INDIANAPOLIS — A trip inside the current Indianapolis Animal Care Services shelter on South Harding Street is less than pleasant and stress-free for the staff, the animals and the people who are looking to adopt pets.
”You spend time down there, it’s tough,” said Dean Metcalf of Friends of Indy Animals. “The people I give credit to are the workers and the volunteers because they’re the ones doing the heavy lifting because they’re down there every day seeing the conditions, and it’s never ending.
”If there’s a stray alligator running around, animal care services has to pick that up and take care of it, they have to take care of any confiscation cases and stuff that ends up being very costly and hard to do.”
Overcrowded, loud and lacking enough green space for animals to roam, the current IACS site was never intended to function as a mass adoption center.
”Right now, the current shelter was designed to hold animals for a stray hold for about 48 hours, and then they were euthanized,” said Abbey Brands, Director of Business and Neighborhood Services. “It was never designed to be an actual animal welfare center or one that expected animals to be maybe longer term.”
After falling back from its original plan to build a new shelter on the property of the former RCA plant near East Michigan Street and Sherman Drive due to expensive remediation costs, ground was broken today at 5001 East Raymond Street, a vacant lot that will situate the new IACS precisely in the community that needs it the most.
“46201 and 46203 are two of our highest zip codes for strays runs and pickups and things of that nature,” said Brands. “So, we know we’re building the shelter where it is currently really needed in the community, and we hope this space is more of an inviting community space. We want to have drive thru clinics, we want to have even a retail area for people to come and shop as well. We want to be so much more connected to the community than we are today just tucked away on Harding Street.”
Photos from Monday’s IACS groundbreaking and facility rendering courtesy of the City of Indianapolis.
FOX59 and CBS4 have documented the problems at the City’s current IACS site, including staff burnout, excessive noise and a lack of suitable green space leading to more stressed out animals up for adoption, even though the shelter has boosted its live release rate from 63% to 85% over the last 10 years.
”This new shelter will have more lights, it will have a greater emphasis on how the kennels are designed to make sure that we’re maintaining mental health for the animals, that they get more outdoor time, which will also make it a little easier for staff in how we arrange the kennel space in the shelter as well,” said Brands, who has brought in consultants and best-practices advisors to analyze the current IACS system and propose changes to go into effect now and when the new shelter opens.
”I think what we’re looking at is, how do we have a more robust foster system? How do we have a more robust rescue engagement partnership?”
The budget for the new shelter is estimated to be just over $30 million with $7 million raised by Friends of Indy through private donations.
”I’ve recently retired from the Bob and Tom Show,” said Metcalf, a Q95 veteran for 36 years. “Tom Griswold, great guy, super generous, as part of my retirement package he put together, he threw in a $10,000 matching grant so if we can raise $10,000, Tom’s gonna match that so we can put $20,000 toward the shelter, which is amazing.”
To make a matching grant donation, log on to friendsofindyanimals.org.
If construction begins this fall, the shelter could be open in early 2026.
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