Loveland homeless shelter plan delayed indefinitely

LOVELAND — A controversial plan for a homeless shelter on a church property is now on hold indefinitely after the Loveland City Council on Tuesday, Dec. 17, voted to table the rezoning plan the project would need while the city’s staff more thoroughly studies its potential impacts  — but with no fixed date on when that report is due.

The council chamber was packed with residents anxious to testify for and against the project, which would convert First Christian Church, 2000 N. Lincoln Ave., into a 24-hour Loveland Resource Center and Homeless Shelter, but most of them filed out soon after the meeting opened when council member Patrick McFall introduced a motion to delay the vote. That motion carried 5-4 after council member Troy Krenning cast the deciding vote, even though he questioned its supporters’ motives.

“A great deal of misinformation is being circulated in this community, most of it not grounded in fact,” Krenning said. “My challenge to other council members would be, if you got all the information Mr. McFall’s asking for, would you consider it? Or are we just looking for a reason to postpone this so that we can come back later and still vote no against it.”

Krenning said he remained undecided about the issue and welcomed more information, but only “if it means someone’s going to actually listen to it and not just bury their axles up to the mud.”

McFall’s motion directed the city manager’s office “to commission a comprehensive impact study” that would “remove speculation from the discussion and provide a clear, fact-based understanding of the short- and long-term effects” from which the council can make a decision.

He asked that the study include:

• “An analysis of the economic and infrastructure impacts on surrounding residential and business areas.”
• “A review of the community impacts, including effects on public spaces such as the [adjacent] cemetery.”
• “A full report on police calls and emergency service costs related to similar facilities including the St. Valentine’s Apartments, the Loveland Resource Center, the South Railroad crossing facility.”
• “An assessment of the operational feasibility of the proposed shelter, including wraparound services, staffing plans and security measures.”
• “Comparative data from regional facilities that have been approved or denied, identifying successes, challenges and lessons learned.”

Council members Steve Olson and Dana Foley immediately spoke in support of McFall’s motion, with Olson producing a hard copy of a detailed action plan from United Way of Weld County’s “Weld’s Way Home” initiative in Greeley.

“If this were to be approved” in Loveland, Olson said, “we would have a building but no plan.”

City attorney Vince Junglas said the council’s role would be to decide whether the shelter plan meets the standards of the city’s Unified Development Code, but Foley noted that, “when we voted for the allowance of a shelter into the UDC, staff was adamant that it would not be in a residential area. But yet the first thing that comes in is to rezone a residential area. So there’s some concerns there.”

Foley said a better idea would be “pumping the brakes a little bit, getting the data that we need to make good governance and good decisions on behalf of the city.”

Council member Erin Black, however, contended that the research has already been done by the Loveland Homelessness Task Force, which was formed last year by project applicant Homeward Alliance, which is contracted by the city as its lead agency for homeless services.

“The charge from the previous council was to come up with the data and the plan, and they have, over and over and over,” she said. “You have consistently dismissed the data. You have consistently kicked the can down the road.”

Krenning asked how long it might be “until staff finds the time to get around to doing all these things Mr. McFall asks for,” and Junglas replied that his recommendation would be “to have a date-certain. That way the applicant has some measure of assurance. Tabling the motion is fundamentally the same as postponing it indefinitely.”

However, no “date certain” was added to the motion.

The ordinance the council would have considered Tuesday could have approved a zoning document for the 4.21-acre parcel and rezone it from “Emerging Business” on its west half and “Low Density Residential on its east half to “Planned Unit Development.”

The parcel is north of Lakeside Cemetery, east of Loveland Burial Park, west of a multifamily development and south of Allnutt Funeral Home.

Complicating the issue is that Allnutt has sued in Larimer District Court, claiming it has “legal or equitable interests in the church property” because it has shared a parking lot and two access roads with the church for decades. The city staff report submitted to the council acknowledged that, “to the extent an adjoining property owner claims ownership to the property within the proposed PUD, the city’s PUD approval process is not the appropriate vehicle to adjudicate claims of disputed title or ownership, and as a result, it must account for the pending court litigation.”

According to the staff report, “the signed application was originally submitted by Homeward Alliance on behalf of the property owner, First Christian Church. After the Planning Commission public hearing, First Christian Church requested to be substituted as the applicant in place of Homeward Alliance. As the owner of the property, First Christian Church has held ultimate authority for the application since the application was originally submitted. If the PUD zoning is approved, the proposal is for a nonprofit organization to manage the facility and oversee multiple nonprofit partners. The operator has not yet been chosen, but the applicant has submitted a detailed list of operator qualifications and is currently in contact with experienced potential operators.”

Homeward Alliance runs a day resource center for homelessness in Fort Collins and offers advice and consulting on how to address homelessness around Northern Colorado.

The report said the rezoning request not only meets all UDC requirements but also “complies with the use standards applicable to a homeless shelter as contained in the UDC, which are not required to be met by this application as the application preceded the adoption of these standards; however, the applicant has agreed to comply with the standards.”

The report said those standards “address operator requirements, facility supervision, fence screening, and a safety and security plan. The application, it said, outlines the facility’s organization as well as “the safety and security plan, the client code of conduct, and the good-neighbor plan to address issues that may be of concern to the surrounding neighborhood. These items will be further refined by the facility operator prior to commencement of the use.”

The church put the property up for sale last year as part of its plan to downsize. 

Hundreds of residents spoke for and against the project at a hearing in September, at which planning commissioners voted 7-1 against recommending that the City Council approve the rezoning.

The debate continued into Tuesday night’s City Council public-comment period, with some residents at odds over whether homeless shelters attracted mostly families with children or mostly violence-prone drug abusers.

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