The building at 100 W. Rosemary St. was once a lockup for the Chapel Hill police. It has taken more than $1 million over the years to turn it into a 30-bed men's homeless shelter and community kitchen.

And even with the bars and jail cells removed, the drab, two-story brick building has never been ideal, its director said.

"We have to sleep people on the dining room floor at night, every night," said Chris Moran, executive director of the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service.

Now, thanks to a three-way partnership announced Monday, that's about to change.

The shelter will be moving -- Moran hopes by 2011 -- to a spot off Homestead Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in northern Chapel Hill. The 1.5-acre site is part of a larger tract that UNC-Chapel Hill is buying from Duke Energy.

Town staff had recently approached the university for help when it learned UNC-CH was buying the land, Mayor Kevin Foy said Monday. UNC-CH agreed to a long-term lease.

"That was just our good fortune," Foy said.

The current shelter housed 669 different men in 2007, from anywhere from few days to a few months or more. The IFC houses women in its Project Homestart program, also on Homestead Road.

The new shelter will have 50 beds. In addition to emergency housing, it will offer job training, financial planning and greater access to health care, veterans assistance and other services. Moran expects that residents will help run the program.

And instead of bunk beds and mats on the floor, residents will move from bunks, to quads, to doubles, to single rooms as they get closer to independent living.

"It's going to be different," Moran said.

"We want more than people who want to spend the night," he explained. "We want people who want to work on their goals, who want to make repairs. It takes a long time to make the adjustments [homeless] people need to make."

The IFC may need as much as $3 million to build the shelter, which Moran wants to make a model of energy efficiency.

Homestead Road is growing fast, with a new senior center across the street and a town aquatics center and elementary school opening soon.

But for the project's next-door neighbor, the homeless shelter is a homecoming.

United Church of Chapel Hill helped found the IFC in 1963. In fact, the shelter had its beginnings in the church's fellowship hall on Cameron Avenue, said the Rev. Richard Edens, who, with his wife, Jill, has pastored the church for 29 years.

"We would store mats and blankets in the basement of the Wilson Street house and bring them over every evening to the fellowship hall," Edens said.

Moran praised both Foy and UNC-CH Chancellor James Moeser, who also attended the morning announcement.

"Kevin has always championed our vision to find a new facility," he said. "Having the university involved made this day even more special."