🏢 Agate breaks ground on emergency shelter, affordable housing project on 27th Ave
The four-story building, a block east of Cub, will provide shelter and housing for about 100 people at a time.
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Agate Housing and Services broke ground Tuesday on a major new affordable housing and homeless shelter building at 2810 27th Ave, a block east of Cub, which it says will help provide shelter for about 100 people at a time and help single adults transition from homelessness into permanent stable housing. Agate expects the $25 million project to be completed by the end of next year.
Background
Agate formed in 2021 with the merger of two of the city’s prominent homeless services agencies: St. Stephen’s Human Services and House of Charity. In tandem the group provides street outreach, emergency shelters, showers, meals, and case management services to about 5,000 people a year, with a focus on single adults.
After one of its flagship shelters closed during COVID, and the peak-pandemic practice of sheltering people in hotels wound down, Agate began looking for a place to expand its housing inventory.
It zeroed in on four parcels at the corner of 28th Street and 27th Avenue: The former China Wok restaurant that was badly burned during the 2020 unrest, a parking lot, a vacant lot, and one house. The area met its criteria of being near affordable shopping and transit.
Early last year, an anonymous individual donor gave the vision a major push with a $1.5 million donation to cover the cost of buying the land. The rest was cobbled together through a mix of city and county funds, along with $5 million in bonding from the state and some additional funds from the Metropolitan Council. Agate partnered with Longfellow Community Council to host a pair of public meetings about the project last year.
Affordable housing developer Trellis (who was behind the Trinity on Lake development) is overseeing the development. UrbanWorks, which also designed the Longfellow Station apartments at 38th and Hiawatha, is the architect.
The facility
The four-story L-shaped building will be functionally separated into two levels of apartments and two levels of emergency shelter, each with its own entrance and security.
The emergency shelter is designed to get people living outside into a safe environment where Agate can help connect them to services and longer-term housing. It will feature 54 beds on the first two floors of the building, clustered into small dorm rooms rather than one large open room, along with separate areas to securely store belongings. It’ll be operated 24/7 with on-site security.
The top two floors will host 50 units of permanent, “deeply affordable” housing units, a mix of single-occupancy rooms (small rooms that use a shared bathroom), studios, one-bedrooms, and a single six-bedroom unit. Groups of four rooms will cluster around a common area and shared kitchen.
Behind the building will be a small parking lot, bike storage, and private courtyard.
In addition to bathrooms and kitchens, the 17,000 square feet of common space throughout the building will include dining areas, gathering spaces, a health clinic, and offices for Agate’s support services. Each person staying in the facility is assigned a caseworker who helps them jump through the necessary hoops to access benefits, education, and employment, with ongoing check-ins.
Agate hopes to complete construction and open the facility before next winter.
