If you live in the Oakdale area, you may be aware that Animal Emergency & Referral Center of Minnesota is undergoing an expansion! When we moved into our current home at 1163 Helmo Ave North in January 2010, we never dreamed that we would outgrow its 8400 square foot capacity in five years! And boy, have we ever! Since that move in six short years ago, we have added specialists in all of the following disciplines: Emergency & Critical Care, Internal Medicine, Surgery & Rehabilitation, Cardiology, Dentistry, Dermatology, and most recently, Radiology and Neurology!
The last of those, Neurology, requires as a tool of its trade an MRI unit. A new, state-of-the-art MRI unit will be the highlight of our current expansion project! In the photos below, you can see the construction workers building a steel structure that will eventually be the home for the MRI unit. We are very excited to be able to offer this advanced level of diagnostics to our patients who need it: pets with disc disease, seizures, cancer of the central nervous system, or vestibular disease.
The expansion will more than double our existing square footage to about 17,000 square feet. Since our leadership team and managers are spilling out of their current administrative offices, the plan includes additional office space on the second floor. In addition, the second floor will be home to a new community room where we can host our roster of educational topics for both primary care veterinarians and pet owners alike. In fact, construction on the community room (which was existing office space) has begun this week!
We are excited to see the project developing, and we will keep all of you updated. Fingers crossed, the expansion should be complete in February or March of 2017.
Check out the inside of the expansion in Part II here!
