ESCANABA, Mich. (WZMQ) – The Delta Animal Shelter has broken ground on a new addition focused on community outreach.
The work being done off the side of the shelter has been a dream among administrators since 2017.
“We are building a multi-purpose educational room,” said Executive Director Tonya Gartland. “We wanted to make a bigger space for us to be able to do more kids programming, fundraising, training.”
However, the pandemic put those plans on the back burner. In 2020, an influx of dogs from a puppy mill pushed the dream even further into the future. Then, two generous community members stepped in.
“This very nice lady named Chris Lundin came in,” Gartland said. “Before her husband passed, they wanted to give some money to the shelter for a project. She said, ‘This is perfect,’ and so they donated the money to help build it. We’re so grateful for that.”
The primary goal of the new center is to bring back children’s programming.
“Before COVID, we had birthday parties,” said Gartland. “We had this kids’ club we used to do. We still kind of do field trips, but we’re all crunched into the lobby. To us, kids are very important to get into the shelter world just so they understand what we do and can be our advocates in the future.”
It will also be a place to host fundraisers, community outreach efforts, and training sessions for dogs and their owners.
“That’ll help them bond with their dog better and then help make it a better environment and a permanent home,” Gartland said. “These are just things that are coming to me right now, but I can only imagine what we can do with that space.”
Gartland expects the addition to draw many new people to the shelter, where they’ll see just how much goes on inside.
“There’s a statistic out there that says only 20% of people actually adopt from shelters, which is pretty low,” she said. “A lot of people don’t know what goes on here. This way, people can come for different reasons to be able to bump that up more and to see what we do. We’re excited to bring this opportunity to the community.”
The addition was designed by Dynamic Design, and Roy Ness Contracting is constructing it. The shelter hopes the new center will be operational by October.
