The South Park Inn shelter for people experiencing homelessness is abandoning a controversial plan to relocate from near downtown Hartford to a larger building in the city’s North End, after an uproar from neighbors and businesses.

The shelter, a fixture on Main Street since 1984 in a former church, had set its sights on the Salvation Army building in Upper Albany neighborhood on Homestead Avenue, near Albany Avenue.

But the neighborhood strongly opposed the plan, arguing the Homestead Avenue corridor was targeted for economic development by the city.

The neighborhood, they said, also had already done its part supporting social services organizations in the past. The support included the Chrysalis Center, just a block away on Homestead from the Salvation Army building. Chrysalis helps those living in poverty struggling with mental health issues, addiction, HIV/AIDS, homelessness and returning to society from incarceration.

South Park Inn officials said the community feedback — expressed in two community meetings this month, the latest on Thursday — had led the shelter to consider other alternatives in Hartford “where we can provide Hartford residents with the services they need and deserve.”

“Support from and for our community is core to our organizational mission at South Park Inn,” Jane Banks, the shelter’s executive director, said in a statement. “We look forward to the collaborating with the city on identification of a new site that meets both the community needs and our needs.”

The opposition illustrates the difficulty in finding new locations for social services such as shelters, especially in urban areas where the need is typically more acute.

A year ago, South Park Inn said it could accelerate its plans to find larger and more modern space because the city had offered possible federal coronavirus funding designated to fight homelessness.

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said, in a statement, the city had clearly heard the concerns of the Upper Albany neighborhood and responded to them.

But the city is “committed to working with the leadership of the South Park Inn to help identify a site that will meet their needs and allow them to pursue their mission as effectively as possible, in partnership with the community.”

Bronin said Friday a dollar amount of aid for the shelter’s relocation had not been determined yet.

Neighborhood leaders who organized opposition to the relocation plan acknowledged the invaluable and essential work of the shelter.

Homestead just wasn’t the right place, they said.

The thoroughfare would be better used for economic development that would lift property values, stimulate more business opportunities and foster support for the arts and education, said Francine Austin, a board member of the Upper Albany Neighborhood Revitalization Zone Organization who organized opposition to the shelter relocation

The area also could be used to form a more cohesive, collaborative community between Upper Albany and other nearby neighborhoods such as the West End and Asylum Hill, said Austin, a Hartford native who lives near the Salvation Army building and runs an entertainment and marketing business.

Austin said she was pleased with the shelter’s decision to look elsewhere.

“Can you feel my smile through the phone?” Austin said in a telephone interview Friday.

The neighborhood’s displeasure surfaced at a recent meeting of the Upper Albany Main Street, an organization that focuses on development in the neighborhood.

Ula Dodson, whose parents bought a house in the neighborhood in 1966, said Upper Albany has long supported social services, maybe too much so.

“As things are picking up, we want things that are going to put more value in our neighborhood,” Dodson said. “We need something more than this. And we don’t want to be labeled that we don’t have compassion because that’s not true. There are some people in our family who might be in this situation.

“I just want it to be known, when people speak out, we want to be heard and understood, that we’re not against anybody. We just don’t want this at this time.”

Last year, South Park Inn said the pandemic had made it painfully clear the shelter needed a larger space to evolve from a dormitory-style of sheltering. South Park, which serves men, women and children, said its mission has evolved to help those seeking shelter to transition to permanent housing and connect them with, if needed, mental health, addiction treatment and other services.

The shelter has also ended a long-running policy of discharging those sheltering to the streets during the day.

Banks told The Courant last year South Park Inn had explored potential renovations at the church, but the options for expansion were limited. There was little room for more clinical services and a dental office, plus the shelter’s operations are now split between two buildings and should be all under one roof,” Banks said.

“I want all that, and I’m never going to have it where we are,” Banks said.

A potential relocation of the South Park Inn — once the home of the South Park Methodist Church — comes at a time of major change in the surrounding neighborhood.

A new, $26 million, mixed-income apartment development just north of the shelter at the intersection of Park and Main streets is nearly complete.

As the apartments have been built, concerns have lingered about the compatibility of the shelter and the new development. But the shelter said it has worked to be a good neighbor and the decision to relocate as the new development is being built is purely coincidental.

The historic Barnard Park, across Main from the shelter and the new development, is the focus of plans to make the park more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly.

Contact Kenneth R. Gosselin at kgosselin@courant.com.