New animal shelter construction begins
Anderson County Mayor Terry Frank, front-center, talks about the new county animal shelter on Carden Farm Road in Clinton during an event Monday morning celebrating the start of construction on the building, which will be in the area to the rear. Looking on to Frank’s left are Tennessee Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and Clinton Mayor Scott Burton. To Frank’s right are, from left, Cindy Boshears, field representative for U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann; Emily McCaul, field representative for U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty; Chelsea Merrell, state field director for U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn; and Patrick Jaynes, rural development state director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
“They are already pouring the footings for the building,” Frank said as she and other participants in the event stood in front of the planned shelter.
Also among those on hand for the Monday event were Tennessee Lt. Gov. Randy McNally; Clinton Mayor Scott Burton; Cindy Boshears, field representative for U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann; Emily McCaul, field representative for U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty; Chelsea Merrell, state field director for U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn; Patrick Jaynes, rural development state director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture; and County Commission Chair Denise Palmer.
The USDA’s Tennessee office provided the county a low-interest loan to finance the project.
“This new shelter will have [more than] 10,000 square feet of operational space that includes offices, community space for education … a viewing area for adoptable cats, as well as a dog play area for potential adopters.
“Unlike out current small facility, we will now have dedicated quarantine space for new dog and cat arrivals,” she said. “We will have a dedicated space for small dogs, a space for other animals, such as when our officers might take in a pot-bellied pig running at large”
Clearing and site preparation for the shelter began in early March, and Frank said at the time that construction should take “365 days” to complete, according to the contract approved by the County Commission in December 2025.
The new shelter, a highlight of Frank’s tenure as county mayor, has been designed as a state-of-the-art animal-care center that will rival the best that can be found in Tennessee and even beyond, she said.
Frank’s office had been working on the project for at least six years, and she said in late February that she was glad to see all the efforts to create the new shelter finally coming to fruition.
“I am exited for the animals and excited for the people [of Anderson County],” county Animal Control Officer and Shelter Manager Damon McKenna told The Courier News on Monday.
The new shelter will replace a decidedly inferior one on Blockhouse Valley Road that sits on the site of a county recycling center.
Frank, a lifelong animal lover and advocate who has three cats of her own, said she and others working on the new shelter’s design “visited multiple shelters, walking through to see what works and what doesn’t.”
Those included newer shelters in Putnam, Blount and Hamilton counties in Tennessee.
Sitting about a quarter-of-a-mile from the city of Clinton’s Carden Farm Dog Park, the new shelter is being built on a tract sold to the county by the city of Clinton. It’s on the east side of Carden Farm Road.
Frank said that about 2.6 of the five acres “will be disturbed” to build the shelter, with the rest left mostly intact, including its trees.
