Oakdale approves 48 apartments within walking distance of stores. What rents could be
Plans for 48 apartments next to an east Oakdale shopping center won approval Monday night from the City Council.
The 4-1 vote followed a brief dust-up on the dais over how the city should deal with its housing shortage.
The apartments will be built on 2.4 acres just south of East F Street and west of the Foothill Oaks complex, which has a Save Mart and several other businesses.
The rents would be $1,600 to $1,800 a month based on plans from 2019, but the figures need updating, developer John Simvoulakis said after the vote. The project will be market-rate, not subsidized, and could be completed by 2026.
‘A planner’s dream’
The applicants said the apartments fit with city and state goals for putting homes close to businesses to reduce driving.
“This is a planner’s dream,” said Lea Simvoulakis Sonnenberg, niece of the developer and a land-use planner herself. “You have 48 residents in a walkable distance of the grocery store, to Rite Aid, to the pizza parlor. This is what compact mixed use is all about.”
The family built the shopping center in the 1980s, as well as Foothill Oaks Senior Living, a 48-home complex just to the south of the planned apartments.
The project will have a gated entrance about 100 feet south of East F, just east of Haidlen Ford. The homes will be in three two-story buildings and have one to three bedrooms each. The site also will have a swimming pool and community center for the residents.
‘A lot of question marks’
Councilman Bob Amaral voted against the project. He said he was concerned about adding traffic to East F, which also is state Highway 108-120. He also said the apartments could become subsidized in the future.
“I still see a lot of question marks,” he said “... You can put a lot of things down on paper.”
Amaral was elected in June to fill a vacancy. Councilman Christoper Smith criticized him Monday for having spoken from the podium against a subsidized project, Oak Leaf Meadows, that opened on East J Street last year.
Oakdale needs to build 1,665 housing units by 2031, according to a state-mandated plan adopted in August by the Stanislaus Council of Governments. It suggests that 42% of the total be for people with low or very low incomes.
This story was originally published October 18, 2022 at 12:31 PM.
