Ascension Parish looks for property for new animal shelter

Ascension Parish has a design plan in hand and hopes to break ground next year on a new animal shelter and animal control services facility. It just needs to find five acres that meet certain requirements — like not being flood-prone.

Hopefully, the new facility will be up and running some time in late 2024, said Ruth Phillips, chief of staff for the Ascension Parish government.

"We're so close to that finish line," said Phillips.

The new building and its operations will be funded by a 1-mill property tax that's been collected since 2019, generating about $1.32 million annually.

The current animal shelter, operated by the nonprofit Companion Animal Rescue of Ascension (CARA's House), has long outgrown its aging space on Airline Highway in Sorrento. With three temporary buildings in use, in addition to its main building, the shelter has had to temporarily move its animals and operations more than once to the parish's Lamar-Dixon Expo Center when flood waters strike.

The shelter made another temporary move to the expo center last year, while major repairs were made at its Sorrento site.

Every winter, the shelter must depend on diesel-fueled heaters to warm the unheated area of the shelter where dogs are housed in kennels. Employees are paid to stay through the night at the shelter to monitor the heaters.

Much of the diesel fuel is paid for by donors or delivered to the shelter by donors, shelter officials have said.

The new shelter, when it's here, will have climate-controlled housing for all its animals, said Michael Barnard, founder and president of the Arlington, Texas-based Shelter Planners of America.

Ascension Parish contracted with the architectural firm last year for a needs assessment and a conceptual building design for its new facility, after learning about the company's work with Lafayette Parish, where a new shelter opened in May 2021.

"They're doing an amazing job in Ascension Parish, with what they have," said Barnard. "They just desperately need better facilities."

Over 30 years, Shelter Planners of America has helped plan close to 800 shelters across the country; for 11 of those years it was in charge of consulting on all of the animal shelter designs for the Humane Society of the United States.

The $30,000 project that Shelter Planners completed for Ascension Parish last year included a needs assessment study that projects the numbers of animals the new facility will be caring for over the next 20 years.

The firm also provided a conceptual design of the new building that shows the housing for the animals, lobby for the public, and pet adoption counseling stations.

"Animal shelters need a good flow; flow is everything," said Barnard. "The animals need to get into their forever homes."

"Facility design has helped adoptions increase 100 percent in some cases," he said.

Email Ellyn Couvillion at [email protected].

When temperatures plummeted this winter, workers at CARA's House, the animal shelter for Ascension Parish, set up diesel-fueled heaters in the…

Cats who live in their kennels much of the time and mama dogs who need a safe place to care for their puppies are the beneficiaries of an $85,…