The Friends of the St. Joseph Animal Shelter have been working to find a new location for the animal shelter and have a promising option under consideration.

St. Joseph City Manager Bruce Woody said a few years ago, it was brought up that a larger and better located new facility is needed. Woody said the Friends have spent a lot of time planning a new shelter and looking at locations to move from the current Stockyards Expressway location.

Woody said after a lot of looking, a location in Mitchell Woods Business Park is under consideration.

“Bayer owned a series of individual lots as well as larger properties, it was previously under operation including two buildings that they were using for production facilities,” Woody said. “They have since sold that property, so they put all of that property up for redevelopment as well as two existing buildings up for sale. They’ve priced it very attractively but it’s layout and format actually is very conducive to what we would need for an animal shelter.”

Woody said a resolution will go before the council asking if they support the location at 5909 Corporate Drive as the goal for the relocation of the animal shelter.

“If we get a majority support of council… it will make a pronouncement to the general public that the council supports that and that’s important for two reasons,” Woody said. “The Friends of the Animal Shelter is going to be doing some fundraising because they’re coming up with about a million and a half worth of the total project budget and to fundraise they need to be sure and show potential donors that they have the city’s support and city match money as well. On the city side, we’re proposing that the city’s match money be funded through the next Capital Improvements Program, the half cent sales tax.”

The resolution will go before the council on January 2nd.