THOMASTON — When the new Lyman Pope Jr. animal shelter building opens in Thomaston this summer, surrendered animals and their former owners may find the transition easier than those entering the existing Humane Society of Knox County facility next door on Buttermilk Lane.

Dogs, cats, chickens, pigs and other animals considered by someone to be a pet will be provided more space in the 10,075-square-foot facility. More importantly, they will find a safer, healthier environment thanks to the enlargement and modernization project.

The $2.2 million  building has been funded in part by the generosity of Lyman Pope, who contributed $1 million in 2015; and by the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation, which donated $100,000 in 2014.

An exterior surveillance camera will supervise the parking lot and main entrance in order to capture license plate images of owners who abandon pets after hours.

“We’ll find boxes left on the front of a litter of kittens, or a dog tied to a post, or dogs put in a kennel out back at night,” said Warner Vaughan, who has been head of the shelter’s building committee and member of the shelter since 1996.

For the new building, the front vestibule will remain unlocked so if a person abandons a pet after-hours, the animal can at least be sheltered by being left inside.

The local animal control officer will have access to a room through a designated exterior door where he or she can leave stray animals dry and secure at any hour.

An intake room will allow for more privacy for owners surrendering pets.

In the canine area, which will allow for 28 single dogs or 56 dogs in double occupancy, there will be manual garage doors for fresh air.

In the cat area, with its 130-feline maximum limit, an air circulation system allows for 10 to 12 air changes per hour, and negative-pressure air systems in each feline room draws any germs out a specified vent instead of through the doors to the rest of the building.

When asked if the current shelter has such a system, Vaughn laughed in response.

The current facility is so cramped and outdated that the only barriers keeping the cats from eating the birds are the cages those birds arrived in.

“One of the terrible problems for us in the red building is that you’ve just got no place for the cats. When one of them gets a respiratory infection, you count on almost all of them getting it,” Vaughan said.

Along with puppy rooms and kitten rooms, a new large-animal room will allow for the occasional domesticated barnyard animal, ferret, bird or other unexpected pet.

Isolation and quarantine rooms deter the spread of disease; and high ceilings draw the noise level upward instead of sideways.

According to the Knox County Humane Society website, fundraising is in motion for the furnishings for the new building.

Though the funding goal remains far higher than the amount of contributions, the facility will open in June, when Maine Coastal Construction, acting as general contractor, completes the building.

This new building, which will replace some, but not all of the structures of the Buttermilk Lane shelter, since August has grown from a wooded lot to a framed building, thanks to unusually warm winter temperatures.

This coming week construction workers intend to add vinyl siding to the outside of the building.