Daylight Community Development on Friday held a virtual groundbreaking event for Watts Works, a 25-unit affordable housing project to be built modularly by stacking shipping containers at 9500 – 9502 Compton Ave.
The four-story project, which will contain 24 320 square foot studio apartments (and one manager’s unit), is being built for chronically homeless residents and will provide on-site services such as counseling and employment training. The team behind the development, which includes Daylight, Decro Corporation, and The People Concern, was awarded about $24 million in Los Angeles Measure HHH funds to finance the development.
Joined by development partners like Decro Corporation, Daylight Community Development partner Greg Comanor said that the first shipment of modules from Colorado-based IndieDwell‘s factory are scheduled to arrive on April 14 and that the project should open in September. Two of the first batch of 12 containers, which will comprise the Watts project’s first floor, were shown on camera by IndieDwell General Manager Ron Francis during the event.
“As you’ve heard and as you will see, Watts Works represents a new and innovative approach to meeting the challenge of our city’s homelessness crisis,” Decro Corporation CEO Ted Handel said.
The group says that the project, which will use 58 repurposed shipping containers when complete, is scheduled to finish more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional construction. It will replace a single-family dwelling that has occupied the 6,141-square-foot lot along Compton Avenue.
“In this case, steel modular containers work really well with the site parameters, the project scale, and the unit sizes,” Michael Bohn, a senior principal of project architect Studio One Eleven, said during the call. “Costs for this project are coming in significantly less … about [$378,000 per unit]. We’ve been finding other projects are anywhere from $500,000 to $750,000 a unit, so this is saving a lot of money.”
It will also be completed “several months quicker than conventional projects,” Bohn said.
Amenities will include a ground-floor community room, an outdoor patio overlooking the street corner of Compton Avenue and East 95th Street, a tranquility garden, a backyard, and a rooftop terrace.
“We’re all ready proud of this project,” Bohn said. “Many of us on the team call Watts Works the small site with a big purpose.”
Looks like a beautiful project! The budget is just north of $9mm. The $24mm refers to a broader financing commitment to Daylight for three other modular projects