While standing alongside Urban Peak CEO Christina Carlson, Johnston made a teary-eyed speech about the importance of the organization and its new Mothership, which began construction in January 2023.
"When I had my first child, someone said to me, 'Having a child is like having your heart walking outside of your body for the rest of your life,' which is how deeply you love them and how exposed you feel," Johnston said at the ceremony. "The Mothership is what love looks like in a physical form."
Urban Peak's new campus is four floors and 66,000 square feet in size, which will give it much more space than the organization's older facility at 2100 Stout Street. The Mothership cost more than $38 million to construct and was funded largely by organizational partnerships, bonds and donations from the City of Denver and State of Colorado, as well as local fundraising.
The building was part of a financial controversy after the Denver Auditor accused Urban Peak of wage theft earlier this year, alleging that the construction workers who built the Mothership were paid less than the correct prevailing wages. In April, Denver Labor, a division of the City Auditor's Office, determined that Urban Peak had indeed committed wage theft.
Although Carlson worried that Denver Labor's decision could seriously impact the Mothership at the time, she tells Westword that Urban Peak has "settled" wage disputes and is now paying $2 million in back payments to construction workers.
"We've settled all those [issues]," Carlson says. "All of that there is [left] is the process of doing the various payments and those things for our amazing construction company. We're moving through all that. It's great."
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and Urban Peak CEO Christina Carlson hug during the grand opening of Urban Peak's new Mothership Center at 1630 South Acoma Street on Wednesday, July 24.
Evan Semón
The whole facility will not open right away to those new residents, as construction workers continue to touch up parts of the building, but incoming residents will have access to a music studio, classroom and well-being center for therapy.
When completed, the campus will offer community living rooms, case management on site, laundry and dining rooms, dorms, a courtyard and terraces, a medical clinic, a tech lab, an art studio and offices. Because the campus offers more room than the Stout Street location, Urban Peak will lower the age limit for kids who can stay at the shelter, from fifteen years old to twelve years old; the maximum age allowed for Urban Peak tenants is 24.
Founded in 1998, Urban Peak works with about 1,000 young homeless residents a year. Many Urban Peak residents have aged out of the foster care center or are leaving unstable family situations, Carlson says, so the organization prides itself on offering a "comprehensive" set of services for them.
"It's not just we meet them once and we provide a bottle of water," Carlson says. "It's much longer and much bigger, and we're building a long-term relationship."
According to the most recent Metro Denver Homeless Initiative report, nearly 1,800 youth under 25 in the Denver metro area relied on services from providers like Urban Peak from July 2021 to July 2022 — that's almost twice as many from July 2020 to July 2021. From 2021 to 2022, about 600 youth were living on the streets while nearly 1,000 were living in shelters and just over 200 were living in permanent housing.
Urban Peak will leave its Stout Street center, which provides meals, homeless services and overnight shelter, by the end of the year, according to Carlson. All of those services will now be offered at Urban Peak's new location just off South Broadway in the Overland neighborhood, where the City of Denver operates a homeless micro-community of tiny homes.
"Coming into here feels amazing," Carlson says. "Providing a space that's so comprehensive, and [where] there's so much opportunity for 24/7 shelter and transitional housing, is so exciting."
