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EDINBURG — Palm Valley Animal Society, the largest stray animal shelter in the Rio Grande Valley, is looking for public financial support for an ambitious plan to expand its facilities and services.

To that end, representatives from the shelter recently delivered a presentation to the Edinburg City Council to ask city leaders for $1.2 million to help fund what is expected to be a $6 million renovation of the Laurie P. Andrews Center north of town.

“With this proposal, we seek to further our mission by expanding our facilities and consolidating into one location to better serve the needs of our community and, of course, our partners,’ Suzette Cruz, executive director of PVAS, told city leaders during a Feb. 4 city council meeting

PVAS has served the Hidalgo County area for five decades, with much of that time spent holding and adopting out stray animals at its facility located along Trenton Road between Jackson and McColl roads in Edinburg.

But that facility has long since outlived its usefulness and no longer meets either PVAS’ or the region’s needs, Cruz explained.

We have some current challenges. If you’ve been to our Trenton facility, it’s been there for a very long time. It’s been there for over 40 years. And it’s aging and deteriorating,” Cruz said.

“Most of the buildings and the kennels there have been in heavy use since 1984,” she added.

It’s an issue the nonprofit first tried to address about a decade ago, when PVAS built the Laurie P. Andrews Center just off the I-69-C frontage road north of town.

But animal control issues continue to plague not just Hidalgo County, but the Valley, at large. And conditions at PVAS’s Trenton location have continued to get worse.

The majority of that facility’s dog kennels are located outdoors, putting both animals and PVAS staffers and volunteers at the mercy of the elements during periods of extreme heat and cold.

The Trenton location is also prone to flooding when it rains.

Moreover, the kennels are veterinary spaces within the shelter are no longer sufficient, Cruz said.

Together, all those factors prompted PVAS officials to begin looking into expansion plans again in recent years.

Initially, the plan called for renovating or rebuilding the Trenton facility. The city of McAllen became the first municipality to jump on board with the plans, announcing last May that it would commit more than $800,000 to pay for designing the proposed shelter rebuild.

But by December, PVAS and McAllen officials realized that that proposal was not feasible.

“We have looked at and discussed what it would look like for us to tear down and to rebuild at that facility. It would cost us tens of millions of dollars to do so. Not one building in that property is salvageable,” Cruz said.

So together, PVAS and McAllen embarked on a new plan — one to renovate the much newer Laurie P. Andrews Center, taking advantage of the ample plot of land it sits on.

“We have 6 acres of land that allows us to expand our current property and add other buildings as well. We’re looking to add state-of-the-art kennels, and also expanding and remodeling what we currently have at this facility,” Cruz said.

The nonprofit wants to add at least 300 new dog kennels “with a more modern design,” Cruz said.

PVAS also wants to construct a new warehouse, revamp veterinary care spaces and expand quarantine areas to help minimize the spread of infectious disease.

“Infectious disease within our animals has been running rampant,” Cruz said, referring to a recent distemper outbreak.

PVAS also wants to include more public-facing spaces at Laurie P. Andrews, including seminar space for public education campaigns, a “multipurpose room,” and more.

PVAS’s proposal is ambitious, but it also comes just a couple of years after the organization fended off threats from some of its largest partners to withdraw their support.

In July 2023, Hidalgo County officials considered severing ties with the shelter, citing the ever-rising costs of contracting with PVAS to take in stray cats and dogs from the county’s unincorporated areas.

At the time, Hidalgo County was paying the shelter more than $1 million per year.

In 2022, the city of Edinburg denied PVAS’ request to help stave off a nearly $400,000 budget shortfall.

Both McAllen and the county, however, approved $250,000 in additional funding, though PVAS officials told The Monitor that the county’s additional aid never came through.

Last year, county officials quietly abandoned their plans to drop PVAS and build a shelter of their own; however, Edinburg has moved forward on expanding its existing stray animal holding facilities.

Thus far, of all the shelter’s three major public partners, only the city of McAllen has committed to PVAS’ new expansion plans.

Last Tuesday’s presentation before the Edinburg City Council marked the shelter’s first public effort to seek help from its other partners.

And to show how important the issue is, several of the shelter’s board members and other supporters showed up, including McAllen Assistant City Manager Michelle Rivera, PVAS Advisory Board Member Keely Lewis and her husband, Byron Lewis, and several others.

Cruz said that though PVAS is asking “for a $1.2 million investment” from its community partners, the nonprofit is “committed to being the majority stakeholder” in the project’s fundraising efforts.

But, in exchange for helping the shelter expand, PVAS is promising investors reduced rates for service.

The nonprofit hopes to begin construction in the second half of 2026.

The post Palm Valley Animal Society begins seeking expansion support appeared first on MyRGV.com.