Last week, MHS held the official ground breaking ceremony for our new Detroit Animal Care Campus. The new facility will be approximately 34,000 square feet in size and will cost $15.5 million to construct. The future MHS Detroit Animal Care Campus will offer improved and highly progressive animal housing, an expanded veterinary center, which will be open to the public, a new home for the MHS Cruelty Investigation and Rescue Department, dedicated canine and feline rehabilitation areas, secure and spacious shelter dog play yards, and a community dog park.
In the coming months, we will share stories of those who are impacted by the work of MHS in Detroit and how this new facility will change lives – both human and animal.
As we kick off this campaign, we received this note from a former MHS employee and thought he did a great job of explaining the importance of this new facility for Detroit and for all of Michigan:
So, I used to work at MHS for a few years and had a chance to spend a lot of time in the current Detroit building.
And I urge all of you. Please. Help them. Give generously. Help build this new building. Give these men and women the facilities they need to save more animals.
If any of you have seen Animal Cops: Detroit, you’ve seen the current building. It was old and shabby 15 years ago. And it’s not like the place has aged like fine wine. It used to be piston factory, the current building, back in the late 1800s, early 1900s, before MHS bought the building some seven decades ago? I might have the dates off, but they’re close enough. The point is: they’ve been there a long, long, long time. And the current facilities are not sufficient to handle the amount of animals that come through those doors.
Modern animal facilities have a host of features in place to prevent disease transmission between animals – features that are impossible in the current building. Modern animal facilities have large areas for animals to play and socialize – an area that the current location can’t fit. Modern animal facilities have large facilities for cruelty investigation and care of animals brought in from the streets – while MHS’ vets, cruelty investigators and rescue drivers are working out of rooms that make my college dorm room look like a palace.
This building is going to help save more animals. It’s going to improve the lives of everyone it touches, people and animal alike. It’s going to be a place where Detroit residents can bring their pets to get them healthy and happy. And it’s going do more to save animal lives than any one event, one initiative, or one group could ever do. Because right now, MHS is the only truly open-admission facility in the city of Detroit. But they need help.
So, please. Listen to a random stranger on the internet. Consider making a gift to this campaign. Be part of something that will literally save the lives of thousands of animals every single year. I’m looking at you, next Mega Millions winner.
– Kevin Hatman