Project NOW will lease prime Moline riverfront property to operate a new temporary emergency winter shelter, off 19th Street north of River Drive.
City of Moline leaders and Project NOW officials held a press conference Wednesday morning (Jan. 21) at 1 Montgomery Drive, to announce the plan to serve a capacity of 60 unhoused individuals on a first-come, first-served basis. The shelter will operate from Wednesday night through April 15.
Last year, Project NOW hosted a temporary winter shelter (37-person capacity) at its old building across from the Rock Island downtown library, serving a total of 180 people, but not during the weekends.
Project NOW operated a temporary shelter for 58 hours from Dec. 12-15, 2025 at the MLK Center, Rock Island. The big difference with the new Moline temporary shelter is that it will be available during the days on Saturdays and Sundays.
Ron Lund, Project NOW’s chief operations officer, said 10 agency staff will work with the temporary shelter. Operations will run 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays, and there will be a 15-passenger van in the morning to take people to Moline’s nearby Centre Station, where they will be given a bus pass to go wherever they need to within the Quad Cities to gain the services that they need to be able to secure housing.
“That could be through our partners, the Third Place, Christian Care or quite frankly, right back to Project NOW at our Rock Island office, and at the end of the night, same thing,” he said Wednesday. “When those locations close down from their daytime to nighttime operations, they'll be able to jump on the bus and come right back here.”
From Fridays at 8 p.m. until 7 a.m. Mondays, the temporary shelter will be available 24 hours a day, Lund said.
Project NOW executive director Rev. Dwight Ford said the QC area has had more than 44% increase in homelessness, compared to 2024. “I know that for sure these numbers are skyrocketing,” he said.
Moline Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati, as with some other city officials, wore a T-shirt saying “Housed Communities Are Happy Communities.”
“We've been hard at work at this process to strategically address housing needs, because I am tired personally of Band-Aid operations. We need strategic structural solutions,” she said. “So this is just the latest piece of the puzzle to fall into place for us to address the needs of this really large ecosystem around housing.”
“This community has never had a shelter and it's time we start thinking about how that will meet a need,” Mayor Rayapati said. “That conversation continued on with mayoral listening posts, which I've had a history of doing for all five years, just about that I've been in office. And we again, very openly talked about this need and how the community would need to grapple with this, so it's not been hidden.”
The city of Moline in September 2022 bought the BridgePointe 485 property for $3.1 million.
The landmark property at 1 Montgomery Drive is the center point of the future riverfront redevelopment area (Moline River Front + Centre redevelopment plan), made possible by the demolition of the former I-74 Bridge. Heritage Church purchased the 119,114 square-foot building that sits on seven acres of prime riverfront property in 2017 to serve its congregation’s needs and to offer services to the Moline community.
The city has a memorandum of understanding with Project NOW, which will rent the vacant building from the city.
Ald. Matt Timinion, whose 4th Ward includes this property, said the vacant building (built by the former Montgomery Elevator) will be torn down this summer as part of a wider riverfront redevelopment.
Story of a changing community
“The story of Moline is the story of a community that changes and adapts to the needs of people who live here,” he said Wednesday. The building was last used by Heritage Church as Bridge Pointe 485.
“This building has done that time and time again and is once again adapting to the needs of the people society has forgotten and in the emergency shelter,” Ald. Timion said. “It is fitting to me that this building's final application will be giving back to the community that has fought so hard for it over the years. It's my honor to represent the city in this area and the city that always changes and adapts to the people who live here.
“That's the story of Moline and that's why we do it. I am especially thankful for the nonprofit partners who are stepping up as well to help us,” he said. “This is a moment of celebration, but it's a recognition that this is just one more chapter in a city that is always rising.”
Rev. Ford praised his nonprofit’s ongoing relationship with Moline.
“This is something that we've been working on for months and it now finally has come to fruition that we can make this public announcement. So this partnership is between the city of Moline and Project NOW. And this effort allows us to do some wonderful things.”
“We want people to feel as if they are not only welcome, but fully, completely human. Full stop, period,” Ford said. “And deserving of the resources, the supports that we all will come into need. Right now, 51% of Americans can't afford a $400 emergency on any one day of the year. We're not talking about them, we're talking about us. This is a part of the community as a whole, and we want to make sure we secure as many as we possibly can.”
“This is a very, very exciting time for the continuing of care and we thank the city of Moline and Project NOW for their extraordinary, extraordinary responsiveness to community need,” said Amanda Erwin, Northwestern Illinois Continuum of Care coordinator. “We are very hopeful that this effort is ushering in a totally new era of responsiveness to the needs and desires of folks in our community who are experiencing homelessness.”
Many of the unhoused population work and raise families in the area, she noted. “They are members of this community.”
“We find that folks who are born and raised in the Quad Cities sometimes experience rejection from the communities that raise them because they sleep outdoors or might experience substance use or PTSD or other mental health conditions,” Irwin said. “The stigmatization of homelessness is ending because of this effort. This is an effort to move forward in ending stigmatization of homelessness.
“And we are very, very much looking forward to not just this year, but seeing what happens at this effort a couple of years down the road,” Irwin added. “The 180 folks who were served at Project NOW winter overflow shelter last year, 14 of those are still housed. As Dwight said, 50 people were served a few weeks ago at the MLK center partnership. And we will be able to accommodate 60 people per night here at this shelter. That's still not enough. And like Ron said, we are going to be making arrangements for folks who unfortunately are not going to be able to stay here. But we're very much looking forward to not just sheltering, but long-term housing options in the Quad Cities for the folks who need them.”
