A new supportive housing project slated for downtown Los Angeles won't be built there — at least not in its initial stages.
Rather, Suffolk Construction Co. will employ modular construction to manufacture parts of the building off-site and assemble them on-site later like a giant 3D jigsaw puzzle.
"As the demand for supportive housing throughout the city continues to grow, it's important that we use the latest tools and techniques to build as efficiently as ever," said Tom Donohue, president and general manager of Suffolk Los Angeles, in a statement.
Suffolk has been selected by affordable housing organization Mercy Housing to provide reconstruction and construction services for its 70,000-square-foot project on the northeast corner of East 6th Street and San Julian Street.
The $59 million project includes the demolition of a three-story commercial building that is the site of a mural called "Skid Row City Limits."
Designed by TCA Architects, the six-story building includes 94 permanent supportive housing units for low-income households, 1,800 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor, and a 13-car subterranean parking lot. In addition, the project will feature a community room, resident art mural, landscaped outdoor courtyard, bicycle parking and on-site supportive services provided by The People Concern.
The project is currently in the reconstruction phase. Work on 6th and San Julian is scheduled to start next year, with construction slated to be complete in 15 months — currently by March 2022.
Mercy Housing has received nearly $15 million from the California Housing and Community Development Department and $5 million in No Place Like Home funds from Los Angeles County.
Benefits of modular construction
Still, for Suffolk, whose contract on the project is worth about $30 million, cost is one of the biggest challenges on supportive housing projects like 6th and San Julian, as well as meeting the quick construction timeline. That's where modular construction comes in, reducing project timelines, saving construction costs and reducing waste.
The company is also using modular construction for the Moxy Hotel in Oakland.
"They're setting the units on-site as we speak," Donohue told me. "We used that project and some of the lessons learned in order to talk to Mercy about how we would approach this project."
The 6th and San Julian project marks Suffolk's first project in Southern California to use modular construction exclusively.
The approach is more efficient for workers, who instead of commuting to a jobsite will head to a warehouse "typically closer to where they live," Donohue said. Suffolk has not yet selected the warehouse site or hired workers for the job.
The controlled environment has the added benefit of making it easier to employ health-safety measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
"The old days of kind of camping on jobsites is going to end," Donohue said, describing the effects of the pandemic on both traditional and modular construction projects. "Sanitary conditions are going to improve."
Suffolk has installed hand-washing stations with soap and hot running water at all of its jobsites, and is taking temperatures and tracking illness and testing among its workers, among other measures.
Active in the multifamily market in California, Suffolk is following its work on affordable housing projects in San Francisco and San Diego with 6th and San Julian in L.A.
"Knowing that it's a very big political push to build more affordable housing in Los Angeles, we used our experience to reach out to developers and try to find some work," Donohue said.
The company has worked on multifamily projects in the local market before that included an affordable component, but this is its first in L.A. that is "100% affordable."
Donohue added that while Boston-based Suffolk has 10 offices across the country, the 100 people who work in the company's Los Angeles location live in the community and, in addition to the coronavirus crisis of the past few months and the civil unrest of the past week, homelessness and affordable housing are "probably the biggest issue that we're facing. ... We want to be a part of the solution here in our community."