Renderings have emerged a $22 million mixed-use development which would create affordable housing, stores and restaurants across the street from the Gold Line's Soto Station.

The project, dubbed Cielito Lindo, would rise upon an approximately half-acre site at 2407-2419 East 1st Street, replacing a series of Craftsman and Victorian-style structures.  Plans filed with the City of Los Angeles call for a six-story building, featuring 50 residential units, 5,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, and an 8,500-square-foot penthouse to house the offices of its developer, the East LA Community Corporation (ELACC).

Cielito Lindo is being designed by Gonzales Goodale Architects, a Pasadena-based firm with an extensive portfolio of transit oriented developments.  Their website describes the Cielito Lindo as an sustainable and energy efficient development, thanks to proposed features such as a cool roof, a solar thermal hot water system, and high efficiency boiler and mechanical units.  The building would feature a graduated massing, with residential units set back from the property line in order to maintain the existing low-rise streetscape.

The residential complex is the third development at Soto Station for ELACC, a non-profit organization which provides affordable housing and economic development services to predominantly Latino communities such as Boyle Heights and unincorporated East Los Angeles.  The group is currently collaborating with Metro on two additional multi-family projects aon the opposite side of 1st Street which would create a combined total of 88 affordable and senior housing units above ground floor retail space.

According to a document from ELACC, construction of Cielito Lindo is expected to finish in July 2016.