An Update on ENM-Constructed ISOasis at Langley Animal Protection Society

On April 12th, the Langley Animal Protection Society held a grand opening ceremony for its brand new ISOasis shelter for sick and injured cats. In its first two months, the one-of-a-kind shelter has been a huge success.

“We’re still not completely open, we haven’t opened the ISO condos yet. But with the rooms we have available, we are at capacity,” says LAPS Executive Director Jayne Nelson. “It’s fantastic, our staff love having it and it’s made a huge, huge difference for the cats and kittens that we’re nurturing there.”

Jayne and her staff came up with the idea for the ISOasis over two years ago after realizing that their facility wasn’t capable of adequately preparing its sick and injured cats for adoption. They realized that no other shelter of this kind existed, and so they set about designing one of their own from scratch.

“The intent of the building was to provide low stress for the cats. We wanted all big windows, natural light, spacious rooms. We wanted perches, little places for them to hide. It needed to be very easy to clean, completely disinfected with hoseable materials. So we sat down an architect and planned it out. We redesigned it three times, we kept making it smaller, trying to bring down the cost. But there was a point where we thought, there’s no way this is happening. We just couldn’t afford it.”

But that’s when ENM stepped in.

“We had a $550,000 budget and the lowest bid we’d gotten was pushing $800,000. We were well out of range of being able to afford it. ENM learned about the project and offered to build it basically at cost.”

The project broke ground last August and 8 months later, the ISOasis welcomed its first patients.

“It’s only been two months, but so far we’ve treated 27 cats and kittens, and 9 of them have found homes.”

The facility is far beyond the typical design of an animal shelter. ENM installed medical-grade materials in the shelter and ensured that the air would be refreshed every hour. “It was important to make sure that diseases couldn’t be spread through the shelter, and ENM worked with the architect to make that happen.”

Jayne had nothing but praise for the relationship LAPS developed with ENM.

“We’re so very fortunate to ENM, to Colin Lacey and Daniel Greenhalgh. They were amazing to work with. Even our architect commented on how unusually smooth the process was. They were transparent and honest about what we could accomplish, and they worked around any problems that arose. They even installed ACs, which was beyond what we’d asked for. They’ve committed to coming back every year for any updates or maintenance that are required. We just simply couldn’t have done it without them.”