“Everyone deserves housing,” said Cathy Jordan, Project NOW director of housing stability and homeless prevention. “We work with people with mental health issues, substance abuse issues, with financial woes.”
“We work with people who have never been homeless before, because they lost a job, or they got sick, or maybe they made a bad choice with a partner or spouse,” she said. “We work with wonderful property managers and landlords in the city of Moline, as well as others, and we find solutions to move people from homelessness to housing.”
Last year, 14 homeless people were moved into permanent housing by Project NOW from its temporary winter shelter.
“We are all together in this,” Jordan said. “Project NOW is simply a very good modality to move people forward.”
Housing as city priority
Moline city administrator Bob Vitas said a city strategic goal is to increase housing opportunities for all populations, and that the city is also looking for a permanent shelter solution.
The city will not stop with a temporary shelter, Mayor Rayapati said.
“We are committed to exploring local solutions for a permanent shelter. And I'm really pleased that over the past several months we've been able to engage, especially Mr. Vitas and myself, with the members of the big seven -- the cities and two counties -- to talk about what that looks like,” she said. “But I will say, I want to say very clearly, I am personally hyper focused on local solutions. We're working with our Illinois provider, community service provider.”
“We also need to be discussing transitional housing needs. We need much more of that,” Rayapati said. “We, of course, need permanent supportive housing. And these are all the pieces of the puzzle and the pathway to getting people out of this cycle of temporary housing. So know this, just because the city of Moline does not talk incessantly on social media about what we're doing doesn't mean we're not getting anything done. And I just want to encourage all of our residents to pay attention to what we do put out there, to come to the events we have to share with you what's going on and be a part of the conversation.”
The shelter is part of Moline’s Project Uplift, which this year set aside $1 million for related community initiatives, the mayor said.
“This is part of the roadmap for this overall Moline housing plan and especially as it relates to sheltering solutions,” she said. “I encourage you all to take a look at Project Uplift. And with that, I will say my thanks to everyone in Project NOW, to all the staff. It was wonderful to stop in yesterday, help out a little bit and also chat with staff who've been a part of preparing this space. And I truly enjoy seeing their joy in doing something really meaningful for the entire community with that.”
Project NOW and city governments continue to work with area hotels to find shelter possibilities, Ford said.
“I think it's really important for the public to understand, you know, when they go and see certain buildings that are empty and say, why can't this be a shelter?” Rayapati said. “Those aren't wrong actions to take. But there are a lot of requirements for a building to house human beings, and that's why some buildings haven't worked out. That's why it took so long to find a place that did work, whether it's capacity or whether it's a working sprinkler system or any number of building issues.
“So it's not just as simple as saying that building's empty. Why don't we put people in there?” she said. “It’s just not as easy as people think it is. So I think we are all breathing a sigh of relief, especially before this terrible weekend we're expecting in terms of weather outdoors, that we could make it work in this space.”
“We never, ever backed ourselves into a corner. We knew that this was going to have to take a broad approach and looking to see where the best possible solution could be, knowing that it's never been all of us,” Ford said. “It has always been enough of us, a critical mass to make change for the majority of us.”
“There's only been enough of us working consistently behind the scenes to make change for all of us. This is going to help transform the entire Quad-City landscape because the courage and the political will and the commitment to find a solution and work through very difficult days and hard pressed nights to try to get it,” he added.
Urgent needs in winter
“When the sands of the hourglass flow but in one direction, we were running out of time, and I didn't want anybody to be frozen between two cars in a fetal position with ice chip blankets on that we would have to remove from the ground,” Ford said. “We were not going to have that on our conscience. So to have this and have it to work out the way it did in the time it did, we're grateful.”Ford said there’s a new face of homelessness, including people who are not in ragged clothing.
“They're the woman that has a cell phone like you and I that drives an SUV like you and I that dresses similarly to what we do,” he said. “Sleeping in her truck with her two children with all their belongings in it, washing up in Casey's bathroom in the morning, sending her kids alongside of ours to school. That's why we never ask people see people downtown, oh, they got homeless folk down there.
“You don't know who's who. And many people and our team can attest, sleep in our shelter and go to work every day,” Ford said. “And this is what we want to rip out of the atmosphere. These bad misinformation, misnomers and myths about people experiencing homelessness. That's why I said it's not them, it's us.”
Converting nearby test tower
Moline is collaborating with Silicon Valley tech startup Hyprlift, Inc., and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to convert the nearby historic Montgomery Elevator test tower into a hub for vertical mobility innovation.
The test tower, constructed in 1966 by Montgomery Elevator, will be used to test and certify Hyprlift’s next-generation elevator technology, bringing federal innovation funding to Moline’s riverfront as part of the Moline River Front + Centre redevelopment plan.
While the plan calls for removing many surrounding buildings, the city wanted to “preserve the historic test tower as a key architectural landmark and ensure the tower will remain part of Moline’s skyline for years to come,” said Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati.
Together, Hyprlift, the city of Moline, and the National Science Foundation are ensuring that Moline’s historic role in shaping the elevator industry continues into the 21st century.
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