Mayor Kelly Yeade stands with Hamilton Township Council vice president Dennis Pone at the Animal Shelter groundbreaking May 6, 2014.
Hamilton Township Mayor Kelly Yeade broke ground on a new wing of Hamilton’s Animal Shelter May 6.
Along with a gathering of local animal organizations and volunteers, the mayor took the next step in addressing a lack of local stray animal capacity by leading a ceremonial first dig to kick-off the construction of an expanded wing.
The needed expansion project will nearly double the shelter’s dog kennels from 20 kennels to 36 kennels, double the size of its areas to accommodate cats from 25 cat rooms to 50 cat rooms, provide a larger animal medical area and private quarantine areas for both dogs and cats, and include two, additional adoption rooms and a grooming area for animals.
Yeade said the expansion is taking place out of necessity, not desirability.
“The expansion of our community’s shelter will address our facility’s critical need for additional capacity in order to provide humane and compassionate conditions for the animals that find their ways to our shelter,” Yaede said in a statement. “Additionally, great strides were taken during the planning stages of this project to ensure that the most cost-effective alternative was taken, for the benefit of our residents’ hard-earned tax dollars.”
The expansion project, conducted by Newport Construction — the lowest of 12 bidders on the project — will begin immediately and is expected to be completed by the fall.
The additional building will not only provide the overall facility with critically needed capacity, but was a significantly less expense alternative when compared to the cost of constructing of one, larger new building. A completely new structure would have cost upwards of an additional $500,000 for the project.
The original Township shelter building was constructed in 1971, with an addition to the existing building taking place in 1989.
