After years of struggling to get their project going, organizers of a proposed shelter for migrant farmworkers have started spending part of a $2 million city grant.
"It's in process," Sister RayMonda Duvall, executive director of Catholic Charities, said Wednesday as she discussed the long-debated shelter project.
Last week, the nonprofit organization hired an architect, and it hopes to have initial concept plans and construction cost estimates within the next several weeks, Duvall added.
Catholic Charities is proposing to put the 50-bed facility on its existing La Posada de Guadalupe homeless shelter property, on Impala Drive in Carlsbad's business park. The City Council OK'd the grant for the project in February.
The 1-acre site now contains several trailers. Plans call for those trailers to be replaced with one large building with two wings -- one for the farmworkers and one for the general homeless population, Duvall said.
Initially, the group had considered a two-story building, but now anticipates that such a structure might be too costly, Duvall said.
Local farmworker housing advocates have been trying for years to improve the living conditions for the people who toil in the city's flower and strawberry fields. Some of these workers sleep in makeshift, tarp-covered sleeping platforms in canyons near the fields. Several proposed shelter sites fell through before advocates joined with Catholic Charities to put together a project.
However, the shelter plan has been widely panned by anti-illegal immigration activists. Several members of the San Diego Minutemen have urged the council to rethink its decision to award the grant money, arguing that the people who would stay there are likely to be illegal immigrants.
Though the city administers the grant, the money doesn't come from property or sales tax revenue. It comes from a fund that developers pay into when they put homes and commercial projects on what had previously been farmland.
Earlier this month, the city released $54,400 from the $2 million grant, city associate planner Kevin Pointer said.
The city plans to release up to $108,500 for what's termed "pre-construction" work. The rest of the $2 million can be spent only on actual construction, Pointer said. To gain access to it, Catholic Charities will need to have both construction cost estimates and information on how it will handle paying the proposed shelter's annual operating expenses, he added.
The organization will be required to present that information at a City Council meeting as well as a meeting of the grant advisory committee, he said.
The project also will require various permits, including a conditional use permit.
Whether the rest of the $2 million grant will ever be spent depends on the result of the now-in-progress construction cost estimates, Duvall said. Rough estimates from several years ago put the project's estimated cost at $3.5 million.
One factor is in their favor now -- the recent national economic downturn has reduced the price of building materials and left contractors eager for work, Duvall said.
"If everything looks good, we'd like to expedite and start moving quickly," she said.
Call staff writer Barbara Henry at 760-901-4072.
