion itself.

“What we’re talking about is a pre-existing condition which is that this building was constructed to serve as an assisted living facility,” she said. “Its design, layout, the infrastructure, everything was tailored to meet that need at that time. Then, just given the age and the current condition of the building, it would be very expensive and possibly just impractical to make those significant modifications to the layout and the structure to meet that 600 square foot requirement. It would require significant demolition, which would have an impact on the neighbors as well and it would ultimately result in the loss of valuable units.”

Commission member Lorene Krumm was really the only member of the planning commission pressing Powell. Her concern was largely about guaranteeing that the property would only be used as senior housing.

“What are the assurances,” she asked, “that seniors will live there and other people won’t reside in, let’s say, like a two-bedroom apartment? “Powell replied that additional people living in the units would be impractical just due to their small size.

The other concern noted was that units be actually “affordable.”

Powell replied that rent would not be on a sliding scale based on income and that the units would not be government subsidized.

“Affordable” is not based on any dollar figure,” Powell said. “It just means that the rent is no more than 30% of income. So, to qualify, residents will have to show more than triple the rent in monthly income. According to a website for the development, rent for the smallest studio apartment is slated to run under $1,000 per month.

As the item was approved as part of the consent agenda, there was no discussion by the city council.

Answering a concern from the commission that current Boulder City residents get priority, Powell said that the intent is to prioritize BC residents. However, there is nothing in the variance language and therefore no legal requirement to do so.