photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Community Building at 115 W. 11th St. is pictured on Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2021.

The recent cold spell has caused the City of Lawrence to reopen its winter emergency shelter at the Community Building.

The city announced toward the end of February that the winter emergency shelter would close for the season following the night of March 1, but it only remained closed for about a week. City officials said once cold weather was forecast earlier this month, the city decided to reopen the shelter for this week, and will continue to monitor the weather in the coming days.

Housing Initiatives Manager Danelle Walters said that after city staff saw that the extended forecast soon after March 1 included a cold spell, it was decided to reopen the shelter on Monday, March 7. Walters said the shelter has been open throughout this week and will remain open through Saturday night.

Walters said the city will plan to close the shelter on the morning of Sunday, March 12, but will continue to monitor the forecast through March 21 and will plan accordingly if a second dangerous dip in temperatures occurs before then.

“We continue monitoring the weather and working to balance community needs,” Walters said.

Initially, Walters said the shelter was scheduled to be open from Nov. 3 through March 1, but that the dates were established with the awareness that weather can be unpredictable. She said March 1 was selected based on anticipated progression into warmer weather and taking into consideration that the Community Building is an active recreation center with scheduled programs and activities.

The city has been operating the shelter with the help of volunteers at the Community Building, 115 W. 11th St., for the past four months on any night when the overnight temperature is 35 degrees or below. The city or volunteers have been operating an emergency winter shelter for the past three winters since the Lawrence Community Shelter initially reduced its capacity in 2019. The LCS has been allowing a maximum of 40 guests at its building in eastern Lawrence throughout much of the pandemic, and Board President Isabel Johnson said this week that no increases have been made to the shelter’s capacity.

The Lawrence City Commission approved a resolution to temporarily suspend certain building and fire codes at the Community Building through March 31, which Walters said has given the city the flexibility to extend the shelter program.