Ground was broken Wednesday for the long-delayed Iowa City Shelter House but not without protest over the site.

Members of the Waterfront Neighborhood Association contend that the Shelter House will violate a new sex offender law that went into effect Wednesday. The law creates 300-foot exclusionary zones around such places as schools, day-care facilities and parks where children gather to keep away sex offenders.

Sex offenders will not live in the shelter but will be able to use facilities inside the building during the day for taking baths, doing laundry and checking mail.

A few dozen people protested around the new Shelter House lot at 429 Southgate Ave. on Wednesday, holding signs saying “Keep our kids safe” and “Please don’t build here.”

In the Waterfront neighborhood around the Shelter House site are a HACAP day-care that serves 85 children and Hilltop Mobile Home Park, where 80 to 100 children live and go to the school bus stop, according to Joyce Barker, president of the neighborhood group that protested Wednesday.

“I’m confident in my interpretation,” Barker said of the law.

(Liz Martin/The Gazette) Mercedes Aguirre (left) and Veronica Flores, holding daughter Gissele Aguirre, 2, protest across the street from the groundbreaking tent for the new Shelter House location on Southgate Avenue in Iowa City on Wednesday. Nearby residents, including Aguirre and Flores, protested the new location for the shelter, citing concerns for the safety of children living at a nearby mobile home park, women’s shelter, and other children picked up at a school bus stop in the area.

But Eric Goers, Iowa City assistant attorney, says in letters to Barker that the new law keeps sex offenders out of exclusion zones — not away from businesses, agencies or non-profits. He said he does not believe exclusionary zones apply to children’s homes or school bus stops.

“It is our opinion that the new Shelter House can be constructed and operated in full compliance with the new law,” Goers says in a letter to Barker.

Shelter House Executive Director Chrissy Canganelli said she believes people have a right to protest but maintains that the Shelter House complies with all laws.

And despite nearly five years of roadblocks, Canganelli said, it’s a relief to finally break ground on the new building.

“It demonstrates we’re making progress in the project,” she said.