If you love dogs and cats and have $250,000 laying around Vicki Pasenko wants to hear from you.
Pasenko, executive director of the Evanston Animal Shelter and co-founder of the Evanston Animal Shelter Association, is looking for someone to donate $250,000 to secure the naming rights on the Community Room and other spaces in Evanston’s soon-to-be-opened, state-of-the-art animal shelter.
“The Common Room is one of the rooms in the building I am very excited about,” she said. “It’s a place where we can bring people in for a variety of things.”
She said the shelter has a lot of plans for the community room and thinks naming rights to it is a great opportunity for someone to put their name on it to support the community.
The shelter launched a capital campaign to raise $1.2 million of the $6.3 million it will cost to open the new facility. Evanston kicked in $4 million and Cook County gave $2.9 million. Construction of the new 8,800 square foot shelter at 2310 Oakton Street in Evanston started last summer after City Council approved a $6.85 million contract with CCC Holdings.
The shelter is scheduled to open in September, said Pasenko.
She said selling naming rights for various rooms has already raised about $600,000 with many who donated naming rooms after their pets.
“You can put whatever name you want,” she added. “Most people have named rooms after their favorite pet. Mostly dogs actually. No one has named a room after a cat so we need somebody to do that!”
Naming rights still available include the building lobby at $150,000, two cat colony rooms for $75,000 each, an adoptable cat room for $50,000, a dog intake room for $50,000, two cat get acquainted rooms at $25,000 each, a cat intake room for $25,000, two dog holding kennels at $20,000 each, a dog isolation kennel for $20,000, a cat holding room for $20,000, a cat isolation room for $20,000 and a laundry room at $10,000.
The new shelter replaces the old shelter that opened in the 1970s in a building that had been used by the city as a recycling center. It was not designed to be an animal shelter leading to many shortcomings, Pasenko said.
“In the old building, people used to meet the cat they were adopting in the bathroom,” she explained. “To have adoption rooms and places where people can come in and feel comfortable meeting their animal is amazing.”
Pasenko said the new shelter will also be the city’s first with zero on-site greenhouse gas emissions as part of its climate action goals. The building will eventually have solar panels installed as well.
According to the shelter’s website, the new facility will include 20 kennels to house dogs, cat colony rooms, a medical suite, a separate intake area with isolation areas for sick animals, five outdoor dog runs, a food pantry, adoption rooms, a community room and LEED Silver certification.
“We’re very excited and also very busy,” Pasenko said. “It’s one of those things that you think it’s way out in the future and it feels far away but it’s also like ‘tomorrow.’ We’re very busy writing new procedures and doing all kinds of work planning for the move and living in the new building.”
Brian L. Cox is a freelance reporter with Pioneer Press.
