With site preparation already underway, the Fort Collins Rescue Mission officially celebrated the start of construction on its new homeless resolution center with a shelter inside of it.
On Sept. 26, the organization held a groundbreaking ceremony for its future home at 1355 Mason St., which is just west of the North College Avenue corridor.
Almost 800 donors, whether individuals, businesses, foundations or churches, have contributed $27.3 million toward the facility, which will cost $27.5 million, steering committee chair Rob Dunn told the crowd.
Construction is expected to take 12 to 14 months, meaning this coming winter will be the last before the facility opens.
Several speakers at the event noted that the project has been an enormous task and said it has been successful only because of community partnership.
Fort Collins Rescue Mission leaders and local leaders turn dirt at the organization’s groundbreaking ceremony for its new homeless resolution center on Friday, Sept. 26, 2025.
Bohemian Foundation owns the land and is leasing the land to the rescue mission, for example.
The city of Fort Collins contributed $1 million from its one-time American Rescue Plan Act funding.
“This does not just happen,” said Dennis Van Kampen, president and CEO of the Denver Rescue Mission, which oversees the Fort Collins Rescue Mission. “This is an example for what can happen across our country” when public funding, private citizens, businesses, nonprofits and ministries join together.
“We had some challenging moments, and yet people kept coming to the table time and time again to say we know this is such an important need,” City Manager Kelly DiMartino said during the ceremony.
John Kefalas, Larimer County commissioner, also alluded to concerns that have been voiced due to the proximity of the facility to homes and businesses.
“I’m trusting and hopeful that the Fort Collins Rescue Mission will have good communication and connections and with our neighbors — Hickory Village mobile home park folks who were very engaged, the north Fort Collins businesses who were very engaged,” he said.
“I think ultimately this will help address a very complex problem, but it’s not been an easy journey to get here,” Kefalas said. “I’m glad we’re here.”
The new facility will have 38,000 square feet of space.
It will include an overnight shelter for up to 250 men, a day shelter and private areas for intake and case management.
Its trauma-informed design is meant to reduce barriers to getting help.
“We decided to brand this campaign ‘More Than’ because this is not a shelter, this is a homeless resolution center that includes emergency shelter,” Van Kampen said. “This is more than meals. Of course, we feed people when they’re hungry, but this is way more than that and this is going to allow us to have more impact than we’ve ever had before.”
Last year, Fort Collins Rescue Mission helped 92 of its guests move into stable housing.
“We hope we’ll at least double those numbers every year until we’re not needed to do it again,” Van Kampen said. “We are going to work to bring an end to homelessness one life at a time.”
During the past year, the rescue mission staff say they’ve had to turn away guests more than 1,200 times due to a lack of capacity.
And in the past month alone, since a fire damaged the organization’s Jefferson Street facility, making it uninhabitable, they’ve turned away guests 227 times.
But when the new building is done, Van Kampen said, that will not happen again.
After fire, Fort Collins Rescue Mission tries to recoup capacity during winter months
While the new homeless resolution center is about a year from opening, the rescue mission is getting ready to go into the winter season without its Jefferson Street facility.
For now, the organization can host up to 70 men per night at the location of its winter overflow shelter, 117 N. Mason St. But that facility can’t house as many as the Jefferson Street site, which can take up to 89 men.
The overflow shelter is meant to operate only from November to April, to meet demand during the coldest months, when finding shelter is “a life and death problem,” said Seth Forwood, the rescue mission’s vice president for programs in Northern Colorado.
Rescue mission staff were already worried about having enough capacity during winter prior to the fire, he said, because even though they had 159 beds last winter, they still had to turn away 13 people.
During a Sept. 24 neighborhood meeting to talk about the overflow shelter, Forwood said the rescue mission has been working for four weeks to find alternatives to provide shelter to more people.
But right now, the rescue mission is still working to assess whether the building is habitable, he said during the groundbreaking ceremony.
“I wish I had a more definitive update on what we’re going to do this winter,” Forwood said, “but we’re actively workging with the city and all those partners to figure out how to provide capacity.”
Van Kampen said the organization must also consider how much to invest in the building when it has plans to sell the building after the new facility is open.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins Rescue Mission breaks ground on homeless resolution center