KANSAS CITY, Mo. – City leaders broke ground on a new animal shelter Tuesday morning. The new Kansas City Campus for Animal Care will go on the corner of Elmwood Avenue and Gregory Boulevard in Swope Park.
The groundbreaking ceremony at the site took place from 11:30 a.m. to noon.
Currently, the city’s animal shelter is in an old construction warehouse on Raytown Road. It was never designed to be a shelter and is now more than 40 years old. Dogs are all in one big warehouse, cats are in an old office, and the veterinarian clinic is in a portable trailer.
The new shelter will remain no-kill. It will be built specifically for animals with proper ventilation, kenneling and veterinarian facilities.
“It will be less stressful on the visitors who are coming to look for a pet, less stressful on the animal that is living there at the time. The cats will be in a separate area far, far away from the dogs. Right now, they're just kind of across the hall from them,” explained Tori Fugate from KC Pet Project, which runs the shelter for the city.
In 2017, voters approved a series of general obligation (GO) bonds to pay for improvements around the city. $18 million from those bonds will pay for this facility. Fugate said the KC Pet Project and private donors are responsible for roughly an additional $8 million.
Fugate said the cost of the project is about $4 million more than anticipated because the cost of construction has increased over the four years since plans were made, and the city has now decided to move its animal control offices to the facility, which was not part of the original plan.
KC Pet Project will also create an endowment to pay for the annual operations of the facility. If you’re interested in donating, click here.
The new Kansas City Campus for Animal Care is expected to take 18 months to build.
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