SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Leaders with the City of Sacramento’s Front Street Animal Shelter say it's outgrown its current space, and they’re looking for a new location.
One place they’re eyeing is where the Sacramento Zoo is currently located in Land Park.
“This is one of our adoptable dog sections here,” said Front Street’s Animal Care Services Manager Phillip Zimmerman, giving ABC10 a tour this week. “We’ve got everybody pretty much doubled and sometimes quadrupled (in a kennel), depending on the space issues.”
He says the shelter – which takes in some 9,000 animals per year - is consistently operating at about 150% capacity and there’s no more room to expand on this property.
Currently, “we are just under 150 dogs and just under 100 cats here in the shelter,” Zimmerman said. “We do what we can with what we’ve got, and we have made a lot of changes over the years and added buildings, but now…there’s no room to add on to this facility.”
Leah Morris is chair of Sacramento’s Animal Wellbeing Commission, which advises City Council on matters related to Front Street Animal Shelter. She said the issues aren’t just about kennel space; the areas where volunteers and staff members do the laundry and dishes are outdoors.
“This is where all the laundry is done,” she said, standing outside with a metal awning overhead. “We live in Sacramento, where it can be 110 (degrees)… Now that it’s winter, it can be freezing in here. It can be raining. This is an example of one of the challenges of this facility because there’s no space to grow into.”
Just yards from where Morris was standing, traffic whizzed by on I-5, another challenge of the shelter’s location.
Morris and Zimmerman say the shelter’s medical building is too small for the volume of spay, neuter and other surgeries performed there. They routinely have to outsource procedures to community clinics.
“There’s no way to do volume,” Morris said, standing in a corner of the room. “The staff are kind of crashing into each other.”
These issues and more are detailed in a newly published Shelter Needs Assessment, commissioned and funded by the city.
“What we've come to learn is that this acreage here is not sufficient to take care of the needs of the volume of animals that are brought in,” Morris said. “This is on approximately 1.8 acres…We need approximately 7 acres.”
That’s why shelter leaders are eyeing other locations, including the land where the Sacramento Zoo is currently located in Land Park.
“There's a lot of infrastructure there. In fact, I believe there's a medical clinic there at the zoo,” Morris said.
There are plans to move the zoo to Elk Grove, as ABC10 has reported, which will free up the property in coming years.
Shelter leaders plan on presenting this new report to city council in coming months. The report says a new shelter could cost between $50-60 million.
“We're very, very thankful for all the time that people have devoted to this (shelter needs assessment), and we're very committed to making sure that it doesn't get left on a shelf, that we get to move it forward,” Morris said.
Leaders know a new shelter is still years away, but if people want to help in the meantime, they can donate to the shelter, volunteer their time or become an animal foster family.
WATCH ALSO:
