Some faces had changed. So had the proposed location. But the response Wednesday of Brook Creek neighborhood residents to a possible new homeless shelter was unchanged from nearly three years ago:

Not in our back yards.

“The question isn’t how it should be done, but whether it should be done at this location,” said Michael Almon, a Brook Creek resident. “I don’t know how to spell ‘no’ any differently.”

But unlike 2001, when the Salvation Army abandoned plans for a Brook Creek shelter in the face of neighborhood opposition, officials suggested Wednesday that they were likely to stay the course.

“If the only issue is location, we can’t make you happy, we can’t solve this problem,” said Dick Zinn, a member of the Salvation Army advisory board.

Wednesday’s meeting of Salvation Army officials with residents of Brook Creek, an east Lawrence neighborhood, came after the Army last month announced plans to build a new 32,000-square-foot community center with temporary sleeping quarters for families, women and men seeking employment and permanent housing. It also would include space for a food bank, as well as rooms for classwork and case-management services for the homeless.

The $4 million center would be on Haskell Avenue, between Lynn and Homewood streets — just three blocks from the failed location at 15th Street and Haskell Avenue.

Brook Creek residents raised the same objections they did during a virtually identical January 2001 meeting on the earlier proposal. Their neighborhood will suffer from possible increases in crime, danger to children, stormwater problems and the lowering of property values. There also were concerns about neighborhood pride.

“Anything good is built in west Lawrence,” said Goldie Harmon, a Brook Creek resident. “All the bad goes to east Lawrence.”

¢ 6News video: Neighborhood residents protest new homeless shelter¢ 6News video: Salvation Army decides on shelter location (10-16-03)¢ Homeless shelter plan revived (10-16-03)¢More on the Brook Creek Neighborhood Assn.

And other residents said their neighborhood was too far from downtown, where most services for the homeless are located. Zinn said the Salvation Army’s current center, at 946 N.H., was too small and that no other good downtown location existed. More than a dozen other sites around Lawrence also were rejected, he said.

“We’ve grappled with staying downtown,” he said. “But it’s clear that it’s impossible to do that.”

Brook Creek residents who attended the meeting were nearly unanimous in their opposition to the shelter; only one resident expressed support. No homeless person attended the meeting.

Salvation Army officials said they planned to apply to the city for a “use permitted upon review” to allow construction of the shelter. Purchase of the land should be complete within a few weeks, they said.

Before that happens, though, officials said they would meet in coming weeks with residents of adjoining Barker and East Lawrence neighborhoods.

Zinn said the organization wanted to allay neighborhood concerns.

“The objective,” he said, “is, ‘how can we make this community center better?'”