Pet shelter gets new home

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Construction is scheduled to begin next month for a new animal shelter in Isabella County.

David Ling, Isabella county commissioner and chairman of the Isabella County Animal Shelter Committee, said he intends to have a contractor lined up for the new facility and ground broken by the end of February.

“Hopefully we will have it completed by early next fall,” Ling said.

The new facility is slated to be built next to the Animal Control Department’s current location at 1105 S. Isabella Road.

Architectural designs call for the new facility to be approximately 9,700 square feet; 2,800 square feet of the present facility will continue to be used for storage and euthanasia, Ling said.

“We originally thought the project could be done for between $300,000 and $350,000,” Ling said. “Now it is already costing us $500,000 and could cost us up to $350,000 more.”

Ling said all financing has come from Isabella County and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, but efforts at public fund raising from individuals will likely begin in the near future.

“A new shelter is something we have desperately needed for probably 15 years now,” Ling said. “The current one is unhealthy and unsafe. We can’t control the spread of disease from new dogs which come into the shelter.

“Studies show that a clean and bright shelter environment can increase adoptions by 50 percent,” he said.

One goal of the current design, drawn up by Herb Otto of Otto, Dufty, Bensinger and Dice Architects, 4912 E. Pickard Road, is to increase the length of the average stay in order to increase the likelihood of adoption.