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 critical safety problems. It’s also the subject of complaints from the strip’s affluent new residents.

But the religious organization doesn’t want to move the shelter, which can host more than 400 men per night.

Instead, they may follow the latest trend on Brighton: build up.

Early plans emerge

This summer, the Salvation Army submitted a conceptual plan for its Crossroads site to the city of Denver. The organization, acting 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 in a statement to The Denver Post.

The Salvation Army hasn’t disclosed any details of how it would pay for the new 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 townhomes and condos have risen up in the traditional “mission 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 that he, too, is worried by how some people behave around Crossroads. Often, shelters are the last lines of care for people suffering with mental illness.

A building in distress

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

The shelter has since spent more than $300,000 fixing the bathroom, creating safe exits and working on other problems, and it’s working on the ventilation system, according to Pasha-Glenn. 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 earlier this year to move toward rebuilding the site.

“It’s dilapidated,” Seitz said.

“It’s an old building, but at least they keep a roof over your head,” added Mark Bordelon, 60, a former merchant mariner who travels to Denver for cancer treatment. Both men 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, especially in cities where homelessness and property values are both growing.

In Los Angeles, one provider has proposed a “sleek metal-and-glass design” on the city’s so-called skid row, the Los Angeles Times reported. In San Jose, Calif., a new apartment building for once-homeless people will rise to six floors. And, in Denver, the new Sanderson apartment building hosts 60 bedrooms that are specifically designed for people who have spent years on the streets.

“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. But the question’s becoming more important, especially as shelters like Crossroads reach their limits.

Some cities, Batko said, are building large new shelters to save on space and money. Others, such as Washington, Salt Lake City and New York, are trying to shrink their shelters, creating more hospitable experiences and scattering them throughout the city.

And the type of shelter that the Salvation Army is imagining — a mix of emergency and longer-term housing, plus room for other services — is increasingly common.

“The movement in the field has definitely been toward lowering barriers for entry, (and) placing an emphasis on having an exit pathway for anyone entering shelter,” Batko said.

Denver’s new homeless services leader, Chris Conner, has said that he wants the city’s shelters to add more apartment-style units that can help people transition out of homelessness.

What’s next?

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.

The cost of redevelopment would be substantial. Conner said in an earlier interview that he was unaware of any new plans for financing the project, and the Salvation Army hasn’t yet announced the kind of capital campaign that usually accompanies such a project.

The city has long paid private organizations to run its shelter system, though the local government in recent years has invested in its own shelter buildings, too.

Meanwhile, some hope that a redesigned Crossroads could ease tensions and safety concerns 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. An office worker at the neighboring Industry building, she added that she has “never had a bad interaction.”

Finkelstein suggested that better lighting and more frequent police patrols would make him more comfortable. The church already has cleaned up the area, but it remains “Denver’s Skid Row,” as Finkelstein put it.

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.”