BRIDGE Completes Celadon Affordable Housing in Tight Spot in San Diego
BRIDGE Housing recently completed Celadon at 9th & Broadway, a high-rise affordable rental development in downtown San Diego.
By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor
San Diego—BRIDGE Housing recently completed Celadon at 9th & Broadway, a high-rise affordable rental development in downtown San Diego. The property offers 250 units composed of micro-units, studios and one-bedrooms available for households with incomes ranging from 30 percent to 60 percent of the area median income.
Residents of the building have access to three major common areas, all of which are integrated with the outdoors to take advantage of the San Diego climate. These include a great room, kitchen, media room and outdoor space on the ground floor.
On the fifth floor podium, there’s a laundry room, a supportive services office, a seminar room with a kitchen and outdoor space with barbeques and a resident garden. On the 15th floor is a terrace with great views of San Diego towards the Bay.
Celadon is located amid historic five- and six-story structures along Broadway, one of downtown San Diego’s main thoroughfares. Fitting it into the site was a major undertaking, according to San Diego Studio E, the architecture firm that designed the building.
Lead architect Eric Naslund tells MHN that “the most challenging aspect was the tight urban site. We had to be creative during the design to fit parking below grade and respond to adjacent historic structures. During construction they had to continually shift across the site to stage the work. A bigger site with lay-down area and a place to put the excavated dirt would have been much easier.”
Celadon also qualifies for LEED Silver by incorporating a number of efficient design features. Examples include: a 143-foot vertical PV array generates power for the building’s common areas, and folds at its base to form an awning over a seating area on the terrace; solar hot water panels located on an exposed steel framework at the upper terrace offset an estimated 50 percent of the entire building’s hot water needs, while also providing shading to the terrace below; and the north to south running corridor is open and breathable on both ends, encouraging natural airflow.
