SANTA CLARA, CA—SummerHill Apartment Communities, a division of SummerHill Housing Group, recently announced plans to develop 994 residential units, Nuevo, in the 65-acre Lawrence Station area plan. In addition, SummerHill recently completed Villas on the Boulevard, a 186-unit residential rental community at 2615 East El Camino Real.

From local bikeways to RideMatch, Villas on the Boulevard is located between the Lawrence and Santa Clara Caltrain stations and a half-block from the proposed VTA Bus Rapid Transit Bowers station. The multifamily property also has access to the Central Expressway and Highways 101, 237, 280 and 85.

“The project was a complex assemblage of six parcels and more than a dozen property owners, including the largest tenant, Russell's Furniture, which is now located in a 50,000-square-foot, two-floor store at 2600 Lafayette St. in Santa Clara,” Robert Freed, CEO of SummerHill Housing Group, tells GlobeSt.com. “This site is situated within the city's 2010 General Plan El Camino Focus Area, which envisions transforming the city's most visible and identifiable commercial corridor into a tree-lined pedestrian- and transit-oriented corridor. Villas on the Boulevard, with its 186 high-quality residential units, helps the city meet its goal of revitalizing El Camino and creating economic vitality along this key corridor.”

As part of the development, SummerHill widened the sidewalk and added trees, landscaping and tiled stoops leading to the apartment homes. The apartment community's new public plaza highlights the adjacent Saratoga Creek and a new crosswalk constructed on El Camino Real to give residents access to the neighborhood shopping center across the street.

“While the Villas are loaded with amenities, the ability to walk to shopping, dining and entertainment make the location on El Camino perhaps its best amenity,” Manny Gonzalez, principal of KTGY Architecture + Planning, tells GlobeSt.com.

The property includes a mix of one- and two-bedroom luxury apartment homes ranging in size from 758 to 1,378 square feet. The homes are energy- and water-efficient, and include gourmet kitchens with stainless steel ENERGY STAR appliances, quartz countertops, spacious kitchen pantries, in-unit full-size washer and dryer, large walk-in closets, private storage units and balconies or patios.

Villas includes also alternative transportation amenities such as electric vehicle charging stations, a resident carpool web portal, and secure bicycle storage and repair facilities. Other amenities include a resident lounge with a common kitchen, cyber café, conference room, fitness center, swimming pool with a spa, poolside cabanas, outdoor kitchen with lounge seating and fireplace, green space, and a pet spa with washing station and grooming table.

The amenity courtyards provide a series of outdoor rooms. The main courtyard adjacent to the club and fitness rooms includes the pool, spa and barbecue area. A breezeway connects residents to a second courtyard. Additional amenities include a nearly half-acre pedestrian promenade and a fitness par course along the side of the building. Designed by KTGY Architecture + Planning, the Villas features a four-story residential building over a one-story partially subterranean garage.

“We designed The Villas on the Boulevard in Mission style architecture that the city of Santa Clara and El Camino are known for,” said Gonzalez. “We took great care to address the adjacencies of the property by introducing ground-floor stoops along the El Camino frontage in order to bring more pedestrian scale to the building along El Camino and stepping the back portion of the building down in scale with the goal of minimizing privacy impacts on the existing single-family homes.”

SummerHill has six new apartment communities in various stages of planning and construction including Nuevo's 457 for-sale residential units, 537 apartments and approximately 40,000 square feet of neighborhood retail and restaurants; 268 new residential units featuring a mix of apartments and condominiums in Burlingame, CA; 694 residential units and 36,500 square feet of retail space near the Milpitas BART station and a proposed 211-unit apartment community in Mountain View, CA. Currently, SummerHill is leasing 481 on Mathilda, a 105-unit apartment community in Sunnyvale, CA.

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