In October, North Fork Animal Welfare League moved into its new location on Church Lane in Aquebogue.
The six-acre site was formerly home to Scoshire Kennels, whose owners sold the property and retired. Referred to on their website as the “Taj Mahal of kennels,” the property boasts 24 interior kennel runs and 16 outdoor runs, along with exercise areas and showers for larger dogs. READ
If you’re a dog lover, this is an app you should download. (Credit: Joseph Pinciaro)
Anyone who enjoys animals, leisurely strolls or a combination of the two can take advantage of a new smartphone app that directs cash to a local animal shelter every time they take a walk.
Walk For a Dog uses the location services function on smartphones to track users’ walks and then makes a donation to an animal shelter of their choosing — just for using the app. (more…)
Precious Pups in Calverton was shutdown by authorities for selling sick dogs. (Cyndi Murray photo)
A Calverton animal shelter in court for reportedly selling sick dogs to its customers and failing to offer proper health records of the animals had a future shipment of dogs put on hold by a Suffolk judge on Wednesday, despite objections from the company’s lawyer that the move unfairly implicates the company of guilt.
However the dogs currently there will be allowed to stay on site.
The Pfiefer community center building in Calverton. (Credit: Tim Gannon, file)
Plans to move the Riverhead Animal Shelter to the Henry Pfeifer Community Center building in Calverton have become a bit more definitive.
The nonprofit North Fork Animal Welfare League, which operates the town’s shelter on Youngs Avenue, announced it has signed a lease agreement with Riverhead Town for use of the building. (more…)
Eileen Kreiling, manager of the North Fork Animal Welfare League’s Riverhead shelter, with 4-year-old pitbull Benny, who has been at the shelter since February. (Credit: Barbaraellen Koch)
In a divided vote Tuesday, the Riverhead Town Board scheduled June 3 hearings for two proposals connected with moving the nonprofit North Fork Animal Welfare League, which operates the town animal shelter, to the property holding the Henry Pfeifer Community Center in Calverton, a town-owned building that underwent a nearly half-million-dollar renovation about a decade go and has been underutilized ever since.
“It was a monumental day in Riverhead for the animals,” said Denise Lucas, head of Riverhead Move the Animal Shelter, another nonprofit that has held more than 40 fundraisers in the past two years to offset the cost of finding a new town animal shelter.
The vote took place in a room filled with supporters. And while none of them spoke, they burst into applause after a deciding third vote in favor of the hearings was tallied. Ms. Lucas said more than 30 “animal people” attended.
The 3-2 vote — with Supervisor Sean Walter and councilmen Jim Wooten and John Dunleavy in favor and council members Jodi Giglio and George Gabrielsen opposed — technically concerned only two issues: scheduling public hearings on the transfer of the Pfeifer building to the town from the community development agency and signing a no-rent land lease allowing NFAWL to build a new kennel on the town land and use the building as a shelter.
However, the 3-2 split could foretell how board members will vote next month on moving the shelter to the Pfeifer building.
“The [current animal shelter] on Youngs Avenue is inadequate and poorly located,” Mr. Wooten said.
Mr. Gabrielsen disagreed, saying that the Pfeifer building “is a hostile environment for dogs” and adding that it’s in an industrial park next to railroad tracks. He’d prefer that the town sell or lease the property, and use the proceeds in the town’s recreation department.
“We’ve got close to 1,000 kids in lacrosse, football and soccer that need more room … versus 18 dogs in the shelter. Pick your priority,” Mr. Gabrielsen has said in recent weeks.
The Riverhead Town animal shelter may soon be on the move. The Riverhead Town Board is scheduled to vote on resolutions at its meeting Tuesday afternoon to set two hearings related to a proposed move for the shelter to the Henry Pfeifer Community Center building in Calverton. (more…)
The Riverhead Town Animal Shelter. (Credit: Barbaraellen Koch)
It looks like the dogs at North Fork Animal Welfare League could be in for a treat.
Three town board members have said they are in favor of a plan that will move the nonprofit from the town’s shelter on Youngs Avenue to the Henry Pfeifer Community Center building in Calverton, and will vote next week on scheduling two public hearings needed to move the plan forward. (more…)
TIM GANNON PHOTO | The Henry Pfeifer building on Grumman Boulevard goes mostly unused.
Riverhead Town’s sparsely-used Henry Pfeifer Community Center on Grumman Boulevard in Calverton may have a new purpose, as the town’s new animal shelter.
A group called Riverhead Move the Animal Shelter, headed by Denise Lucas, has been holding fundraisers for more than a year trying to raise money to build a new animal shelter for the town. The current shelter, on Youngs Avenue, is considered to be too small, and in a bad location, with a recycling facility surrounding it and the town landfill across the street.
While the RMTAS group had been considering building a new building, the idea of the using the Pfeifer Center was suggested last week by Supervisor Sean Walter and Councilman Jim Wooten, and was discussed at Thursday’s Town Board work session.
(See what else happened at Thursday’s work session by clicking below.)
That idea has met with support from Ms. Lucas’s group, from the majority of the Town Board and from the nonprofit North Fork Animal Welfare League, which takes over the operation of the town shelter on Friday morning.
Mr. Wooten said he originally thought a new animal shelter should be built behind the new dog park RMTAS built at EPCAL. But the cost of building a new building, along with the cost of extending the town’s sewer lines to the building, would be in the millions, officials said.
The cost of retrofitting the Pfeifer Center into a dog shelter could be done much quicker and with much less cost, officials said.
“I think I could get it done in a matter of months,” Ms. Lucas said in an interview, adding that the timing would be up to the town, since they are raising money to give to the town for a new shelter.
Meanwhile NFAWL has received a $300,000 bequest to build a new animal shelter and they have been planning to use it on a new cat shelter and spay/neuter clinic which they had proposed to locate on land leased from Rex and Connie Farr on Youngs Avenue.
But that proposal has met with widespread community opposition, and if NFAWL can build that facility on the town-owned land by the Pfeifer building, that controversy would go away. The bequest money cannot be used on a town-owned building, but the town could sign a long-term lease to allow NFAWL to situate the building at the Pfeifer property, officials said.
The proposed cat shelter was on the agenda at Thursday night’s Riverhead Zoning Board of Appeals meeting, where the hearing was held over for 30 days, but which time, officials said, they believe a decision on the Pfeifer site might be finalized, and the Youngs Avenue proposal might be withdrawn.
To read News-Review reporter Tim Gannon’s blog on else happened at Thursday’s work session, click here:
February 28, 2013 – Agenda by rnews_review
BARBARAELLEN KOCH PHOTO | Suffolk County FEMA official Jeff Simons (center) at Thursday morning’s town work session.