Two hundred and forty people shifted their plastic chairs from one side of the Dorothy Day Center to the other Wednesday night, dragging along the mismatched luggage, backpacks and trash bags that contained their belongings.

Usually, they would wait outside during the squat building’s conversion from a service hub to an overnight shelter, but the temperature had dropped to 6 degrees, so the crowd was allowed indoors.

It was a routine everyone knew well. And it will change completely Thursday with the opening of Higher Ground St. Paul: a five-story building near the original Dorothy Day site, one intended to provide safe, dignified housing for 450 people.

“This is our last night here!” advocate coordinator Terrie Green called into the crowd.

“Woo!” cheered a man, pumping his fist in the air.

Later that evening, Green danced with joy at the thought of Higher Ground opening and what it will mean for the people who turn to Dorothy Day for help.

The shelter on the edge of downtown has been called cramped and overcrowded. Civic leaders have been trying to move or replace it for years. And on Wednesday, it turned off the lights as a shelter for the last time.

A BEACON

When he walked through the doors of the Dorothy Day Center in the winter of 1988-89, T. Mychael Rambo felt disheartened and discouraged about his future.

He had come to Minnesota from Texas to enter Hazelden Addiction Treatment Center in Center City, but graduated from the program with nowhere to go and no winter clothing.

He found his way to the Dorothy Day Center on the corner of Old Sixth Street and North Main Street. There, he was fed, protected from the harsh Minnesota winter and given a place to go while he found his way into transitional sober housing.

“Dorothy Day provided then what it provides now: hope for so many,” said Rambo, a regional Emmy Award-winning actor and teacher who lives in St. Paul’s Aurora-St. Anthony neighborhood and serves on the board of Catholic Charities, which operates Dorothy Day.

“The reality is Dorothy Day has been more than a beacon of light,” he said. “I found it as a place to get the services and support that I needed to reclaim my life.”

The Dorothy Day Center opened in 1981 as a day facility that could serve 30 to 50 homeless people at a time. It expanded in 1993 to accommodate 200 people at a time during meals. The center began offering overnight shelter seasonally in the winter of 2000 and became a year-round shelter in 2003. While the shelter initially saw 50 to 60 people sleeping there each night, the numbers have increased with the need.

Currently, about 250 people sleep shoulder-to-shoulder on mats stretched across the Dorothy Day Center’s floor each night. The center provides services to 6,500 people a year and shelters 2,500, Dorothy Day director Gerry Lauer said.

A large number of Dorothy Day’s clients sleep in the shelter for a week or two and leave — never to return once their temporary needs were met. But others have been chronically homeless for two to 10 years or longer and “have tremendous barriers” in securing housing, including mental health problems, Lauer said.

Despite the fact that it’s cramped and virtually impossible to get a good night sleep in the shelter, it has been a harbor for Samuel McIntosh, 35, during the six months he’s stayed there.

“Personalities clash,” he said. “You have to have a strong mind to put up with a bunch of different things … but it brings me down to reality. It keeps me focused. It opens my eyes on where I was and what I’ve accomplished.”

Since moving to St. Paul in August 2015, looking for a change from Chicago, McIntosh found a job that he loves working in a downtown restaurant. He has set up a checking account for his own expenses and a savings account for his youngest daughter, who lives in the area with her mother.

And he’s moving into the first place that he can remember calling his own Thursday, when Higher Ground St. Paul opens.

A NEW BEGINNING

In addition to providing separate emergency shelters for single men and women, the new, L-shaped shelter in downtown will also offer pay-for-stay beds, and almost 200 units of permanent housing — each with its own address and its own key.

And one of those is going to be McIntosh’s.

“It feels good. There’s just … relief,” he said, envisioning himself coming home from work, unlocking the door and lying down on his own bed.

Beyond a good night’s sleep, McIntosh is also looking forward to the responsibilities that come with having his own place and the chance to prove to his children that he is bettering himself.

“I’ve been through so much. … But the whole journey, it’s actually been amazing,” he said. “I’ve had my ups and I’ve had my downs. … But it opens your eyes. You go, ‘Wow, did, I really accomplish this? Did I really do this?’ I did.”

Rambo is excited to see the same hope that inspired him extended to many more people through Higher Ground St. Paul.

“I’m elated,” Rambo said. “I’m overjoyed for the hundreds upon thousands of people who will be able to walk into this new facility with pride … into a space where they can see that our community, the Twin Cities, believes that they can do better when we do better.”