The City of Richmond is working on details of a new animal shelter that has received an $8 million funding approval.
At Tuesday’s general purposes committee meeting, city staff were directed by council to include more information in an animal shelter report, including options to add some additional multipurpose space or a space for holding injured wildlife on a temporary basis.
Last December, council approved the funding of $8 million to replace the current animal shelter.
The existing animal shelter will be demolished and replaced with a new, more modern, facility on the existing site.
The new facility will include rooms for dogs, cats, small animals and rabbits, an outdoor area for dogs and farm animals and an adoption room for visitors to interact with animals prior to adoption.
Councillors also wanted to consider options to allow for the future expansion of the shelter to meet emerging needs.
The existing 4,590 sq. ft. facility was constructed in 1978 at 12071 No.5 Road.
“[It] was built when the city’s population was approximately 80,000. Since then, the city’s population has grown to over 200,000 and the number of animals has similarly grown,” the report detailed.
Eyal Lichtmann, CEO of the Richmond-based Regional Animal Protection Society (RAPS) that runs the shelter, said the replacement is “definitely urgent.”
“The shelter is outdated, for both health reasons and for the need to upgrade the infrastructure to accommodate more animals,” said Lichtmann.
He noted that when the current shelter was first built, it was considered a kill shelter, where animals were brought in to be euthanized.
“That’s not the way our shelter operates anymore, it now operates as an adoption centre. There’s a whole different infrastructure to do that.”
RAPS had proposed to move the animal hospital, which opened in February, to the shelter after its current lease runs out but that proposal was rejected by council.
City spokesperson Ted Townsend said there is no timeline for the report coming back to council.
