GREENFIELD — Greenfield Mayor Chuck Fewell remembers his first time visiting the Greenfield-Hancock County Animal Management facility after taking office. Noticing the large number of wastebaskets in the space, he asked the employees why they had so much trash to throw away. They replied that it wasn’t an issue of trash — the bins were being used to catch rainwater that leaked from the trailer’s ceiling onto employees’ desks.
“I said, ‘I’ll tell you this, you’ll have a new home,’” Fewell recalled. “‘I just can’t tell you when.’”
Now, after years of planning, that promise is finally coming to fruition. On Wednesday, July 7, Fewell joined animal management director Amanda Dehoney and other city employees for a groundbreaking ceremony at the future site of animal management’s new headquarters at 740 S. Franklin St. The site is south of the county’s 911 center.
The new building will be about 12,900 square feet and include a 190-foot horse barn. It sits on an 11-acre city-owned property that will eventually also house a new building for the Greenfield Street Department.
At the new building, the department will be able to house up to 100 cats and about 40 dogs. They will also have the space for some animals they can’t currently house, including horses.
Fewell said the new facility will be a major step forward in Greenfield’s ability to care for animals with the hopes of holding onto them for only a short time until they are reclaimed or adopted by a new family.
“We have to have the right facility to make sure we’re doing the things that we can to protect what people love,” he said.
The project is costing the city about $4.2 million and is expected to be completed in February 2022.
Animal management has moved into a temporary home while it waits for the construction of the new, permanent one. Located in a building off U.S. 40 that was once an animal hospital, Dehoney said the space is a little cramped.
“The space is still the main issue. We’re a little bit more constricted than we actually were at our original location,” Dehoney said. “We’re dealing with it, and the community has been great working with us, doing drop-offs by appointment only, so that’s been a big help.”
Dehoney said other animal rescues, including the Hancock County Humane Society, have been taking the pressure off animal management by housing some of the animals that are brought in.
The design work for the project was done by Indianapolis-based MD Architects, which frequently works on animal-related projects like animal hospitals and “doggy day-cares.”
“We were really excited to see an opportunity for somewhere local, and a shelter too, because those don’t happen every day,” architect Adela Groht said. “We were really excited to work with Amanda to get this shaped into everything they needed, and a little bit more, we hope.”
The new building will have the ability to house some species that animal management currently doesn’t have the right facilities for, including horses, chickens and pigs. Unlike private animal shelters, the department can’t utilize discretion in what animals they take in — they have to respond to all calls about animals in the county.
The department has only had to house one horse since moving into its temporary location, Dehoney said, and was able to find an animal rescue to take the animal in until it could be returned to its owners.
“We go out, and we do our best to find owners, if we can,” Dehoney said. “Usually they (wayward animals) stay pretty close; you can find where their pen or pasture was, and you can hopefully kind of guide them back in there. If not, we would have to call on our friends who have let us use a horse trailer before, and their barns, and hopefully they’ll house them for us. That or we have to use a boarding facility.”
In the meantime, residents can still adopt animals at the temporary facility, located at 2195 W. U.S. 40. For more information, call (317) 477-4367.