Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Pasadena Unified Launches Search for Builder of 110-Unit Workforce Housing Project on Roosevelt Campus

The district has opened a design-build solicitation for 110 below-market homes on the former Roosevelt Elementary campus, financed by two bond measures

Pasadena Unified has begun looking for a company to design and build 110 homes for its own teachers and staff, opening a contractor search late last month that pushes its first venture into housing development toward construction on the campus of a closed elementary school.

The Pasadena Unified School District issued a request for qualifications and proposals in mid-May and set a June deadline for firms to respond, according to the solicitation, which estimates construction at $82 million to $85 million.

The combined solicitation asks firms to submit qualifications and a bid at once, so a single team would handle both design and construction.

The project, on the former Roosevelt Elementary School site at 315 N. Pasadena Ave., would bring 110 below-market rental units — 80 apartments and 30 townhomes, in a design district planning materials describe as Spanish Revival — paid for with two voter-approved bonds. Half would be set aside for lower-income employees, in a district where more than 120 staff members lost homes in the Eaton Fire.

In a June 1 message to the PUSD community, Superintendent Elizabeth Blanco wrote that the district “recently started” the process to select a design-build team — a step she said would let it “advance the project into the next phases of design and construction immediately following the City’s approval.”

The money for the project comes from Measure O and Measure R, the bond programs district voters approved for school facilities.

Officials have cast the housing as a way to keep employees who can no longer afford to live near the schools where they work.

At a community open house last summer, the district’s chief business officer, Saman Bravo Karimi, said “there’s an economic benefit to retaining staff.”

All 110 units would rent below market, with half reserved for employees who qualify as lower-income; the district has said the homes would range from one-bedroom apartments to four-bedroom units, rising two to three stories on the roughly five-acre site.

It would be the district’s first housing development. Roosevelt closed in 2019, one of several campuses shed as enrollment fell, and has stood empty since.

To move quickly, the district is relying on state laws that let school systems build housing on land they already own and bypass much of the usual local zoning review. The city cleared the last major obstacle in June, when the City Council voted unanimously to deny landmark status for the old school building, overriding a divided preservation commission that had recommended protection.

Districts across California have increasingly become landlords for their own workforces. Jefferson Union High School District, near San Francisco, opened a 122-unit complex in 2022 that now houses about a quarter of its staff; Santa Clara Unified built the first such project in the state more than two decades ago.

At the same open house, Blanco said the district wanted “a project that any job you had in the district, you’d be able to afford to live there.” Not everyone is sold. “The main concern is traffic, especially on Rosemont Avenue,” one resident said at the meeting.

The district has said it will hold another community meeting this summer, and aims to break ground by the end of the year, with the first units ready as soon as 2028.