Note: This story was last updated at 12:45 p.m. July 26.
A $2.8 million animal shelter is planned in Anderson County, possibly inside the city of Clinton.
The current animal shelter is on Blockhouse Valley Road in the Claxton community. It has 12 dog runs and 12 cat cages. It’s a 720-square-foot animal holding facility, the first in the county, and it cost about $25,000 to build. It was built by the county on county property with help from local contractors and inmate labor. It opened in the fall of 2015, about six months after Anderson County Commission approved an animal task force, said former Anderson County Commissioner and Oak Ridge resident Robin Biloski, who has helped lead the animal shelter project, including through fundraising.
“It was little, but it spoke volumes,” Biloski said during an unveiling ceremony for the plans for the new shelter at Calhoun’s restaurant in Oak Ridge on Thursday evening.
The new shelter would be much larger than the current facility. It would be more than 10,800 square feet, including about 2,900 square feet for kennels. It could have 20 dog kennels—30 total including kennels for animals that need to be quarantined and for miscellaneous animals such as pigs—and space for 20 to 30 cats, said Brian Porter, Anderson County Animal Control and Shelter Director.
Besides kennels, the shelter would have intake cages, viewing rooms, animal adoption rooms, counseling rooms, and a laundry room, training room, and surgery room, among other types of rooms.
The timeline depends upon fundraising, Anderson County Mayor Terry Frank said. The next step is to set up a fundraising committee, Frank said.
It’s not clear how much the new shelter would cost to operate each year.
Preparing the plans, Anderson County officials said they have toured other shelters in Tennessee, including in Blount and Putnam counties and in Chattanooga.
They worked with Bill Blankenship of Blankenship and Partners, a Knoxville architectural and planning firm, to develop plans for the new Anderson County shelter. With the support of County Commission, the work with Blankenship and his team started in August, Frank said.
The current shelter was used by about 1,110 cats and dogs in fiscal year 2018.
More information will be added as it becomes available.
More information will be added as it becomes available.
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