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The emergency structures, made by a Eugene company and set up at the corner of Centennial and Mohawk, will serve as an Egan Warming Center in Springfield. St. Vincent de Paul is undertaking the project as a previous warming center location downtown is no longer available.
St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County has purchased four emergency response shelters from a local manufacturer to set up a complex in Springfield that will serve about 80 people during freezing weather this winter.
St. Vincent de Paul and Deployed Logix set up the shelter system Friday, Dec. 12, in the parking lot of the former Waremart at 1600 Centennial Blvd. The shelter will be one of three Egan Warming Centers serving adult clients this season. The other two are in Eugene.
“Really, it just came down to building availability,” said Bill Barnard, director of operations for St. Vincent de Paul.
During previous winters, the organization had been leasing the Memorial Building from the city of Springfield to use as an Egan Warming Center, but the city sold the building earlier this year, so it is no longer available.
The new white shelters, customized with St. Vincent de Paul’s red logo, are connected in a “T” shape. Barnard estimates the 2,720-square-foot structure will accommodate 80 to 85 beds. It will remain in place through March.
“I love the flexibility,” he said, noting the shelters could be used for wildfire and smoke response in the summer. “I think that there’s a real future in being able to provide services less expensively in this model.
“I keep telling people that if the alternative is being outside and freezing and having nowhere to go, this starts to look pretty amazing,” Barnard said. “It meets the mission. It keeps people alive. It keeps people safe. That’s what the goal is.”
Barnard knows how critical that mission is. He stayed in a warming shelter about 15 years ago when dealing with addiction and homelessness.
“I love seeing people come in, you know, just absolutely miserable and then you can see them, like, exhale,” he said.
A mobile kitchen will provide meals on site. Portable bathrooms will be available as well. All Egan Warming Center sites are pet-friendly and volunteers will have kennels available, which clients can place next to their beds.
Deployed Logix
Deployed Logix is a rapid deployment emergency preparedness company that manufactures shelters in Eugene and sells them globally.
The shelters have a steel framework with a blackout vinyl exterior. Heaters pump warm air into the shelter and an insulation liner keeps the shelter warm.
Barnard said the shelter is rated to maintain 70 degrees inside when it is as cold as zero degrees outside.
String lights hang throughout the shelter and wiring harnesses provide outlets next to each bed, which sit on vinyl floors.
“These things are really designed primarily in mind for frontline workers and first responders to go into extremely harsh environments,” said David Georgieff, who works in marketing for Deployed Logix. “So they’ll have quite a bit of durability in winter conditions as a humanitarian shelter for the unhoused community.”
Deployed Logix trained St. Vincent de Paul staff on shelter setup and maintenance.
The shelters are interoperable with shelters from other brands and other Deployed Logix shelters owned by other agencies, said the company’s marketing director, Garret Towne.
“If there’s a natural disaster or something, people can combine resources and loan equipment to each other,” Towne said.
The shelters pack into cases that look like big Lego blocks, he said. Each shelter comes in two 8.5-by-2-by-2-foot cases.
“It’s an exceptionally small footprint when not in use, that gives them quite a bit of space when deployed,” Georgieff said.
Both Barnard and Deployed Logix declined to say the cost of the shelters.
Other warming centers
The other two Egan Warming Centers are at the Lane Events Center, 796 W. 13th Ave., and at The Zone, 530 Highway 99N. Each of those locations has capacity for 100 guests.
A youth warming center at First United Methodist Church, 1376 Olive St. in Eugene, will serve up to 25 minors per night.
The Egan Warming Center season is Nov. 15 to March 31. St. Vincent de Paul activates the shelters when overnight temperatures are forecast to drop below 30 degrees, which has not happened yet this season. Last year, the Egan Warming Centers were active for 31 days.
The warming centers are available to anyone in the community. Barnard said that while the Memorial Building had greater capacity than the modular shelter, St. Vincent de Paul has supplemented capacity at The Zone.
“Nobody will be turned away from this site based on capacity,” he said. “If we hit capacity, we have buses standing by and we’ll shuttle folks across the river.”
Overall capacity for the warming centers is down about 125 beds this year, Barnard said. This is because of a reduction in state funding that caused St. Vincent de Paul to lose half of its budget for Egan Warming Centers, a cut of $151,000 for the year.
The warming centers are volunteer-run. Barnard said at the Springfield location, seven to eight volunteers will work per shift, for about 32 volunteers a day. Anyone interested in volunteering can sign up for a virtual volunteer orientation.