awarded the bid contract to Watterson Construction<\/a> for $17.4 million in April, far shy of the $29.25 million borough engineers initially estimated. The overall project had a $33 million price tag, including scoping and design, and the purchase of the new site in 2022.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s exciting to see this project move from planning to construction,\u201d said Kimberly Imbert, the Animal Shelter operations supervisor. \u201cI\u2019ve had the opportunity to be involved from the beginning, and it\u2019s incredibly rewarding to see a vision for our community\u2019s animal shelter become a reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
The single-story, 22,232-square-foot facility is designed to serve current and future borough residents and Animal Control needs.<\/p>\n
The new animal shelter includes larger dog kennels with central drop-down doors that could be used to double capacity as needed, expanded cat capacity, dedicated isolation rooms for dogs, cats and other animals, a modernized animal shelter surgery area, and a sufficient area to house both shelter staff and Animal Control officers.<\/p>\n
The current facility has been plagued with high energy costs, poor drainage, inadequate facilities for spay-neuter procedures and cramped conditions that can stress the animals.<\/p>\n
A 2016 needs assessment identified that the current shelter at Davis and Peger streets was at the end of its operational lifespan.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday marks the beginning of an important investment in animal care for our community,\u201d Borough Mayor Grier Hopkins said in a Tuesday statement. \u201cThe new facility will provide a modern space for animal care and adoption services for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
The groundbreaking featured borough elected officials and staff, Animal Control staff and commissioners, project partners and community members.<\/p>\n
The new facility is expected to be completed in 2028.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A series of shovels and a helping paw from Iris, a 6-year-old retriever mix, broke ground on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,58480,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-719345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-local_news","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}