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Following a day of emotional public testimony, Portland city commissioners on Wednesday narrowly authorized a temporary lease of industrial property north of the Pearl District for use as a large and experimental homeless shelter.

With a 3-2 vote, the council took a first step toward allowing the Housing Bureau to rent the 14.5-acre parcel at 2400 N.W Front Ave. – the former site of the Port of Portland’s Terminal 1 – from the Bureau of Environmental Services, to operate a campus intended to serve up to 1,400 people.

Commissioners Nick Fish and Amanda Fritz were the dissenting votes.

“I’m not voting yes because I think the arguments against are bad arguments,” said Commissioner Steve Novick. “I’m voting yes because I think that we’re not in a position, in the homeless state of emergency, to do anything else.”

The proposal is the brainchild of developer Homer Williams and business partner Dike Dame, and based on San Antonio’s Haven for Hope campus. Williams proposed the idea in mid-June, inspired by a trip to Texas and Mayor Charlie Hales’ declaration late last year of a “homeless state of emergency” in Portland.

Williams said the idea is to get the private sphere to do its share in cracking the city’s historically high homeless rate.

(The Housing Bureau uses point-in-time data compiled by Kristina Smock Consulting, which counts 3,800 homeless people in Multnomah County on any given night.)

Under the plan approved Wednesday, the Housing Bureau will lease the waterfront land and 96,000-square foot warehouse for $10,000 per month. The lease will run for six months, beginning Oct. 7. Officials say the shelter could be operational at that time. The final cost for the permanent facility could be between $60 million and $100 million, with some amount of that covered by private donations.

Much else about the plan is still up in the air.

Commissioners heard testimony from nearly 60 people, most of whom expressed some form of opposition to the plan, currently called Oregon Trail of Hope. They spoke of environmental concerns and criticisms of the San Antonio model. Commenters included sewer ratepayers who receive reimbursement because the land was once part of the Big Pipe sewer project. Many were neighbors worried about negative effects of the shelter, some anticipating an influx of “sex offenders” and “criminals.”

Commissioner Fritz, a registered nurse, spoke against “warehousing” homeless people.

Fish spoke passionately while ticking off criticisms with the proposal, including “breaking faith” with the city’s Comprehensive Plan, privileging one developer (Williams) over others, and a pending lawsuit against BES.

Fish had the city’s broker for the site, Scott MacLean, senior vice president at Colliers International, testify about recent efforts to find a buyer so the city could pay back sewer ratepayers. MacLean said he’s given numerous tours to potential buyers. He expects to receive around 16 serious offers, including six from developers.

When it came time to for him to vote, Fish called the proposal “half-baked” and said it fails his “test of common sense and humanity.”

“Today, by this action, we are making a very big statement, and it is that we are lost,” he said.

The commissioners who voted to approve said they did so because something had to be done. Hales said if the “experiment” begins to look like a failure, it will cease.

“My really earnest plea to everybody is, we really need to work together,” he said. “This is worth a try.”