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Not to mention the sidewalk parade of needles, panhandling and desperation now engrained in the ByWard’s fabric.

Importantly, the new centre will be purpose-built, a major improvement over current shelters, which tend to be converted schools with a prison-like feel: a grubby lobby/drop-in room, a control centre with beefy counter staff, buzzers to gain access to secure areas, steel bunks and food lines.

(The Booth Centre, which opened in 1963, is a former school, as are the Shepherds’ two main buildings.)

“It’s going to be a beautiful facility,” said Marc Provost, Booth’s executive director. “It will change the whole feel of the street.”

One of the main features of the $50-million plan is to bring the human traffic off the street and into courtyards and interior terraces where there is privacy and a sense of calm.

“This is a golden opportunity for us to do things differently, in a modern way.”

The shelters, too, have moved way past what used to be called “three-hots and a cot.” Now they are heavily into program delivery: housing support, employment searches, life skills, addiction treatment, foodbanks, clothing hampers, dentistry and medical care, family services.

“Things have evolved tremendously since 1963,” said Provost. “We offer a lot more services and the way we provide the services has evolved as well.”

The plan in Vanier is for a storefront with the existing thrift shop and a new coffee shop (staffed as an in-house enterprise), and to have the new building set back in an H-shape at the mid/rear of the property. He said it will look more like a condo than a social service centre, with lots of greenery and landscaping.