Housing Services Day Center: Addressing Poverty One Day at a Time

Where can you go during the day if you are homeless in Larimer County? "You may be able to find a place for the night," said Gordan Thibedeau, executive director for United Way of Larimer County, "but there are few places that will welcome you during the day, if you are homeless."

The new Housing Services Day Center is being designed to change that. The center will provide a permanent solution for providing comprehensive services, and will serve the homeless as well as those at risk of being homeless.

The 18,000 square foot building will be located at the corner of Blue Spruce Drive and Conifer Street using green building techniques. "We want to use integrated design to get the best building possible," said Thibedeau.

Steve Steinbicker, Principal with Architecture West, LLC, has organized design charrettes to brainstorm ideas for the center. A charrette is a focused brainstorming session that provides a forum for a wide variety of backgrounds to give the design team insights and ideas in the early stages of design. Charrette participants for the center included the design team, engineers, community leaders, and homeless. Insights from the homeless helped the design team include features that will ensure that the center can meet its objectives. For example, the current design includes a temporary pet shelter. A client could leave a pet in safety, long enough to allow the client to access the center's services.

The center received funding from the Fort Collins Utilities Integrated Design Assistance Program. The funding will help support the energy modeling, daylighting analysis and design assistance efforts that will be necessary to achieve the goals of providing a pleasant, welcoming space and a target energy use 20 percent below that required by code.

The funding and development of the center is the effort of an impressive collaboration of private and government organizations working together to address homelessness and housing issues, including:

• CARE Housing
• City of Fort Collins
• City of Loveland
• Fort Collins Housing Authority
• Interfaith Council
• Larimer County Health and Human Services
• Neighbor-to-Neighbor
• Salvation Army
• United Way of Larimer County (the fiscal agent for the project)
• Urban Congregations in Partnership

Design team:

• Architect: Architecture West, LLC, Fort Collins

Planning a new facility or major renovation? Call us!
The Power to Save Team
Fort Collins Utilities
Phone: (970) 221-6700