Sugar Pine Village and Jefferson Elementary School District (JESD) Faculty and Staff Housing, two affordable, workforce housing developments designed by Lowney Architecture, have been honored with Awards of Merit for the 2025 Gold Nugget Awards. Awards of Merit recognize the firm’s projects as receiving top votes across 675 entries.

Presented by the California Building Industry Association and the Pacific Coast Builders Conference (PCBC), the Gold Nugget Awards are the oldest and most prestigious residential design awards in the nation. Their purpose is to recognize those who improve our communities through exceptional concepts in design, planning and development.

“Receiving not one but two Awards of Merit is a great honor, and we’re grateful to be recognized among the year’s most distinguished work,” said Ken Lowney, president and CEO of the firm. “Sugar Pine Village and JESD are transformative projects, each showcasing what can be accomplished through stakeholder alignment and collaboration. We have a deep passion for the work we do, and these awards validate that we do it well.”

The Jefferson Elementary School District (JESD) project is an affordable, workforce housing development in San Mateo County. To fulfill the unmet need for affordable faculty and staff housing resources, the firm helped design and deliver this first-of-its-kind facility in San Mateo County for a California K-8 school district and only the second project in the county for a public school district. To keep costs down and deliver the project as quickly as possible, JESD turned to Lowney to assist with site planning and to take advantage of its expertise in the modular construction approach.

Sugar Pine Village is an affordable, mixed-use, multi-phase development designed to serve the South Lake Tahoe workforce. Comprised of 248 affordable apartment homes, it is the largest residential development in the region and was the first project to commence construction by the State of California as part of Governor Newsom’s Executive Order to build affordable housing on state-owned excess sites. Some of the phases utilize modular construction, which is well-suited for Tahoe’s short building season.