Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Beyond the current work on school renovations, part of the main focus for Prince Edward County officials involves building a new animal shelter. The county’s planning commission made that clear when they ranked that project at the top of the capital improvements list during their Tuesday, Oct. 15 meeting. 

So where does the project currently stand? Conceptual designs for a new shelter are expected to be finished by Dec. 13. To do the design work over the next few months, Moseley Architects said it’ll cost $37,352. And yes, this is the same group, Moseley Architects, that’s been working with Prince Edward County on the elementary school renovation.

As a refresher, the proposed site for the new shelter is a 9-acre parcel of land owned by the Prince Edward County Industrial Development Authority, located between the Social Security building and FACES on Commerce Drive. The location was chosen because it was a bit easier to get to, as opposed to the current shelter, located at 255 County Shop Road in Farmville. But this isn’t a case where a simple renovation was possible. The current building is just too small for the county’s needs. 

“The current shelter can house nine cats and 11 dogs legally,” Prince Edward Planner Robert Love told the planning commission, adding that the shelter typically stays at max capacity. 

One benefit with using the Commerce Drive property is that the county already owns it, so there’s no cost in acquiring the land. It’s also already connected with public water and sewer, so that also saves the county some money. 

Outlining the animal shelter schedule 

So after the design gets submitted, what happens next? From December through March, the county will work on design development. That means going through the process, with the planning commission and eventually county supervisors seeing the proposal and weighing in.

Then comes roughly 14 weeks to develop the construction documents, assuming everyone is satisfied with what the design shows. That would be finished by roughly June 20, 2025. The requested building permit then gets submitted for review and eventually put out to bid. County officials would then choose a contractor to work with, which all should be finished by the end of September, 2025. 

Then finally construction itself, assuming that everything goes to plan, would take roughly a year, finishing up around Oct. 2026.