CINCINNATI — Hamilton County’s overcrowded animal shelter is about to get some relief, with a $375,000 budget allocation to develop a new home for Cincinnati Animal Care.
“This facility is not built to take in 8,000 animals per year,” said Ray Anderson, spokesman for the nonprofit humane society that took over the county’s dog warden and shelter programs in 2020. “This was built to house dogs for three days in the 1960s. You could put four dogs in a kennel together and then after their three days they get euthanized. So, that’s not what we do here.”
As a no-kill shelter with a policy of housing one dog per kennel, Cincinnati Animal Care requires more space than its current two-acre site allows. The building at 3949 Colerain Ave. is owned by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which CAC replaced.
The county has retained the commercial real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield to find a site of up to 15 acres to replace the current shelter, Hamilton County Budget Director John Bruggen said. It's scouting sites near the highway in western Hamilton County because hots spots for the dog warden tend to be west of I-75, Bruggen said.
While the search continues, the county plans to renovate a warehouse building it recently purchased at 4210 Dane Ave. so the shelter can temporarily house dogs when the shelter is over capacity. That’s what happened in October, when the shelter took in nearly 700 animals, forcing it to hold dogs in pop-up crates.
“It’s heartbreaking to see so many dogs, stressed because they’re lost. They’re in a cage. They’re in a room full of other stressed dogs,” said Terri Spiegel, a Cincinnati Animal Care volunteer. “There’s so much time that’s spent cleaning the kennels when we’re overcrowded like this that staff, they don’t have the time they need to actually work with the dogs on behavior issues.”
Anderson said no price tag has been established for the replacement shelter, which CAC hopes to complete within three years.
Goals for the project include “room to roam for the dogs while they’re here and more areas for the specialty programs that we have in place,” Anderson said.
The new building will likely have more space for CAC’s medical programs and a state-of-the-art facility for cats.
“One of the big things is trying to figure out office space,” Anderson said. “I think about every department has four people in every office right now.”
Anderson expects the new shelter will be county-owned and partly financed by a Cincinnati Animal Care capital campaign.
“The community is pretty jazzed about it,” Anderson said. “I think we’ll find people willing to help out. But we’ll be launching a capital campaign when we have a more concrete plan.”
