Coachella’s affordable Tripoli Apartments to break ground in May, be finished in 2024

Eliana Perez
Palm Springs Desert Sun
The latest renderings of the Tripoli Apartments affordable housing project are shared during a council meeting on March 8, 2023.

With recently approved state and county funding, the affordable housing complex in Coachella known as the Tripoli Apartments will break ground in May. It's scheduled to be finished in December 2024.

Late last month, the city announced it had obtained $40 million in bond revenue for Tripoli Apartments from the California Municipal Finance Authority. And on Tuesday, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors approved the allocation of $1.3 million from its HOME Investment Partnerships Program for the project.

With a $13.6 million loan the Coachella City Council approved for the apartments in 2021 and additional funding from the state's Infill Infrastructure Grant Program, the project has met its $61 million budget.

"The funding pie is pretty complex," Mayor Steven Hernandez told The Desert Sun. "It's very, very expensive. We're at about $560,000 a unit."

The Tripoli complex will be made up of of 108, one- to three-bedroom apartments and four retail spaces on 2.8 acres at the northeast corner of Cesar Chavez Street and Bagdad Avenue. Plans for the project show two buildings facing Sixth Street, Tripoli Way, Bagdad Avenue and Cesar Chavez Street.

A site map of the Tripoli Apartments affordable housing project in Coachella.

The number of apartments has remained 108 all along. But in order to stay within budget, the project has changed on several occasions within the last year. Initial plans had the largest, three-bedroom units at 1,061 square feet, which later shrank to 932 square feet.

One of the apartment buildings will also no longer have an elevator — a factor that led to much debate from the Coachella City Council in recent months, with members expressing concern for future residents who may have disabilities and need an elevator.

"Obviously, there's a quality of life concern there, with the elderly, etcetera, so I'm hoping that they're smart about how they lease it out," Hernandez said Thursday. "About the size, if they had to shrink it a little bit, to make the budget, I get it. We're just trying to build as (many) units as we possibly can."

Revisions to the project also included adding a park by Ninth Street, with a maximum cost of $350,000 to cover landscape architecture and other fees.

During a council meeting this month, Colleen Edwards, a development executive with Chelsea Investment Corp., the company that is working with the city on the project, told the council that eliminating the elevator in one of the buildings allowed the firm to "move money over" to the park.

Hernandez on Thursday emphasized the importance of the park: "It's good for the kids and it's good for the community, because we know that when a community has an absence of parks, there can be issues with health outcomes, with crime, so we're factoring all that in."

Edwards said in the meeting that as the project moves forward, the company will continue to check in with council, including regarding any "left over" funds that can be spent on enhancements to the buildings or other details.

The architectural style of the Tripoli Apartments also changed to incorporate a Spanish Colonial Revival design and match other affordable housing projects in the city as well as the Coachella Library.

The city previously worked with Chelsea Investment Corp. on the Pueblo Viejo Villas, a 105-unit affordable housing project located near the Tripoli Apartments that opened in May 2022.

Eliana Perez covers the eastern Coachella Valley. Reach her at eliana.perez@thedesertsun.com or on Twitter @ElianaPress.