Animal Ark Prepares to Break Ground on New Adoption Center
    Puppy care center, Plasma TVs, fireplaces and private yards are some of the amenities that will make new adoption center wonderful for people and animals
    Published 11/13/2007 11:00:07 AM

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    by Mike Fry

    Imagine an animal shelter where you can take a dog for a long walk, along a beautiful river, then take it to an off-leash park area and play fetch. Then, when you are tired, you can bring the dog to a comfortable living room, and curl up with it in front of a working fireplace and read a book, watch a movie or just listen to classical music while you sip a coffee.

    This is the shelter of the future. And, the future is coming to Animal Ark faster than you may think!




    Several years ago a small group of Animal Ark staff and volunteers visited the San Francisco SPCA to see their new Maddie's Adoption Center. Built with a budget of several million dollars, the Maddie's Adoption Center represented an entirely new way of housing and re-homing dogs and cats. Rather than living in cages, cats had large rooms, with beautiful cat furniture and other amenities like aquariums and television sets. The big thinkers running the SFSPCA at the time understood that they could make their shelter nice for both people and animals.

    Those of us who made the trip to San Francisco were very inspired by what we saw. And, though we did not have any money to start with, we vowed to take some of what we saw back to Animal Ark. Shortly thereafter, with the help of some very generous donors, we made some pretty dramatic changes at Animal Ark. First, we enlarged each of the dog runs and purchased raised, soft beds for each of the dogs. The improved Phoenix and McNeely dog kennels were nicer than what we had before. With the support of the James J. Wolf Family Foundation for Animals, we also added an off-leash play area for dogs called the Ark Park.

    But the real transformation that took place was in the cat center.

    In the second floor cat center, all cages were removed. In their place we built 17 luxury rooms with ceramic tile floors, track lighting, and windows with nice valances. Inside each of these rooms, we added beautiful cat furniture, donated by Custom Cat Purrrniture.

    Though much smaller and less lavish than the Maddie's Adoption Center, Animal Ark accomplished all of these changes for less than $100,000 rather than several million dollars. The changes have made things much better for our animals, who are happier and healthier as a result.

    Now, Animal Ark is planning another round of renovation to make things even better.

    In early December, we plan to break ground on a new, 1,200 square foot adoption center that will include a brand new puppy care center, four new socialization rooms and an expanded and more comfortable adoption area.

    The new socialization rooms will feature niceties like fireplaces, plasma TVs and small, private yards. They will have the look and feel of nice living rooms and will be places where people can spend as much time as they like playing with, socializing and getting to know the pets at Animal Ark. They will be able to curl up with a dog or cat in front of a working fireplace to read a book or watch television.

    A new puppy care center will feature special flooring for young dogs and will be easy to clean and monitor.

    A new state-of-the-art, comfortable and sound-absorbing floor is also being installed in the Phoenix Wing of the existing dog kennels.

    When all of this work is completed, the Animal Ark shelter will still be a relatively small facility. However, by making it much nicer for people and animals, we will be able to save the lives of many more pets.

    When this vision is complete, we are planning another, even nicer adoption center in Saint Paul - details to be announced in the future. In the meantime, you can help us see this dream come to life by helping to sponsor this project. Sponsorships are available from $250 - $75,000 and include opportunities for honorary and memorial ceramic tiles or large color portraits.

    For information about how you can play a role in building this and other adoption centers, please call (651) 772-8983. Press 1 and then 0.
    Join the conversation about this article below...



    Archive of readers comments:
    On 11/13/2007 Mike Fry said: Thanks, Carol

    Thanks for your feedback Carol.

    The new adoption center will be MUCH more wheelchair friendly. Lack of good wheelchair access is one of several issues we have struggled with over the years.

    I never let any of it cause me to think badly about the people who originally designed and built this shelter. There are days when I curse the original design of the building. However, given the very limited resources of the organization when it was built, I do not know that I could have done it any differently.

    When Animal Ark built this shelter, the organization was just a little more than a group of volunteer foster homes. These dedicated people raised $250,000 dollars to built the original shelter. That was a huge accomplishment for them, but far less than was needed to build an ideal facility.

    In our original plans, for the new adoption center, we included a wheel chair lift to the cat center. Funding for that never materialized. For several reasons, delivering this lift alone would add more cost to this project than this entire renovation is costing.

    In spite of the fact that there will not be a wheel chair lift to the cat center, we will, at least, have wonderful socialization rooms on the first floor where people in wheelchairs can meet cats. We will also have staff and volunteers available to bring cats to the socialization rooms.

    Though this is not a perfect solution, it will be a dramatic improvement over the current situation.

    On 11/13/2007 Carol said: Wheelchair Access

    I adopted my first cat from Animal Ark almost 20 years ago. I remember struggling to go up that large flight of stairs, thinking how frustrating it is that Animal Ark was not wheelchair accessible. Now I am reading about all the new projects that look awesome for the Ark, however, I would have liked to have seen your facility to be more friendly to those who are not able to navigate those stairs. It just kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth as I think Animal Ark is an amazing place and does fantastic things for animals and this one issue really should have been addressed quite some time ago. Thank you.
    Carol Ersing