Proposed Vet Hospital Finds a New Location, Again

The idea of opening a new veterinary hospital in town has been floating around for years, first in Sandy Hook, then at Fairfield Hills and later on Mount Pleasant Road.

In each case, the proposal went by the wayside for a number of reasons, such as the high cost of environmental remediation, officials said.

Now, the project appears to have found a new home at 52 Church Hill Road.

Claris Construction is seeking special exception approval to turn the vacant former Taunton Press office building into a new 24-hours-seven-days-a-week veterinary hospital, according to town zoning documents.

The project has received a positive referral from the town's Planning Commission and now heads to the Borough of Newtown Zoning Commission for a public hearing planned for Tues., Aug. 16 at Edmond Town Hall.

The proposed hospital would house 24 employees and 15 clients at any one time with the main hours of operation being 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., according to project documents. Minimal staff will be on site during the overnight hours, according to those documents.

When the office building was in use, it had a capacity of 85 employees, according to documents. The property featured 11 acres and a long driveway, project representatives said, adding that changes to the site were mainly for interior renovations.

"Everything else is being gutted on the inside and renovated," Phil Clark, of Claris Construction for the project, told the town Planning Commission last week. "It's a pretty straightforward project."

Real estate agent Mike Struna, who represented the veterinary hospital in its lease negotiations for the building, said his clients decided their investment should be on the equipment and business, which was one of the reasons they began looking to lease a property rather than own one.

"We are settled on Church Hill Road," Struna said.

If approvals are given, construction will take several months and the hospital might be open as early as during the first half of 2012, Struna said.

Correction: The consultant working on the project is Phil Clark. He was misidentified in an earlier version of this article.