(Photo courtesy of D.C. Department of Health and Human Services)

Crews will be able to start construction on the Ward 3 homeless shelter after a D.C. Court of Appeals rejected a community legal challenge to the project on Thursday.

The Washington City Paper first reported on the decision.

The construction of the shelter at 3320 Idaho Ave NW has been embroiled in legal challenges since early last year.

A neighborhood group in Ward 3, one of the city’s wealthiest wards, filed suit against the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustment for its decision to allow the shelter. A D.C. court threw out that lawsuit in February 2017, and the neighborhood group—”Neighbors for Responsive Government”— filed an appeal in September 2017.

The group has consistently argued that they were not consulted about the location of the homeless shelter, its density, or how it would look. The attorney for the neighborhood group argued to the Board of Zoning Adjustment that the proposed building was too tall and too dense.

But presiding judge Stephen H. Glickman sided with the city.

The project is part of a series of smaller shelters the mayor has been working to open across the city in order to close D.C. General, the city’s dilapidated hospital-turned-family homeless shelter (new shelters in Ward 4 and Ward 7 have already opened this year).

The new projected opening for the Ward 3 shelter is late 2019 or early 2020, according to the City Paper and Curbed.