Bay State Man Offers Farm Buildings for Temporary EG Pet Shelter

EAST GREENWICH, RI — It was a race against time this week for the staff at the East Greenwich Animal Protection League. They found out on Monday they had until 5 p.m. Thursday to move all the puppies and cats out of the shelter. The league has been making arrangements to move to a new location, but the new shelter isn't yet ready. They did make the deadline, Tammy Flanagan, executive director, told Patch.

"All of our pups, and one kitty, have found wonderful foster homes, as well as a few permanent homes and will be all out by the end of the day. Now," she quipped, "we need a nap."

Flanagan posted thank-you messages to all who stepped up and adopted or fostered the pets. No one could have expected the outpouring, she said.

Brian St. Croix, a Patch reader, also saw the story on the Coventry Patch and e-mailed Flanagan to say she could use his place, if she needed.

She was pleased.

"The opportunity sounds amazing," she said.

St. Croix, who lives in Plymouth, Mass., is renovating a property in Foster to turn it into a boyhood dream.

"My uncle's best friend had a horse farm when I was a kid," he said. He loved the place and always wanted his own. Now he's making that dream come true.

The property was abandoned due to unpaid property taxes and other issues, he said. He found out about it and bought it. Admittedly, there's been some controversy. Rumors have swirled over the property's future. He's heard all kinds of stories about the future use, from a mosque to a race track, even a gun range.

No, he said. None of those. And when green energy people approached him about windmills and solar energy, he turned them away, too.

"I want to make it a really big horse farm," he said.

St. Croix, 47, was in construction and didn't like the way the business had changed him.

"It's very competitive," he said. "You become a different person."

His two daughters, 16 and 17, share his love for animals. One rides. The other wants goats or llamas. He also plans to work the land as a tree farm. There'll be a lot of hay fields there initially, he said. He also wants to install two giant ponds.

"It's endless what you can do," he said.

This undertaking is his first Rhode Island experience, and it's been a little daunting, he said.

"It took me a year to get through DEM," he said, meaning the permits from the Department of Environmental Management. The property has "tons of boulders," and he wanted to move them off. That led him into a situation with a temporary gravel pit. In Massachusetts, the state calls it "fill," but the Rhode Island terminology is different. People were afraid he wanted to make the farm a gravel pit.

No, he said.

But when he saw the East Greenwich shelter's post, he figured he could offer help.

"I do have a 20,000 square foot indoor riding ring that is not being used right now," he said. "I think luckily they found homes for all the animals, but if something else like this happens, I'll be more than happy to do the same. Nothing worse to me than animals getting euthanized."

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