Salvation Army aims high, plans eight-story homeless shelter on Brighton Boulevard

The Salvation Army’s homeless shelter is a reminder of the old Brighton Boulevard: an aging one-story warehouse hosting hundreds of homeless men each night amid the new apartment blocks and bars of the booming River North district.

It would be easy to assume the place will disappear one day. The property is worth millions, and the building in recent years has required expensive fixes for safety problems. It’s also the subject of complaints from the strip’s affluent residents.

But the religious organization doesn’t want to move the shelter, which can host more than 400 men per night. Instead, it may follow the latest trend on Brighton: build up.

This summer, the Salvation Army submitted a conceptual plan for its Crossroads site to the city of Denver. The organization, under new regional leadership, is interested in building an eight-story tower on the site, combining beds for single men with offices, a coffee shop, and several floors of apartments and dormitory-style units.

“Most of all, it will allow adequate space

for our social service staff to provide care and treatment aiming for long-term results,” Mike Dickinson, the Salvation Army major who now leads the organization’s Intermountain Division, said.

The Salvation Army hasn’t disclosed details of how it would pay for the tower or when it might be built.

“We’re really in the beginning stages of everything,” spokesperson Tahreem Pasha-Glenn said. “We don’t have a timeline. The ball is really in the city’s court. They’re looking over the proposal we’ve submitted — kind of our wish list.”

Questions of safety

Around the neighborhood, news of the potential change is raising eyebrows. The shelter has become another flash point in a city where new homes have risen up in traditional “mis- sion districts.”

“If it wasn’t for that shelter, people would feel it’s worth what we’re paying,” said resident Chasen Finkelstein, 35, who pays a couple thousand bucks a month for his nearby apartment. He often feels unsafe while walking his dog after work, when groups of men congregate along the South Platte River near the shelter.

But Finkelstein acknowledged that the shelter was there more than a decade before his apartment building. “Where would a lot of these people go?” he asked.

A few blocks away, Robert Seitz, 44, leaned on his cane just outside the shelter. “I would describe myself as an inadequate participant in society, because of my strokes,” he said. His medical condition ruined his sense of balance and ended his 18-year career as an electrician, he said.

Seitz, a frequent guest at the shelter, said he, too, is worried by how some people behave around Crossroads. Often, shelters are the last lines of care for people with mental illness.

If the rebuild happens, Seitz is hoping for better bathrooms and better showers. At one point, the shelter used portable toilets indoors, and it was hosting hundreds more men than it could accommodate safely, according to city inspectors.

The shelter has since spent more than $300,000 fixing the bathroom, creating safe exits and working on other problems. It is working on the ventilation system, according to PashaGlenn. The city has promised a 25 percent reimbursement.

Still, the 63-year-old building is showing its age, and the Salvation Army’s Denver Metro Advisory Board voted this year to move toward rebuilding.

“It’s an old building, but at least they keep a roof over your head,” said Mark Bordelon, 60, a former merchant mariner who travels to Denver for cancer treatment. Seitz and he prefer Crossroads to the new shelter on the city’s eastern edge, where clients wake before 5 a.m. for a bus ride back to downtown services and jobs.

By submitting the plan, the Salvation Army has kicked off a review process with the city.

“The concept plan is the initial proposal,” said Laura Swartz, a spokesperson for the city’s Community Planning and Development office.

A new model

The idea of a high-rise homeless services building is new for Denver, but it’s not unheard of. In Los Angeles, one provider has proposed a “sleek metal-andglass design” on the city’s so-called skid row, the Los Angeles Times reported. In San Jose, Calif., a new apartment building for oncehomeless people will rise to six floors.

“I would say that there is not really a definitive answer to what shelters should look like,” said Samantha Batko, a research associate specializing in housing for the Urban Institute.

Denver’s Road Home is still waiting to hear more details about the Crossroads plan, according to spokesperson Julie Smith. The goal is to create a shelter system that “doesn’t just respond to the emergent need for a place to sleep at night but serves as a front door to resources and, eventually, housing for people experiencing homelessness in Denver,” she wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, some believe a redesigned Crossroads could ease tension and safety in River North. Jill Shreeve, 29, hopes the Salvation Army will create a more comfortable outdoor space for shelter guests, giving them an alternative to the dusty streets around the shelter. Shreeve is an office worker at the neighboring Industry building. She said she has “never had a bad interaction.”

Finkelstein suggested better lighting and more police patrols would make him more comfortable.

Seitz was concerned most about where he would stay if the shelter has to close. The Salvation Army’s leadership has said it will find room for everyone if there is a transition period. But, in the long run, Seitz said, these early plans could be the beginning of something better.

“If it was nicer and cleaner,” he said, “people would be more accepting.”