| Vista del Cielo is situated at the prominent southeast corner of Kingsley at Mills, a main north-south corridor into Montclair, serving as a landmark and gateway for the neighborhood and to visitors traveling into the city. The project also acts as a visual connection to Holt Boulevard – an east-west commercial-zoned street located a block south. It is included in the Holt Boulevard Specific Plan.
The project enhances the adjacent residences on Kingsley, replacing an existing underutilized retail strip building with a multifamily residential use, via zone change entitlements. The scope of work includes 50 units of one, two and three bedroom apartments funded via Tax Credits and the City of Montclair.
The design of the project is a three-story building organized in a U-shaped configuration, focused around a south-facing central courtyard capturing sun and breezes across the pool deck and tot lot. The building edge addresses the corner of Mills and Kingsley with a prominent architectural tower element that serves as the gateway into the city of Montclair. The overall design of the building mass creates interest along the street through the use of varying depths of wall planes, volumes, materials, roof heights and landscaping features.
Each of the stories is configured in a similar manner, with each unit having a private patio. Common laundry facilities are provided on each level. On-site amenities include a 900 square foot community center, leasing office, swimming pool and deck, children’s outdoor play area, central landscaped courtyard and walking paths. Transportation is accommodated with 86 parking spaces, drop-off areas and bicycle rack areas.
The city adopted a strategy of revitalizing this neglected neighborhood through the intervention of high quality affordable housing. This corner site was the most prominent, and represented a special challenge: by replacing the derelict liquor store with modern housing, the city announced its intentions fro the future of this part of town. Thus, the building needed to embrace an optimistic modernism in a high density development that would be sufficiently scaled to make dramatic visual impact, define the multistory street edge on Mills, and yet transition to the single story, single-family residential developments to the east.
This was accomplished through a studied interplay of vertical and horizontal masses, planes and lines. Rather than make a typical “busy” façade with ornate foam trim, the city entrusted the developer and architect to develop a clean, modern design that would reveal the character of the spaces. The success of this approach depended entirely on the carefully crafted execution of simple details such as the handrails, window and door trim. The use of milled aluminum for frames, reglets and reveals was essential to the striking definition of each opening.
The owner acted as their own contractor, developing construction cost models that would release contingency retention early enough to allow for upgrades during construction such as frosted glass privacy screens at the first floor patios. The project incorporated high efficiency exterior lighting, recycled materials and natural ventilation of common spaces for sustainable and economical operation. |
