AURORA | Community leaders from Aurora and the region celebrated the grand opening of the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus, a new facility designed to help homeless people reach their personal, highest level of self-sufficiency through what proponents say is a hybrid approach to addressing homelessness.
The former Crowne Plaza Hotel and Conference Center on the northeast Aurora and Denver border has been transformed into a support hub offering shelter, health care, employment services and pathways to permanent housing.
“This facility will embody a people-focused, progress-driven approach to homelessness that empowers and prepares people to come through these doors to improve their circumstances, not a handout, but a hand up,” Mayor Mike Coffman said.
The project was made possible through House Bill 22-1378, which created a $50 million grant program to develop regional navigation campuses across the Denver metro area. Aurora received $15.4 million from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs to purchase and renovate the facility, with additional funding from Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas Counties, each contributing federal American Rescue Plan Act or ARPA dollars…