Jacksonville, Arkansas – With a $100,000 grant from ARPA, Jacksonville’s historic original animal shelter is renovating half of its structure in an effort to better the lives of the animals.
It is envisaged that Jacksonville’s upgraded shelter would be finished by year’s end.
“Our animal shelter, there’s been a lot going on recently. We’re going through some changes, we’ve had some personnel changes, we’ve made some physical changes here at the building,” said Mayor Jeff Elmore. “Beginning a project of remodeling half of our building. The original half that was the original shelter was built many many years ago. We’re doing a total gut job on that, we’re moving all the interior walls, it’s going to be an entirely new rebuild from the inside out.”
New aspects of the renovated facility will include treatments for the animals on-site.
“We’re actually going to have a surgical room in it so that we can do some on-site procedures that we’ll have local vets that come in to do it for us instead of having to take the animals off-site. We’ll be able to do a lot of that here, in-house, which will ultimately also save funds since we’ll be able to provide the space and so forth like that,” said Elmore.
The shelter is currently sketching out what the interior will eventually look like when it is finished.
“From the outside, it will look the same as it does now, ’cause it’s all going to be what’s on the inside,” said Elmore. “But yeah, they are totally redoing the floorplan and reallocating space, new rooms where other rooms were, and so forth.”
After remodeling, the shelter will keep the same amount of space for the animals; however, the features and space will allow the animals to receive better care.
“We’re not needing really to enlarge our footprint or to make more room for the dogs, we’re managing how we handle them better,” said Elmore.
A local of Jacksonville volunteers at the shelter three times weekly. “I come on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to just help walk the dogs and clean the shelter and anything else they really need me to do,” said Curtis Callham, a volunteer. “I’ve always been a huge animal person and always wanted to work with animals so next best thing other than being animal control or animal vet is being a volunteer at the shelter.”
According to Mayor Jeff Elmore, volunteers are always important to the shelter.
“Our volunteers, we have so many people that come in here and they volunteer to walk dogs, they’ll go help clean, organize, you name it. People who just, you know, love animals and want to be apart, ” said Elmore. “This is partly for them to see the progress that we’ve making and showing them that we really do care about the animals in our city.”
The ultimate aim of the sanctuary is to find permanent homes for the animals through adoption.
Construction on the renovated edifice is anticipated to begin as soon as the layout design is finished.
The shelter at 217 South Redmond Road, 72076 in Jacksonville, is having a yard sale for the animals on Sunday, October 14th from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.