Hell in the hallway....

Everyone has heard that old saying, "God never shuts a door that he does not open a window, but sometimes?... it is just hell in the hallway."   And for the past 6 weeks, I have 'lived' this saying over and over and OVER...

We have spent the last almost two years being told we'd have to relocate once the redevelopment reached our location at the Simi Valley Town Center (SVTC)... And I won't kid you - this temporary status affected a lot of what we did and the decisions we made... We held off installing an air purifier on the roof because of cost and knowing our location was temporary... Any modification we made was made with the mindset it had to be movable and was temporary... That one day we would have to move it from the #587 space to another location inside the mall somewhere... 

When we were told on May 20th by management that they "could not offer us a permanent location and it would behoove us to look outside the boundaries" of the mall, it was a very dark night indeed... 

The morning brought a reprisal of what we had accomplished in the almost 3 1/2 years at that location - we had effectively stopped the sale of puppymill puppies in the previous pet shop location and had saved the 2,226 lives of dogs and puppies since the rescue was formed... We could NOT have reached that number without the generosity of free rent and the graciousness of the management of the mall... 

Business is business, and it was time to get out and get BUSY!   A decision had to be made - either we shut down TLC permanently or we found a new location to be moved to... After a lot of soul searching, we came to the decision we had to try and save TLC somehow, some way.... There were too many canine lives depending on us, not just today but in the future of Ventura County... 

My volunteers started mentioning this commercial location that has sat empty for a year, two years, etc.  Each time, I'd go hunt down the leasing agent and ask about the property...  

In six weeks, I bet I have seen, inquired about or discussed over 50 vacant commercial properties... Either we could not afford the location or it was too small (too big)... Or we could afford it but did not like it... We might be able to afford it, we liked it but then the landlord did not want a rescue center there... Or the landlord felt like we would be a bad risk because we had not been paying rent (but hefty vet bills instead, getting sick dogs healthy)... 

I was really getting pretty discouraged... I learned more about commercial property in the past two months than I EVER wanted to learn in my life time... "Triple Nets", "CAM", lease lingo - you name it - I had to learn the lingo, piece by piece... And you would be ABSOLUTELY AMAZED at the empty locations around our city that the landlords preferred to keep empty for one reason or another... But my volunteers would keep finding yet another location for me to investigate.... (sigh)... 

Finally, we found a landlord who believed in our mission and cause... It was more than enough room... But the monthly rent scared the socks off of us... Almost $5,000 a month... Geeze louise.... How are we going to do this?

I have always told myself and my volunteers... "If God wants this rescue train to stop rolling onward, he will stop laying down tracks for us to run on...." And my husband repeated this numerous times back to me... 

Each time we faced a mountain, someone would help this rescue train overcome it... One of our volunteers is very familiar with leases - I could not have waded my way through all of that without Steve... Never once did he allow me to feel stupid (although I certainly did) because this is not a part of life I have had much experience with.... Because the grant from the city would not be issued until the beginning of July, he offered to loan the money to the rescue so that we could move forward with the signing of the lease in the meantime, and not lose the two, three weeks...

Our new landlord has been exceptionally kind and generous - compassionate beyond belief... I do not have the words to express how much he has helped us to find a new home for TLC at a time I thought we never would... It has restored my faith in mankind that 'business can be business', but not devoid of community spirit and forward thinking... 

Another volunteer works at Sherwin Williams and talked to his boss about getting the paint at cost for us... And when you need 20 gallons of good quality paint, that becomes a substantial savings... Joe not only picked up the paint and delivered it, he carried up the stairs and came back later to help us paint!

Even our adopted dogs are jumping in to help us get the rescue center painted!  This is Miss Allie who was adopted by Jill last year... She's doing a great job and not wearing any of the white satin paint, HUH?

When faced with the costs of putting down the flooring and 'gobsmacked' with the first estimate (OMG $19,000+), other volunteers ran auctions of artwork and raised the money - something we could not have overcome without the help of Kayre and Bill Morrison, along with Carmen who donated the balance when we came up short covering the total cost.

Our landlord recommended a general contractor when we ran into problems trying to get the permits from the city to remodel a few things.  Pete was able to negotiate the paperwork and help.... another Good Sam donated a professional phone system to the cause... And 'Santa Don' along with his lovely wife came by, took a tour of the rescue center gave us a $1,500 donation towards the shelving we need for the back room and other items on our punch list, plus the moving costs... 

Once we get up and running, Santa Don is also going to take care of the wide screen TV and BluRay player we want to run training videos and other things inside of the workshop areas we have laid out in our plans for the new rescue center... We want to teach people how to keep their pets instead of surrendering them, do senior citizen therapy sessions, show children how to not get bitten by strange dogs - and the list goes on and on.... Dreams we've had of making this community a better place in our lifetime... 

I have had more opportunities in the past month to get 'mushy-gushy' from the amount of generosity and belief in the mission of No-Kill for our county than ever before... I'm not one to get 'misty-eyed' easily because I'm a w*tch, but I have been totally overwhelmed at the number of people who share my vision of a rescue center for Simi Valley and have stepped up in either energy, sweat and/or hard labor... Or with financial donations to the cause of making this all happen... 

We hope to be moved in by the middle of July and hold our grand opening ceremony in September...  This is some amazing stuff - miracles occurring almost on a daily basis - at a time when the 'hallway' appeared pretty dark and gloomy!

EXCITING stuff, huh?
Linda