A new animal shelter proposed for Shelton would nearly quintuple the space of the current, outdated facility and bring its mission more in line with the times, advocates told Aldermen last month.
City residents will be asked at referendum this November to approve spending $1.4 million to build the new shelter.
The Board of Aldermen’s Finance Committee invited representatives from the city’s Animal Shelter Building Committee to a meeting last month to give an overview of the project.
A architect’s rendering of what the new facility would look like is pictured. In addition, another rendering and the floor plan for the proposed new shelter, courtesy of Bridgeport-based Wiles Architects, are posted at the bottom of this story.
The $1.4 million referendum question is one of four such proposals that will be on the ballot.
The current shelter, at 20 Riverdale Ave., is in poor repair and overcrowded.
If built today it could not function as an animal shelter, but state law allows shelters like Shelton’s to be “grandfathered,” omitting it from certain requirements.
In planning for a new shelter, the building committee set out three main goals in designing the new facility, its chairman, Gerry Craig, told Aldermen:
- Provide a safe, secure environment for lost and stray animals
- Have a facility capable of promoting and handling pet adoptions
- And offer education to the public, with an emphasis on the pet overpopulation problem, and the importance of spaying and neutering
“We feel we have achieved our goals in an efficient and cost-effective manner,” Craig said.
The new facility will face Brewster Lane and sit at the corner of that street’s intersection with Riverdale Avenue.
It will be about 6,000 square feet, a far cry from the current facility, which is about 1,200 square feet.
The building will have 30 indoor kennels to minimize noise in the neighborhood, with a fenced-in area outside so animals have a place to run during the day. There will also be four “quarantine” kennels, as mandated by state law.
It will also have special rooms for running education programs, an “adoption room,” a “cat room,” and a room where animals can be cleaned or looked at by a veterinarian.
And Greg Raucci, the president of Bismark Construction, which is overseeing the project, said the city’s price tag would have been higher if Public Works Director Paul DiMauro hadn’t offered to do preparatory site work before building begins.
“As a city I think you have to be pretty proud because this is a unique project,” he said, noting that the project would have run about $3 million otherwise.
“When a city steps up and gets involved, if I were a taxpayer in Shelton, I’d feel pretty proud,” Raucci said. “It’s a very economical approach to a building. This is a well-deserved, needed program.”
If approved at November’s referendum, plans for the building will be submitted to the state, which has 90 days to review them.
Raucci said if everything goes according to plan construction will begin in mid-March, with a build time of about seven months.
Advocates hope the new, modern building will attract more people to the concept of adopting a pet.
To facilitate the process, in its “adoption room,” potential owners can view the different animals on a computer, instead of having to do a “perp walk” past the kennels, Craig said.
It’s all part of a larger challenge to make shelter adoptions more popular to the public, he said.
“People have a real problem with going to shelters for animals. This is actually a big recycling program,” Craig said. “Instead of going to a breeder, you can go to a shelter and find a perfectly acceptable pet.”
