When the nonprofit Friends of the Alameda Animal Shelter (FAAS) organization determined that they needed their own facility to spay and neuter dogs and cats and provide other services, they could have waited until an estimated $10.6 million was put into the kitty to build a traditional brick-and-mortar building. Related Articles They decided not to do that, though.
Instead, FAAS will soon break ground on a “temporary” facility made from eight shipping containers cut in half and arranged in a U shape. Called the Animal Medical Services & Training Campus, the facility is planned to open in December with surgery and dental suites, an X-ray and exam rooms and even a pet grooming area. FAAS has raised $1,435,000 of the $2.
6 million needed to build the interim shipping container structure, leaving the group with $1,165,000 still to raise. “We have to fundraise every dollar to make this happen. And using the shipping containers, we can do it for about two-and-a-half million,” said FAAS Chief Executive Officer John Lipp, who described the need for spay/neuter facilities statewide as a “crisis.
” “If we can do this faster, let’s get it up and going,” he said while speaking at a recent unveiling of the clinic site. The planned site is on a patch of land nestled amid office parks and residential housing on Bay Farm Island’s North Loop Road. According to FAAS, 344,000 animal shelters in California don’t have access to veterinary care staff and 40% can’t provide regular access to spaying or neutering services.
By California law, a dog or cat cannot be adopted from a shelter unless it is spayed or neutered. FAAS, which serves about 9,000 animals annually, must currently take animals to be spayed or neutered from their shelter at 1590 Fortmann Way in Alameda to a Pleasanton clinic — almost 30 miles away in a trip that can take 40 minutes to two hours, depending on traffic. The planned North Loop Road site is just 1.
2 miles and takes only 12 minutes to get to from the FAAS shelter near Alameda’s Fortmann Basin on the Oakland Estuary. While the long-range plan is to still eventually build a permanent clinic, some are speculating that the shipping containers may not be so temporary. “If this takes off and does what we think it will do, then it could be here for quite a while and we may not need the brick-and-mortar (facility),” said Michael O’Kane, who regularly volunteers at the shelter with his wife, Donna.
Lipp is keeping his options open as to the longevity of the shipping container plan as well. “It could be two years, three years, four years,” Lipp said, noting that if he got a phone call from someone offering $10 million for the permanent building tomorrow they “will pivot. In the meantime, we’re going to offer the services immediately.
” The need for spay/neuter clinics was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, he added. “During the pandemic, if a dog got lost, it was lost for 30 seconds because everybody was home and everybody wanted to adopt. So we moved all of our animals into foster homes,” Lipp said.
“And then probably more than half of those just became permanent. People fell in love with the dogs or the cats, and they fit in with their family, and they stayed. So most shelters were very empty, but that lull didn’t last very long.
” Lipp said one of the reasons shelters are so full right now is they’re full of what he calls “pandemic puppies” — young dogs that didn’t get proper training or socialization due to the effects of pandemic measures and whose owners hence gave up on them. “Now they’re 80 pounds, they’re two years old and they’re dropped off at the shelters. And they’re good dogs.
They just don’t know that they’re good dogs.” About 12 million animals a year were euthanized in the United States 20 years ago. “Now it’s closer to one-and-a-half million, which is still way too many,” said Lipp.
“They’re beautiful, and it breaks our hearts.” One Alameda cat fancier who isn’t going to be leaving any of her brood at a shelter anytime soon is Cheryl Hanson. That’s because she’s a self-described “big-time” foster flop, but in a good way.
“I’ve tried to foster for the shelter, but they never went back for adoption because we kept them in our family,” says Hanson who now has five cats. “But yeah, five is our limit.” A September groundbreaking is planned for the FAAS shipping container animal clinic at 2331 North Loop Road on Alameda’s Bay Farm Island.
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