Homeless men who board buses outside the Denver Rescue Mission for transport to the city’s overflow shelter soon won’t have to travel as far.

City plans disclosed this week call for a switch by January to a warehouse building that the city is buying near Seventh Avenue and Alcott Street in west Denver, minutes from downtown. Later in the year, a women’s overflow shelter may open at the opposite end of the building.

The pending $4.1 million purchase is for a 28,000-square-foot building, which also would accommodate growing city storage needs in the rest of the space. It could provide a more permanent solution to the need for overflow shelter space to supplement the city’s nonprofit shelters, particularly on cold nights.

Since May 2015, the city has leased a building near Peoria Street and Interstate 70 in the far northeast part of the city, requiring long bus trips each night and return transports back downtown each morning. Before that, officials experimented with opening several recreation centers to the homeless at night during the winter.

At the Peoria location, the city says it has housed about 315 men and 120 women on floor mats in separate areas on some nights.

A city official who oversees Denver’s homeless services said the building purchase offers an opportunity to improve how homeless people who stay in shelters are treated.

“Our plan with this building is to change the paradigm in the way we deliver overnight shelter services,” Bennie Milliner, executive director of Denver’s Road Home, told a City Council committee Tuesday. “We just think there is a level of dignity that needs to be further incorporated. It’s really the first city-owned facility that would be providing shelter, and so we have the opportunity to do that.”

In the short term, though, the new building is expected to resemble accommodations at the Peoria facility: spartan mats on the floor in open spaces.

“One primary goal we have is to put beds in there — whether that be starting with cots,” Milliner said, or holding a design competition to solicit more creative ideas than rows of bunk beds. Groupings of beds that include storage space could provide more privacy.

City officials have faced criticism from advocates for the homeless this year — and a lawsuit — after high-profile sweeps of downtown encampments.

Other city efforts are underway on the homelessness front. Those include a program that’s moving up to 250 chronically homeless people into supportive housing, plans for a “solutions center” providing behavioral health services and temporary shelter, and a recently proposed $1 million performance loan to help Catholic Charities open a new women’s homeless shelter in northeast Denver.

Still unclear is whether neighboring Sun Valley residents and businesses will embrace the city’s new overflow shelter.

Last week, city workers began notifying neighbors with a flier that says the city planned to solicit local nonprofit groups to staff it and run it. As with the Peoria shelter, people staying there would arrive and depart on buses, with no walk-ins accepted.

But the flier says that, based on future needs, “the building could include more regular use and additional services that serve walk-up clients.”

Councilman Paul Lopez, who represents the area, characterized it as filled with very compassionate neighbors — “not a neighborhood of NIMBYs,” or people with a “not in my backyard” stance.

Jeanne Granville, president of the Sun Valley Community Coalition, agreed in an interview, saying: “We have a neighborhood that’s occupied by many individuals who at one point in their lives” have been homeless or “have had people in their families experience homelessness — or at least housing insecurity. I think we’re very open to wanting to help, but we also want to make sure it’s run in a way that benefits everybody.”

She said those who have heard of the shelter plan are keeping an open mind but, like her, want to learn more. City officials are set to meet with the group Oct. 4.

The building, now used by a cabinetry manufacturer, is at 2601-2605 W. Seventh Ave., with a separate address for each of five bays.

The men’s overflow shelter will take up two bays, the city says, while women’s shelter space is expected to take up one bay or slightly more. Remaining bays will be used for general city storage.

When Councilman Kevin Flynn asked about the property’s appraisal at nearly $4.1 million — after the seller bought it two years ago for just $2.3 million — senior city asset manager Lisa Lumley said the market for warehouse space near downtown has tightened since then. Among the factors, experts have said, are job growth and the rise of the marijuana industry.

The council’s Finance and Governance Committee unanimously advanced the building purchase agreement. The full council could consider approving it as soon as Sept. 26.