Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify that the Unhoused Support Center’s design was changed to reduce the cost of the project and that no services included in its initial plans were cut.
When the previous Cumberland County Board of Commissioners broke ground on the Unhoused Support Center in February 2024, they envisioned a large and homey two-story building dedicated to serving the county’s homeless population.
New designs unveiled on Monday by the center’s architecture firm, LS3P, have shrunk this vision slightly to bring down the estimated cost of the project.
“What you saw was a rescoped project, one that brought it back to the original guiding principles that this project had dating back to 2022 when this was originally discussed,” Kirk deViere, chair of the county board of commissioners, said in comments to the press following the firm’s presentation at the board’s Aug. 11 regular meeting.
The center’s initial concept was a 45,000 square-foot building with about 157 temporary shelter beds. It was estimated to cost $32 million, significantly over the allocated budget of $17 million, deViere told CityView on Friday. County staff were concerned the concept strayed from the purpose of providing safe and dignified temporary housing for homeless residents, deViere said. Staff had paused progress on the center in November until new designs could be made.
The new designs now put the center at 24,000 square feet, according to LS3P’s presentation. It will hold 100 total beds: 53 for men, 28 for women, 18 for families and one for isolation. Despite its smaller footprint, no services proposed in the Unhoused Support Center’s initial concept have been cut.
The center will also include a multi-purpose space for community organizations to provide those services.
“Our goal is to make sure that transitional housing becomes permanent,” said Veronica Jones, vice chair of the county board of commissioners and chair of the Unhoused Support Center Committee, during the meeting. “To help them while they’re there [at the Unhoused Support Center] with case management services and resources, if they are in need, for substance abuse or mental health needs.”
The Cumberland County Board of Commissioners voted 6-1 on Monday to accept the new designs and extend the contract with one of the shelter’s construction companies, Barr & Barr, another year. Henry Tyson was the lone commissioner voting against the motion.
The shelter is now expected to cost $17 million to build. The budget includes $510,000 of county contingency costs to make sure that, when construction begins, “this is the actual budget,” Bob Pressley, a senior associate and project manager with LS3P, told commissioners.
The question of who will run the center is uncertain. It’s something Tyson, a member of the board’s Unhoused Support Center Committee, wants to see answered before spending any dollars on the project. He also wants a plan for how the center would work with the Fayetteville Cares Day Resource Center, the City of Fayetteville’s homelessness resource center.
“I think this is a much-needed project,” Tyson said. “It’s very important that this board gets this right before we just move forward on spending our residents’ dollars on this project.”
There isn’t a timeline for when the Unhoused Support Center will open, Assistant County Manager Heather Skeens told CityView. That will be part of L3MP’s second phase of deliverables to county commissioners, she said.
“We still have in front of us, really, the bulk of our work, which is phase two,” Pressley told commissioners. “That’s going to include schematic design, design development and construction drawings.”
Until the center is running, Cumberland County remains in urgent need of temporary emergency housing following the closure of the Salvation Army of the Sandhill’s temporary emergency shelter in April. Currently, the county has only one homeless shelter for men and another for women and children who are victims of domestic violence.
Formerly on Alexander Street, the downtown Fayetteville shelter was one of the largest in the county, and the only one serving women and families.
The Cumberland County Board of Commissioners tried to save the Salvation Army’s shelter earlier this year. In May, the board voted to provide up to $563,000 per year for shelter operations if the facility passed an inspection by the Cumberland County Department of Public Health.
The shelter failed the inspection, according to a June press release from the county. Among the issues found by environmental health directors and Skeens were rusted ceiling vents, damaged tiling and outlets, and lack of cleanliness, according to the inspection report obtained by CityView through a public records request. They also found a “mold-like substance” in one of the shelter’s family rooms.
County commissioners ended contract negotiations with the nonprofit, Jones citing the failed inspection and the thousands of dollars the Salvation Army of the Sandhills owed to the temp agency Dreamville Staffing Inc.
The county has spent about $100,000 to house over 22 families displaced by the closure of the Salvation Army shelter, deViere said to press on Monday. He added that many of those families are now in transitional housing, a step in their path to stable housing.
While waiting for the Unhoused Support Center to open, the county searched for a stopgap organization to provide services for homeless residents and run a temporary homeless shelter. Officials are currently evaluating the at least four responses they received from that search, deViere told the press.
“We’ve invested dollars. We’ve invested resources. We continue to find a short-term, intermediate and long-term solution for this,” deViere said. “We are not standing flatfooted.”
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.