Ground Broken on Villas on the Boulevard in Santa Clara

By Jeffrey Steele, Contributing Writer

Irvine, Calif.—Groundbreaking ceremonies have been held for Villas on the Boulevard, a new 186-unit luxury apartment community in Santa Clara, Calif. Guiding the project forward will be developer Summerhill Apartment Communities and national architecture and planning firm KTGY Group, Inc.

The residential rental community will deliver amenity-rich living near jobs and transit, while helping the City of Santa Clara achieve its vision for El Camino Real. The site is part of the city’s 2010 General Plan El Camino Focus Area, which will be transformed from the city’s most visible and identifiable commercial corridor into a tree-lined pedestrian and transit-oriented artery.

“While the Villas will be loaded with amenities, the ability to walk to shopping, dining and entertainment makes the location on El Camino perhaps its best amenity,” KTGY Principal Manny Gonzalez tells MHN.

As it takes shape, Villas on the Boulevard will emerge as a four-story residential building featuring retail-like frontage along El Camino Real. The frontage will include a leasing office, lobby terrace, new widened sidewalk with street trees and landscaping and tiled stoops leading to apartment homes.

“The property “will offer a wide range of unit plans, from flats with stoops along the boulevard to shallow wide ones with great views of the area,” Gonzalez says.

One and two-bedroom floor plans will offer luxury touches, including in-unit washer/dryers, private balconies and patios and private storage. Gourmet kitchens will serve up stainless steel appliances, European-style cabinetry and quartz stone countertops.

Community amenities will include a clubroom with an entertaining kitchen and fitness studio, facing one of a pair of interior courtyards. These amenity courtyards will offer a series of outdoor rooms for resident relaxation and socialization.

The main courtyard will feature a pool, spa and barbecue. A breezeway will link residents to a second courtyard, offering an outdoor kitchen, living room with fireplace and bocce ball court.

A pedestrian promenade, fitness par course, public plaza, electric vehicle charging stations, secure bicycle storage, web portal for resident carpooling and provisions for car-sharing vehicles are among additional amenities.

“From its bike shop to the pool and creek-side trail next door, the Villas will provide residents with a variety of fitness opportunities,” Gonzalez says.

The development’s design can truly be called “four-sided architecture, he adds. The building pays tribute to the Mission-style architecture for which Santa Clara and El Camino are renowned. The El Camino side offers urban massing that meets the street with ground-floor stoops, while the rear steps down in scale, maintaining the privacy of the single-family homes it faces.

The site is very close to the proposed VTA Bus Rapid Transit Bowers Station, as well as to grocery stores, retail shops and service businesses.