CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – For Charlottesville City Manager Sam Sanders, seeing the finish line for the 2000 Holiday Dr. homeless shelter project has been “emotional.”

During an interview with WINA Morning News this week, Sanders said that, after the city purchased the property in November 2025, he expected it to take 18 months for the doors to open. Now, an emergency facility is expected to be opened there Sept. 1, while work is being done to transform the property to a permanent, low-barrier shelter.

“I never believed that it was possible that the doors could open this year,” Sanders said. “We knew there was so much we needed to do.”

Sanders said Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS), the outside agency the city is tasking with staffing and running the facility, believes it can operate the first floor of the building as an emergency shelter, serving about 120 unhoused people, while construction work is done on the second floor of the 27,000-square foot former office building.

Sanders said CASS is expected to charge the city about $3 million for running the first 12 months the shelter operates. That initial money will come from a $4-million allocation City Council approved from its CIP fund. For future funding, the city will need to include the costs in its annual budget, Sanders said.

Sanders also clarified that the $7 million earmarked for Charlottesville in the Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s Virginia state budget can’t be used for Holiday Dr. That money is designated for transitional housing and the city will contribute a large chunk of it to the Salvation Army’s City of Hope location.

But as the city plans to clear the Free Bridge homeless encampment on or around Sept. 1, opening Holiday Dr. as a temporary measure became a necessary step.

“I got a little emotional yesterday just talking to my leadership team because this is a big, big issue,” Sanders said. “It’s one that most communities around the country are facing and many of them are not doing anything about it, a lot of folks are overwhelmed by the scope of it and they just leave it alone. I think we’ve suffered from some of that over the past years. I’ve leaned into this. Council said we’ve got to do something about this, the public has made it clear that they want something done about this, and I have remained committed to that.

“So, I do feel good about the progress we’ve made. We still have a lot to do.”

CASS, which has been in operation since 1984, sent a team to Charlottesville to visit the encampment and the Holiday Dr. property.

“They gave us an amazing view of what they do. One of their shelters is serving 600 individuals a night,” Sanders pointed out. “There was no question that I had for these folks other than ‘can you please come here’.”

The building will need upgrades to its bathroom and kitchen facilities, to operate as a shelter, Sanders said.

But Sanders said CASS is impressed with the building and told city leaders they believe they can serve up to 120 people on the first floor in their first iteration which would allow the second floor to be unused and, therefore, available for construction while serving people downstairs.

Staffing will also be CASS’s responsibility, but discussions are happening with PACEM “as the group on the ground that actually knows about staffing, and they do their staffing for operations that begin in October.”

“We hope they will be able to align with CASS and do both, we’ve asked for that,” Sanders said. “We’ve asked PACEM to even consider staying open this season, as well, because we know there’s testing the tires, kicking the tires. We don’t know that everybody’s going to run into 2000 Holiday Drive, so there may be some convincing that early users may need to tell others, ‘It’s alright, come on, they’re not bad people’.”

City Director of Human Services Misty Graves addressed City Council on Monday about work being done to draw more encampment occupants to the Holiday Drive center.

“It takes trust and time and relationships,” Graves said. “Because folks out there have been disappointed and discouraged about what has been offered to them before, and it’s about us being able to determine that this is something different and that we’re here with a consistent presence so that folks don’t fall through the cracks.”

Graves said they’re also going to other places where unhoused individuals are known to sleep with the same effort.

Sanders said on Tuesday it’s important the local entities, along with the city, are fully involved and learning.

“Because CASS may not be here forever, this is not a foregone conclusion that CASS is here forever and folks have been asking that and saying, ‘Where are the other groups?'” Sanders said. “They’re at the table with us having conversations.”