As the city of Aurora takes strides forward with its regional homeless navigation campus, officials held two meetings in March to gather feedback from community members and business owners in the surrounding areas.

Once established, the navigation campus will consolidate services for homeless people in one location — a model similar to that of the Colorado Springs Rescue Mission. The center will be the culmination of a year-long exploration by city officials who also traveled to Texas, where they researched strategies to reduce homelessness.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman said he expects the campus to be fully operational by early 2025. 

City staff covered myriad topics about the future campus in a public meeting Thursday, addressing safety concerns, giving updates on the campus operator, laying out the preliminary design and answering other community questions. 

The Denver Gazette listened in on the meeting and summarized answers to some of the most-asked questions and concerns about the project. 

How is the campus being funded and who will run it?

The city purchased the facility, previously a Crowne Plaza hotel at 15500 E. 40th Ave., for $26.5 million. The city has gathered almost $40 million in funding from a variety of sources for the navigation campus project, according to the city’s website, from the following sources:

• $15,360,852 – Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA)
• $5,000,000 – Aurora American Rescue Plan (ARPA) funds
• $3,734,741 – Aurora Housing and Urban Development (HUD) HOME-ARP funds
• $5,000,000 – Adams County ARPA funds
• $3,270,861 – Adams County HUD HOME-ARP funds
• $5,000,000 – Arapahoe County ARPA funds
• $1,125,000 – Douglas County ARPA funds
• $1,500,000 – Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) COVID funds

The city issued a request for proposals for an operator, looking for an agency with experience managing large shelters, transitional housing and with enough financial stability to support the large project, according to city spokesperson Emma Knight.

They got three applications, reviewed by a panel of representatives from Arapahoe County, Adams County, city of Aurora and the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative. 

Now, the city is in the process of finalizing a lease agreement with its chosen operator, which will be publicly announced sometime in the next month, Knight said. 

How will the campus be structured?

Aurora’s navigation campus will be one of several regional navigation campuses in the metro Denver area, including others in Lakewood, Boulder, Denver and the tri-city area.

Campuses are placed throughout the metro area to help mitigate a surge of homeless people to any specific location, staff said. 

“I don’t see this as a magnet,” City spokesperson Jessica Prosser said, explaining that the Aurora campus will accept any homeless people, not just Aurora residents, but doesn’t anticipate Aurora becoming the place to go for homeless people around the region.

The Aurora campus will have three tiers of housing to encourage people to use services, Knight said. The plans are still preliminary.

Tier one will be a low-barrier emergency shelter, Knight said, emphasizing “low-barrier, not no-barrier.”

There will be basic rules in place, such as enforcement against selling drugs and violence, she said. 

Tier two will be an engaged short-term shelter, which will include more private, higher quality shelter for people actively engaging in services offered at the campus. 

This will include, but is not limited to, working to get people important documents such as IDs and connecting them with case management, Knight said. 

Tier three will be workforce transitional housing, Knight said. This will include the highest quality housing on the campus for those working toward self-sufficiency.

Knight emphasized that this will not be the same hotel-room-type housing style Denver has.

“We’re not just going to be putting folks in hotel rooms and leaving them alone,” Knight said. 

Unlike many homeless shelters, the navigation campus will not have time periods when people are, and are not, allowed to seek shelter there. 

The navigation campus will be open 24/7, they said.

Prosser said they don’t anticipate reaching capacity in the emergency shelter based on the number of people currently homeless in the city.

A main goal of the campus is reducing barriers people often have from accessing services and shelter — so it will also have storage for peoples’ personal belongings and an on-site kennel for pets. 

The campus will not serve families and children.

What about safety?

In the meeting, staff addressed many questions from surrounding area residents about the safety of their community.

The concerns came on the heels of high-profile media reports about the former DoubleTree hotel-turned Denver homeless shelter at 4040 N. Quebec St., that has experienced multiple shootings — including a double fatality — seven deaths, and hundreds of 911 calls for service since it opened in December. 

Staff said safety is their top priority.

“We want to make sure everyone’s safe,” Knight said. “Everyone in the community, everyone using the campus … making sure were not disrupting the neighborhood we’re moving across from.”

This effort involves establishing what staff called a “good neighbor agreement,” ensuring they have consistent security measures and communication.

The entire campus will be enclosed by an eight-foot fence, allowing people on the campus to “exist safely” outside while still being within the campus boundaries, Knight said. 

There will be designated and controlled exit and entry points with security, which will likely include metal detectors and some type of belonging search system, Knight said.

The city will continue working closely with Aurora Police Department. Already, APD knows where the city’s shelters are and will be aware of the campus location, Prosser said. 

As they plan, there is potential for further security measures from APD, such as a homeless-specific team, she said. However, the goal is for security on-site to be successful in mitigating issues so they don’t have a lot of calls for service from the campus.

Just like elsewhere in Aurora, the area around the campus will be subject to the city’s camping ban, which will be enforced in outdoor spaces around the campus outside the fenced area, Prosser said.

How is it designed? Who is designing?

The city is collaborating with HDR Architecture, a firm experienced in trauma-informed design, Knight said. 

A preliminary site design produced by the designers splits the site into several areas, including: the overnight emergency shelter; an outdoor area for warming tents and pallet homes; a parking lot; the part of the building formerly used as hotel rooms for transitional housing, and the navigation center portion. 

The preliminary design shows three entry and exit points, all off of 40th Avenue on the north side of the campus. 

Anyone with questions or comments about the campus is asked to submit them on the Engage Aurora website. Questions are answered by staff and posted on the webpage for the public to see.