Bellevue officials narrowed down where to place a homeless men’s shelter at a meeting Monday night. There were three potential locations: the Eastgate Public Health Center, a site in the Wilburton neighborhood, and an operations maintenance facility (OMF East) owned by Sound Transit.
Bellevue Mayor John Stokes said they decided to drop the Wilburton site.
“The next step is continuing to move forward with the planning work on the Eastgate facility,” Stokes said. “In the meantime we’re taking a look at [OMF East] to see if that’s feasible. And then how that might work into what our goals are.”
Steve Roberts is with Congregations for the Homeless. He’s the project manager for the shelter’s permanent location and said the two given choices are fairly the same but spoke on their differences.
“The Eastgate site has a little bit more transportation,” Roberts said. “The OMF East is a lot more expensive.”
Does Roberts have a preference?
“The sooner we can get a site, the sooner we can begin to get more people off the street and out of homelessness into housing,” he said. “So that’s my only concern is that without a clear decision, it makes it a little harder to move forward.”
Bellevue City Council members will be the ones making the call on the site’s final destination.
They’re scheduled to meet again on June 26.
