Back in November, KC Pet Project, an organization that I am proud to be a part of, opened a retail adoption center in a Kansas City, Northland Shopping Center called Zona Rosa.
The goal of KC Pet Project is to take the city's 40 year old, open admisstion animal shelter and make it into a no kill shelter. Where as recently as 4 years ago the shelter only saved 40% of the roughly 8,000 animals that enter the shelter -- in 2012, KCPP's first in operation, the shelter saved 86%.
Part of our marketing plan was to open a secondary adoption location. The location not only gives us slightly more room for animal housing, but also gives us a second permanent presence for people to find our adoptable pets. When we opened the secondary location on November 13, our goal was to adopt out 200 pets over the next 2 months. Well, we bested that, adopting out about 240 pets during that timeframe.
Not only has the retail adoption facility given us more opportunities for adoptions, it has also allowed us to do a lot of "friendmaking" in an area of the city that is 30 minutes (more than 20 miles) from our main shelter location, in an area of the city that is naturally divided by the Missouri River.
It's been a huge opportunity for KC Pet Project, and we're thrilled to have signed a 12 month lease with them recently to continue the success. And thanks for tomorrow's feature in the Kansas City Star on the location that will help let even more people know that we're there. Be sure to click on the link as it has a very good slide show of the location so you can get a feel for how it looks.
And on a personal note, there is a picture that includes a lot of our retail items that has a picture of one of our adopted dogs above it with her tongue hanging out. That pictured dog is Zola, a dog we fostered for about a week so she could overcome kennel cough and be ready for adoption up there and she may have been the smartest dog ever -- learning sit, shake, down, "hops", and rollover within about 5 days. She was pretty awesome and got adopted within an hour of us delivering her to the Zona Rosa location on Black Friday.
Congratulations on a great accomplishment. I have enjoyed following your progress and hope other shelters will follow the example.
Posted by: jan | February 05, 2013 at 04:57 PM
Thanks Jan. It was a scary proposition to dive into because it was a lot of incremental staff and cost, but has been so worth it for the animals. We're so glad Zona Rosa has worked with us on pricing of the empty storefront in order to help make it work.
Posted by: Brent | February 05, 2013 at 04:58 PM