Denise Weinfenbach, one of 100 men and women in an addiction-recovery program at Springs Rescue Mission, likes the latest improvements at Colorado Springs’ largest homeless shelter and resource center.

“It’s going to make it a lot safer,” she said about a new fence that surrounds the perimeter of the 14-acre campus and a new welcome center that’s now the only entry point.

“It’s going to help keep those that are on drugs out of here,” Weinfenbach said Thursday while hanging out at the shelter. “It’s a big problem.”

The campus that now extends more than six blocks south of downtown held its fifth grand opening in as many years Thursday, as part of an $18 million “Community of Hope” expansion project.

This marks the last phase of the massive capital campaign and coincides with the nonprofit Christian organization’s 25th anniversary.

Springs Rescue Mission marks latest expansion with ribbon-cutting for new dining hall

“This has been a journey of hard work, faith, dedication and most of all, love,” said Travis Williams, development director. “We’re trying to love just a little harder, in helping people find a pathway out of poverty, homelessness and addiction.”

The centerpiece of the final $3.26 million upgrade is turning the original dining hall and kitchen, at 5 W. Las Vegas St., into a 3,000-square-foot welcome center.

The building features a reception desk, a mail room for some 1,000 people who use the shelter as their primary address, restrooms, kennels and an outdoor run for clients who have dogs.

The new intake process will prevent people who don’t belong on the campus from entering, Springs Rescue Mission spokesman Cameron Moix said while giving a tour.

Everyone who enters the welcome center gets screened for COVID symptoms and walks through a metal detector. Security guards will remove and hold weapons for clients who carry legally and return their guns or knives when they leave, Moix said.

“So things we don’t want on the campus don’t get on the campus,” he said. “A lot of people are in recovery and have trauma, and it’s really important for them to feel safe.”

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Rows of 268 secured lockers are set up outside the welcome center to hold possessions of clients who are seeing a case manager or enrolled in a work program.

“One of the primary concerns of people who are homeless is the safety of their things,” Moix said. “Having lockers outside means they can access them.”

Clients have had to store their belongings in bins that essentially amounted to large trash cans, he said.

New bike racks also are inside the gates, as well as a bronze sculpture of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns and with hollowed holes through the body.

The statute was donated five years ago and in storage until now, Moix said, as there wasn’t a good place to display the artwork.

“We’re a Christ-centered, low-barrier rescue mission,” said President and CEO Jack Briggs. “We accept everybody just as they are, and we love them unconditionally. We also connect them with other services in the community.”

The ceremony for supporters, including representatives from local businesses, churches, government agencies and volunteers, was held in a new outdoor courtyard in the middle of the campus, which replaces a pothole-ridden parking lot.

Private donors and grants funded the growth, Moix said, which increased overnight accommodations from 37 cots in 2014 to 450 beds today.

A new 185-seat dining hall opened last September, serving 700 meals daily, up from 282 meals a day, officials said.

Some 49 people now meet with case managers each day, up from 12 people seven years ago, and 20 people a month find their way out of shelter living and back into housing in the community.

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The campus also operates an employment program and provides showers, washers and dryers for doing laundry, a day center and access to physical and mental health care, legal work and spiritual assistance.

Some clients complain, though. The food is not as good as at other shelters James Weber has been to, for example.

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It’s might sound like a small thing, but it’s important to people who are homeless, he said.

Ronald Reed Juergens, who’s been homeless in Colorado Springs since 2017, said there aren’t enough toilets or caseworkers for 350 people.

Moix said he hasn’t noticed lines to use restrooms, and caseworkers are available for anyone who wants to use the service.

Moreover, Juergens said, the process of moving ahead is difficult to navigate, such as obtaining a copy of his birth certificate and filling out copious amounts of paperwork to get on a housing list. He would rather see money spent on decreasing the bureaucracy and restrictions.

“It’s a very arbitrary system,” he said. “That’s why there are so many people camping outside. They don’t like the food, the rules, the restrictions, the closed environment of the shelter. They’ve been beat down.”

The city has contributed $6 million to the expansion of Springs Rescue Mission, from Community Development Block Grant funding, said Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers.

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“It’s much more than a food-and-shelter location,” he said. “It’s changing lives for the better.”

Suthers called Springs Rescue Mission “a welcoming and dignified place” that’s become “a model for the nation.”

The city committed to improve services for the homeless after Suthers was elected in 2015, said Springs Rescue Mission’s former CEO, Larry Yonker, who retired last year after overseeing the majority of the renovations.

Yonker said it’s no accident that Springs Rescue Mission is completing its overhaul at the same time as City for Champions tourism projects are coming to fruition, including Weidner Field for the Switchbacks and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum.

City leaders agreed to fortify assistance to the homeless at the same time the community redevelopment plan was being hatched, he said.

The vision to create a one-stop resource center came out of a trip homeless advocates made to San Antonio to visit operations there.

“We said, ‘This is what Colorado Springs needs,’” Yonker said. “It’s been nothing short of a miracle.”