By Jeff Clemetson

Dianne Hutchings wants to make sure that La Mesa residents are aware of the El Cajon Animal Shelter where she has worked as an animal care attendant for more than 19 years.

“A lot of people who live in the city of La Mesa who lose their animals, they actually don’t know where to go look for them,” she said. “They don’t know that there is a shelter in El Cajon.”

Not just any shelter, but the one that is contracted by the city of La Mesa to take its strays and relinquished pets.

And thanks to funding from Proposition O, passed way back in 2004, that shelter is soon to be replaced with a larger, more modern facility.

“We expect the contractors and the architect and the city staff to continue working together to finish up the design by late spring [2017],” said Majed Al-Ghafry, El Cajon assistant city manager and project manager for the new animal shelter. “Construction will start in the summer and the completion is anticipated to be in the late summer [of 2018].”

Right now, the project has finished its feasibility studies and the El Cajon City Council has approved the guaranteed maximum price for the facility — slightly more than $9.3 million — and has authorized the city manager’s office to negotiate the contract with CW Driver to build the shelter. Amanda Shultz of Ferguson Pape Baldwin Architects designed the building.

Although construction for the new facility now has a timeline, Hutchings and the other staff at the animal shelter have been waiting for a long time and point out that other Prop O projects like the new El Cajon police station and fire house are already built and operating.

“We’ve been waiting a long time,” said Cindy Cullinan, Animal Control officer. “We can’t wait to get to the new place.”

Al-Ghafry said the delays are due to an original project idea that had a more regional facility in mind that would be large enough to serve El Cajon, La Mesa, Santee, Lemon Grove and other East County areas. The new site also allows the existing shelter to remain open while the new one is built, saving money that would have had to go toward renting an interim facility.

“The feasibility studies probably took us a little bit longer, but we wanted to do it right. We figured if we wait a little bit longer and do it right, it is better than just go off an idea or a plan that may or may not be the best for us,” Al-Ghafry said. “We wanted to make sure that 10 years down the road, 15 years down the road, people will look back and say, ‘Yeah, you know they did a really good job here. They waited a little bit longer but they didn’t miss much.’”

The existing animal shelter, located at 1275 N. Marshall Ave. in El Cajon, was built in 1957. The aging, 5,900-square-foot, cinderblock building houses up to 103 animals at a time. The new shelter, which will be located just up the street at 1305 N. Marshall Ave., will be 13,500 total square feet when including the play yards and will house up to 190 animals.

In addition to the play yards, the new facility will include a community room that will be used for education; separate dog and cat areas; rooms for the animals with glass walls so they can be showcased for adoption; a full veterinarian center; combo indoor/outdoor cages for dogs; and a separate evaluation area.

“That gives you the ability to come into the sally ports, look at dogs or cats that have health issues or have behavioral issues and treat them in a separate area than where you have your community cats or dogs that are ready for adoption,” Al-Ghafrey said.

Al-Ghafrey visited similar animal centers such as the Humane Society campuses in San Diego and Escondido, the Palm Springs Animal Shelter as well as the county shelter for “lessons learned” in building those facilities and to see what would be helpful to put into the new El Cajon facility.

One idea that came from those trips was to have two entrances — one for adoption and one for intake.

“The intake folks who are giving up their dog or cat, their state of mind is a little bit different than if you are excited about coming to adopt a pet so we wanted to give a dynamic of privacy and respect people’s state of mind,” he said.

La Mesa has contracted to use the shelter for animal care services since 2001, and that contract will continue with the new facility. The city plays a flat fee for each animal that is kept in the shelter. The cost varies per animal but so far the shelter averages around 300 animals per year from the La Mesa, Al-Ghafrey said.

Of those 300 — and of all the animals brought to the shelter — Hutchings worries that some owners might lose their pet just because they are unaware of where to go to look for a lost pet.

“People could come in here two weeks later and their animal could be gone and they wouldn’t even know it was here,” Hutchings said, adding that people whose lost pets end up in the shelter have only four to five working days to come and claim them — after that they are up for adoption.

Cullinan would also like to get the word out about the shelter to all East County and San Diego residents that the shelter also has animals waiting adoption.

“We have people come in all the time saying ‘I never know you guys were here’ from all different parts of town — San Diego, La Mesa, El Cajon,” she said.

Al-Ghafrey is excited that the new shelter will soon be built for the animals that will be housed there and especially for the staff and volunteers who will work there.

“The staff does a fantastic job,” he said. “This is my personal observation. They are all very passionate. They deserve a state-of-the-art building that is going to allow them to do what they really do fully for animal care services.”

—Reach Jeff Clemetson at [email protected].