Strays will have new place to stay – $2.6 million animal care facility to provide for critters in environmentally friendly way

CORONADO — All that the homeless dogs and cats in Coronado need before settling into their new, high-end digs is for crews to put the finishing touches on the city’s $2.6 million animal-care facility near San Diego Bay. When the facility opens — the end of the month is the expected date — it will replace the current animal shelter, a temporary structure built in a parking garage under the Coronado police station. “We can’t believe it,” said Louis Shirey, president of the Pacific Animal Welfare Society of Coronado, a group instrumental in getting the shelter built. “We’ve been waiting for years. We’re so delighted.” The 3,400-square-foot building, whose design a former councilman once called “grandiose,” has an outdoor exercise area, exam and quarantine rooms, two cat-adoption suites, seven dog kennels — each with a window — along with enough environmental building designs for the city to possibly earn a higher green certification than it had initially planned. Read the entire Union Tribune article here.