Inside Town and Country's New Kennel Project and What It Still Needs to Finish

In less than eight hours on June 23, a building that had stood for 40 years at 14110 S 84th St became a pile of rubble.

For four decades that building was the dog kennel at Town and Country Animal Rescue, the no-time-limit shelter that has operated on three acres at the south edge of Papillion for more than 40 years. Thousands of animals came through it, along with the volunteers, fosters and families who came to meet them.

In its place, the rescue is putting up a new dog kennel and adoption center it expects to finish by the end of this year. The project is further along than it looks from the road, and further from paid for than most people realize. Executive Director Angela Heim walked the Papillion Post through where it stands.

"Our building is 40 years old and isn't up to current building codes," Heim said. The kennels had reached the end of their usable life. "The old building's kennels were falling apart," she said. By the time the rescue committed to the new facility, only 12 kennels on site could still be safely used.

The new building will hold 23 dogs.

Capacity is only part of the gain. The old building had almost no storage and very little room to work in. It struggled to hold cool air in summer and heat in winter. The new one gets a full HVAC system sized to the building, a completely rebuilt foundation with new piping meant to last, and drain traps designed to catch animal hair, dirt and waste instead of passing it downstream.

It also gets something the rescue has never had on site: a full grooming station, donated by Forever Stainless Steel. That matters more than it sounds. "Many of our animals come from puppy mills or back yard breeders, and come in under some horrible conditions," Heim said.

The reception area and entryway are being enlarged as well, so staff, volunteers and visitors are not all working around each other in the same few feet of floor.

The project was originally drawn up as a $500,000 build. It is now a $1.2 million one.

Three things account for the difference, Heim said: delays in city permitting, a driveway nobody had budgeted for, and infrastructure the existing campus simply did not have.

The driveway is the clearest example. The first drawings did not include a wraparound drive a fire truck could navigate, so the rescue's first phase of permits was denied and the plans had to be reworked. The site also did not have enough electrical service to support the new building, which meant going back to OPPD before anything could be built.

That is what moved the calendar. The rescue had expected to break ground in November. Instead it announced on March 19 that its permits had finally been approved, thanking the City of Papillion, and demolition followed in June.

The general contractor is Meco-Henne Contracting, an Omaha commercial builder working in the metro since 1989. Heim said the permitting work with the city was handled entirely through the contractor.

In the barn.

"We did not want to halt our mission during a year long build," Heim said, so the animals moved into temporary kennels in the barn on the property and intake kept going.

It has slowed things down. Every animal is held in quarantine for seven days before it can be adopted, and the barn has only so many quarantine kennels. The gap is being covered by the rescue's foster network, which Heim credits directly. "We have been able to continue with operations thanks to our incredible foster network who have opened their homes up for additional intakes," she said.

Demand has not eased to match. "As a no-time limit shelter, we are relied on heavily by our rescue partners to house animals they are unable to keep," Heim said. "We are at capacity every day with animals coming in and out."

The no-time-limit part is the whole idea. An animal that arrives at Town and Country is not on a clock, and it does not lose its place because the weeks add up. That is why other rescues in the region call when they run out of room, and it is why the difference between 12 kennels and 23 is not an abstraction. It is the number of dogs that can be taken in from somewhere worse.

The shelter is not the only thing the organization runs. Town and Country also operates a pet food pantry, low-cost vaccination clinics and boarding, and it has done all of it from the same Papillion address for four decades.

None of it is publicly funded. "We do not receive any city, state or Federal funds to operate our organization," Heim said. The rescue, she said, runs "entirely from the generous support of our incredible community."

As of the first week of August, the build was $350,000 short of its goal, Heim said. That total has been moving, because the scope has been moving: the rescue announced in March that it was 60% funded, back when the plan and the price were both smaller. Online giving through Givebutter is only part of the picture, since major gifts are tracked separately.

The construction budget and the operating budget are two different problems, and the second one does not pause while the first one is being solved. "Construction and growth haven't halted the need for emergency medical care and veterinary treatment, shelter, food, supplies, and our community programs," Heim said. "Financial support is needed now more than ever as we continue operating our current facility while simultaneously preparing for our next chapter."

"Whether through attending an event, sponsoring a kennel, making a donation, fostering, volunteering, or adopting, every person has a role in helping us continue saving lives and creating a stronger future for animals in our community," Heim said.

Town and Country Animal Rescue is at 14110 S 84th St, Papillion. Progress on the new building is posted at townandcountryanimalrescue.org/building-updates. Image courtesy of Kindred26 Media.

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