Sunnyvale Senior Living

With a mission to have a positive community impact, PMB, a healthcare developer, is creating much needed independent and assisted living accommodations for seniors in the heart of Sunnyvale, California. The new mixed-use development will integrate residential living with street-level amenities open to the public, along with a rehabilitation hospital. Located along Sunnyvale’s historic El Camino Real and aligned with the city’s long-term vision for a pedestrian friendly corridor, this new community will provide exceptional amenities, care services, and convenient access for seniors who want to remain connected to the city and the Silicon Valley region.

When complete, this vibrant senior living community will offer residents enriching and empowering experiences and serve the surrounding neighborhood as a new urban amenity. The development features two new buildings—the residential building to the west, designed by WATG’s team of architects, and the medical building on the eastern portion of the site. A walkable, bikeable access road passes between the buildings, activating the space and creating a new connection between El Camino Real and Olive Street. The ground level space will consist of the main lobby and various resident amenities including a café, salon, and fitness center that will be open to the public. Additional amenities on various levels will include dining venues, library-bar, wellness center, media room, arts and crafts space, landscaped courtyards and underground parking.

Offering 149 units, the residential building forms a new, unique marker on El Camino Real. Its six-story façades have been carefully designed to enhance pedestrian comfort, with a massing strategy that incorporates a series of layering inspired by traditional loggias and colonnades, used in urban settings to encourage interaction where the building meets the city. Also, the use of bay windows and balconies further breaks down the façade’s scale with three-dimensional features that expand inhabitants’ views and interior living spaces, in modern architectural forms.

The region’s familiar materials, textures and colors are reinterpreted in a contemporary architectural language. With hues and materiality reflecting traditional red Spanish tiles and white stucco that are common in California, modern materials including glass, stone veneer, composite cement and metal panels wrap the new building. Expansive windows create a sense of airiness and openness in the public spaces and brighten the interior with natural light. While the tight, urban site limits the sizes of ground-level gardens and creation of large open spaces, a variety of outdoor terraces and amenity decks proposed on the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th floors provide ample opportunities for residents’ indoor-outdoor living experience and biophilia. The setback areas facing the neighboring buildings will be landscaped and feature screening trees for privacy and enjoyment—all contributing to the project’s goal of obtaining LEED Gold certification.

“The Sunnyvale Senior Living community was conceived as a mixed-use development that will cultivate strong connections to the surrounding neighborhood while integrating shared public spaces and a highly permeable public thoroughfare to support resident socialization.” – Daun St. Amand, Managing Principal, Luxury Multifamily Residential and Senior Living

In 2024, the development was unanimously approved by the Sunnyvale Planning Commission, whose commissioners are enthusiastic, calling the project “a beautiful addition” that will “help enrich the community and offer opportunities for Sunnyvale residents to age in place, which is certainly a community benefit.” [source]