By KEVIN CHIRI

Editor and Publisher

LAPLACE – St. John Animal Shelter Manager Linda Allen said she considered quitting on more than one occasion.

Longtime Animal Board Member Margaret Landry said that she actually did quit—but then came back.

So for those two, and many others who stood in the gap for years all for St. John’s animal population, it was a happy day to see what was happening Wednesday on a small piece of land just off River Road.

As approximately a dozen public officials and animal board members pushed their feet into some golden shovels, and flipped out a small bit  of dirt, perhaps the most controversial issue in St. John’s history finally came to an end.

The beginning of construction for a new animal shelter in the parish was underway, with nothing left to stop the work by Aegis Construction, until next spring when a beautiful new facility will be completed.

The question of when, and particularly where, a new animal shelter would be built for the St. John animal population has been as contentious as any issue local politicians have ever seen.

Landry said that she was on the board beginning in 2000, and from day one, the question of building a new animal shelter was front and center.

“It was always ‘the issue.’ The facilities we had were always so inadequate,” she said.

Landry said that she was so frustrated with the lack of action on the matter that she finally just quit the board after almost four years.

But she returned almost two years later, and on Wednesday, was thrilled to be on hand as the new shelter was finally begun.

Aegis Construction was the low bidder to construct the facility, getting the job for a price of $647,000. It will be 8,000 square feet and will include offices for grooming, feeding, spay and neutering rooms, and lots of holding space. Special fresh air components are a key factor throughout the new facility.

The current facility is comprised of two trailers for office space, and one small building with outdated holding kennels.

Allen, who has managed the current shelter for 16 years, was near tears when she talked about how happy she was to see the construction finally begin.

“I almost gave up, but I never lost hope for it to happen,” she said. “This is so wonderful, fantastic, so great. It doesn’t seem real. I told my daughter that I would probably believe it when they put the keys in my grimey little paw.”

Newly-elected Parish President Bill Hubbard was rounded thanked by those in attendance for being the reason the shelter finally got approved. Making it one of his campaign promises last fall as he ran for the parish president position, Hubbard made a specific point to hold a council meeting later in the day after he was inaugurated.

The new animal shelter issue was approved by a vote of 9-0, as all council members finally joined in the plan to build a new facility on the vacant lot next to the current building.

“I do feel a sense of success seeing this begin today,” Hubbard said. “People said it couldn’t be done, but I knew we could get this going.

“It was just a matter of talking to all the council members and getting everyone to come together. I don’t think the previous administration wanted to take the bull by the horns. It was a political hot potato and I wasn’t afraid to get in the middle of it.”

Architect Joey Murray, whose firm designed the shelter, said that his company took the ideas of many different people before coming up with the layout. He said it will be unique since it will have state-of-the-art ventilation and sanitation considerations.

“We studied a lot about shelters and found that keeping the animals too close transmits more diseases,” he said. “We took the health of the animals into consideration quite a lot in designing this.”

He said the facility has also been designed to be “user-friendly” for small children who may want to come and see the animals. There will be an “interview room” for them to interact with animals they want to adopt.

“No doubt it should help increase adoptions,” he said. “We wanted kids to be comfortable coming here.”

The facility has a 180-day construction schedule, and is being built in a way that it can be easily expanded in the future.