By MATT PIKE
It's been quite the journey for Friends of the Animal Shelter in the organizations quest to bring St. Joseph a new animal shelter. Now, the journey is complete.
It was nearly a decade ago that the organization began raising money to finance a new facility, Melanie Barnes says.
"But even then, I will tell you, the group of Friends of the Animal Shelter were looking even before that, they were putting in a lot of years of evaluating, doing assessments. What was needed? What type of facility would they need? Would it be feasible?" Barnes says on the KFEQmunnity show. "So, a lot of feasibility work going on the years prior to that, and then there was a large kickoff by Friends of the Animal Shelter, I believe around 2016, it kind of kicked off with two large donations by Nestle Purina and Boehringer Ingelheim."
"We had a nice little ceremony down at the old shelter with all anticipation to maybe like the next three or four years having a new shelter, you know, it did kick off with fundraising, so that was a large part of it."
The goal at the time was to raise approximately $3 million, with the help of Capital Improvement Funds as well, which Friends of the Animal Shelter achieved, raising $1.5 million with $1 million in CIP.
No journey is complete without its own hurdles, however.
"Then Covid hit, and through Covid, we saw a large inflation of construction materials, building materials, both materials and resources, jobs were different, then costs went high," Barnes explains. "And so, during COVID the estimate to build a new shelter kind of deviated or grew or inflated from around $3 million to about four to five million. And so, it basically moved the needle on what we were going to need, and even during that time, we'd already found a location, and Friends of the Animal Shelter was leasing a building with the anticipation of renovating."
"But then as the costs went up, a lot of the partnerships, you know, the conversations with the city kind of started to change a little bit on what we were going to need, and we had to kind of do a reset a little bit.
That reset led to the city opting to build a new facility, with the help of the funds from Friends of the Animal Shelter, with the shelter set to open today. For Barnes, there is a lot of excitement.
"It's not even about a newer facility, although I think that is very key for animal health and welfare, I mean, so many standards have changed from when the original shelter was built back in the 1970s, so many things have changed on what is the best practice for animal health and welfare," Barnes says. "So having a newer facility to support that, but also like having it in a location where it's so much more welcoming. I mean, I'm really hoping we get a lot more volunteers, we get more community outreach, and so that is being more visible in the community and getting more help and support for pets finding their forever homes.
The shelter will officially open today following the city ribbon cutting at 1pm. A special event with food trucks, giveaways and more will be held tomorrow at the shelter from 1 to 3pm as well.
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