Long Road: Hubbard Animal Sanctuary In Newtown Breaks Ground This Week

NEWTOWN, CT — On Wednesday, Jennifer Hubbard will mark the 10th anniversary of her worst nightmare, with the culmination of a dream.

The Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary, named after her 6-year-old daughter who was killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, will be breaking ground on its $10 million permanent facilities in Newtown.

In the past decade, there has been no shortage of grim tributes paid to the 26 lives lost on Dec. 14, 2012. But in the case of the Hubbard Animal Sanctuary, a special alchemy has been at work in the community, transforming grief and rage into a living monument to Catherine's spirit, and love of animals.

That higher power first made itself known when Hubbard made a crucial mistake filling out her daughter's obituary form. The funeral home wanted to know what charitable organization it should tag for donations, instead of flowers. Newtown Animal Control, where Catherine had spent many happy hours among the strays picked up by the local constabulary, seemed as good a cause as any.

"But when I filled in the blank, I mistakenly dropped the word 'Control,'" Hubbard told Patch. "And donations were then asked, in Catherine's memory, to be sent to the Animal Center of Newtown, which was an organization I had not heard of before Catherine died."

A couple of days and $130,000 worth of donations later, everybody was friends for life.

The money that flooded into the new fund from well-wishers fueled the rescue's vision of a sanctuary "where children would see their own innate beauty in the eyes of the animals that they encountered," as Hubbard described it.

Connecticut kicked in over 34 acres of state farmland by a unanimous vote from the Connecticut State House of Representatives and Senate to become home to the sanctuary. Still without any permanent structures, volunteers got to work, creating over 200,000 square feet of native habitat along with a 4-acre meadow habitat. In the past decade, the sanctuary has been just that for over 1,157 companion animals, as well as a working farm.

Since Catherine's death, the animal sanctuary that bears her name has raised over $6.5 million in funding, with another $3.5 million to go. The funding has included grants from the ASPCA, private sector partners and thousands of individual donors. An ever-growing slate of programming now includes a pollinator protection initiative, and free community workshops around animal care and environmental protection.

The sanctuary has also partnered with 29 Connecticut municipalities in delivering programs that support older pet owners, a segment of the population Hubbard said is overlooked.

"They are, in a lot of cases, home bound, and what's left of their family is their family pet. And when these folks have some sort of financial disruption, it compromises their ability to take care of their pets," Hubbard said.

That's when the sanctuary steps in. Before the pets must be surrendered to a shelter, the local housing authorities will contact Hubbard's organization, which then provides regular food and veterinarian care enabling seniors to keep their pets.

The sanctuary's intervention not only ensures the animals stay happy and healthy, but their human companions as well.

"A lot of these folks, once they know that their pets are being cared for, or that burden has been taken off, their health improves, because they're not so stressed and anxious about how they're going to provide for their pet," Hubbard said.

The sanctuary has provided all these services for a decade without any kind of permanent structures. That changes Wednesday.

"On the animal side, having those facilities means that we have a caretaker on site," Hubbard said. "And we can have animals stay with us. Right now, everything we do is making sure that they stay in the homes of families, and we're not able to help some of those animals that don't necessarily have a family home to stay in."

As far as humans go, Hubbard estimates the sanctuary will triple its outreach in its first brick-and-mortar year — not having its programs be weather-dependent, alone, will be huge. It's a tough sell convincing schools to schedule a day of classes that might get rained out.

"It's amazing to think that when these buildings are constructed, the impact that we can have in such short order, because we already have programs going that are just going to scale up."

And what buildings they are. The sanctuary's new digs will be the first in Connecticut and the New York Metropolitan area to be "certified living buildings," according to Hubbard.

"We will produce our own power. The water systems will be closed, we will reuse our water. All our materials are sourced locally, and all of the products that we used in building the physical buildings are part of a 'Declare list,' meaning that they don't use harmful chemicals or materials that harm the earth."

Despite having no background in animal welfare, Hubbard said there was never a time she felt the least bit intimidated about running an enterprise of the scale of the sanctuary.

That doesn't mean she hasn't been occasionally paralyzed from the work for other reasons.

"I mean, there are moments where I'm just overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of generosity and the opportunities that I've been afforded," she said. "I have had incredible people, and experts, and educators and volunteers come alongside the work that we're doing. And I have seen the very best of humanity come together and create a magnificent place of sanctuary."