City of South Lake Tahoe receives $17.3M grant to help develop Sugar Pine Village

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - The City of South Lake Tahoe has been awarded $17,359,470 for the Sugar Pine Village project which is planned for the Y area of the city. The grant funds come from the California Strategic Growth Council’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program.

The grant is a critical piece of a complex funding structure that will provide essential financing to develop the 248-unit multi-phase workforce affordable housing project along Julie Lane and Tata Lane and Lake Tahoe Boulevard.

Being awarded the grant is "an incredible win for the project and for the City of South Lake Tahoe," said Nicole Trierweile of BergDavis, a partner in the project. "As with most affordable housing projects, we are currently piecing together multiple financing sources to be in a position where each phase of the project is fully financed and able to move into construction."

Sugar Pine Village is being built on land formerly owned by the California Tahoe Conservancy and provided to the City for this multi-phase project. The full project will be 248 units of affordable workforce housing built across four phases. The first phase will consist of 68 units and a community building that will serve the entire 248-unit project. They are aiming for groundbreaking on the first phase in 2022 or 2023.

Full financing is not yet complete and the project partners are working to get it all in place. Due to a number of factors, including price escalations for materials and labor, as well as supply chain issues, and recent inflationary trends, the final construction cost is unknown at this time.

Sugar Pine Village will be available to households who earn between 30 percent and 80 percent of El Dorado County Area Median Income (AMI). At this time those figures are $27,200 to $72,500.

"We are grateful to the City of South Lake Tahoe for working with us to create a competitive AHSC application that will partially fund Sugar Pine Village and also separately contribute to pivotal city infrastructure projects," said Trierweile.

The City's grant was selected by the highly competitive program under the Rural Innovation Project Areas (RIPA) category for its expansion and improvement of local bikeway and pedestrian trails, as well as its proximity to one of the region’s main transit hubs. The award includes funding for local bike and pedestrian improvements which will allow residents to use active forms of transportation. Coupled with funding for a solar power system at the City’s transit-related facilities, the award represents real progress towards the City’s sustainability goals.

The Sugar Pine Village project will be the largest multi-family development constructed in the City and is the result of Governor Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order N-06-19 directing the California Department of General Services (DGS), California Tahoe Conservancy (CTC) and the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to identify and aggressively pursue sustainable, innovative, cost-effective housing projects on state-owned excess sites. Related California and local nonprofit housing developer Saint Joseph Community Land Trust were selected by the State to develop the South Lake Tahoe site for affordable workforce housing, combatting the acute affordable housing supply shortage in the Tahoe Basin.

“This award exemplifies the team effort associated with a project this size. The City is honored to work with such a dedicated team of state, regional, private and non-profit partners to help bring this project to fruition,” said South Lake Tahoe Mayor Devin Middlebrook. “Recent funding awards and a focused effort of the entire team and City Council has made this a viable project.” The grant application included an approximate $995,000 local contribution made by the City Council to increase the competitiveness of the project.

"Saint Joseph Community Land Trust is very pleased to partner with the Related Companies on the development of the Sugar Pine Village Project for South Lake Tahoe and is delighted that the AHSC award recognizes the project's benefits to the community: affordable workforce housing and sustainable transportation infrastructure improvements,” said Jean Diaz, executive director of Saint Joseph Community Land Trust. “Our goal is to provide not only affordable workforce housing near work and daily activities but also to improve ease of transportation for the community's daily activities."