Star Tribune
Minnesota wildlife hospital, one of the world’s busiest, plans expansion
One of the world’s busiest wildlife hospitals is located in a cramped building in a Roseville park, taking in nearly 20,000 patients a year from sleepy-eyed cottontails to majestic trumpeter swans.
After 20 years, it’s run out of space.
The nonprofit Wildlife Rehabilitation Center has purchased 22 acres in the Washington County city of Grant, with ambitious blueprints to spread its wings and build an environmentally friendly, $14 million campus focused on rehabilitation and orphaned wild animals, including raising 2,000 ducklings each spring.
“We always thought we needed a rehabilitation campus for our injured and orphaned young patients in the summertime,” said Executive Director Phil Jenni. “There is the emergency veterinary clinic, but most of our business, frankly, is the summer nursery business: baby bunnies, baby squirrels, baby ducklings. All of those things that aren’t necessarily injured, but they need help.”
The nonprofit will continue to operate its Roseville veterinary hospital, where all patients will be initially admitted and evaluated. Renee Schott, a veterinarian and the center’s wildlife director, said the additional space is desperately needed and will raise the standard of care for all patients. Currently, staff members are using every “nook and cranny” of the Roseville building and have space off-site for ducklings, she said.
“Having a new campus will help our healthy young patients grow up in a more wild environment. Right now, we are smack in the middle of the city,” Schott said. “It will also give them the space they need to grow and get away from our sick and ill patients.”
Founded in 1979 as a student club at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine, the center opened its Roseville location in 2003. The organization now has a $2.3 million annual budget and admits as many as 250 animals a day during busy months.
Eight veterinarians, more than 30 other staff members, 70 student interns and 600 volunteers provide care, which includes X-raying and setting broken bones, administering medications, testing for lead poisoning and other toxins and nurturing youngsters. Animals are released back into the wild near where they were first found.
The center has treated 200 species of animals, according to its records. While most are common to Minnesota and are not in peril, Jenni said the organization’s mission is fueled by a love of nature and a deep sense of compassion.
“People appreciate natural resources here and they appreciate wild animals,” he said. “It’s a way for them to act on values. It’s almost a secular religion. Who do we want to be as people and what kind of world do we want our kids to live in?”
Members of the public, as well as animal control officers, can drop off injured and orphaned animals free of charge. Families regularly come in together to drop off animals, Jenni said.
“The parents often say to us, ‘Thank you so much for having this place where I can model compassion and kindness to my kids,’ ” he said.
Jenni, 68, will step down as executive director at the end of the year after 20 years on the job, then serve as project manager for the Grant facility before retiring. The role will include fundraising and planning, with the goal of completing the campus in 2024.
Being good environmental stewards is a top priority, so the nonprofit is installing a state-of-the-art closed water filtration system, which will capture rainwater to fill 56 in-ground ponds needed to raise 2,000 ducklings each spring. That will take 165,000 gallons of water.
The system will allow water to be filtered and reused, keeping patients healthy and protecting natural resources.
“The highest level of design is for the ducklings,” Jenni said. “That water has to be cleaned every day.”
The facility will also have air filtration systems and geothermal heating and cooling technology. There are already outdoor cages in place for raccoons, squirrels and birds, positioned near the center of the property and out of sight of neighbors and passersby. The campus will not be open to the public.
“We want to be a positive part of the community,” Schott said. “We want to be flying under the radar as much as possible.”
The city of Grant approved a conditional use permit for the campus in 2020, despite some hand-wringing from neighbors about the possibility of increased traffic and other changes to the rural community.
“The city has received no complaints,” said Mayor Jeff Huber. “I think they’ve been a good neighbor.”
The project also has approval from the Rice Creek Watershed District, Jenni said.
The nonprofit has already invested $2.5 million in the property, he said. The next challenge is completing fundraising — a goal the organization is aiming to reach by spring of 2024, having secured a major donor.
With patient admissions up more than 34% during the COVID-19 pandemic, they’re hopeful the compassion for their work will continue to grow.
“We want to get everyone excited about this,” Jenni said.
As a photojournalism professor, R. Smith Schuneman mixed high expectations with a warm manner to launch the careers of a wide spectrum of photographers.
His students at the University of Minnesota, many of whom regarded Schuneman as a pivotal influence in their lives, went on to shoot for National Geographic, Look, Life and numerous other magazines and newspapers, as well as for corporate clients, photography studios and a wide array of film and video productions.
Then Schuneman, who went by his nickname “Smitty” and never by his given name of Raymond, embarked on a second career with the creation of Media Loft , an events and communications agency. He eventually sold the company to his employees before retiring with his wife, Pat, to a lakeside home in Okoboji, Iowa.
“Smitty could be utterly ruthless, uncompromising or unyielding in his goal of making photojournalists out of us,” wrote Richard Olsenius, a former student of Schuneman’s, in a memorial book prepared by friends. “But it was underlied with a deep-rooted concern for what is right and moral. He demanded honesty from our work.”
He died Nov. 24 at age 88 of heart problems.
Schuneman was born in 1936 in Spirit Lake, Iowa. His parents Raymond “Art” and Olive “Bunch” Schuneman ran the local newspaper in Milford, Iowa, and it was there that Schuneman began publishing photos while still in school.
He also ran a side business covering weddings, events and “whatever pictures were needed around the small town,” his wife said.
She remembers seeing Schuneman for the first time when her band director arranged for her to take drum lessons from him. She was 15 and he was 16. She later worked for him at his photo service, processing the film.
Lawmakers this session will talk to parents, teachers and others about whether they are identifying too many students as needing special education services and if some kids could use less-intensive support, she said. There’s a “mismatch” where some kids get more services than they need, said GOP Rep. Ron Kresha, who will be Youakim’s co-chair in the evenly divided House.
“There’s always going to be this tendency to [say], ‘Hey, let’s get as much services to this kid as we can because we want them to succeed.’ I think that’s a noble quest, but what are we taking away from other students who may have needs that we may not be addressing?” Kresha said, noting that some services may have to be rolled back in light of the potential deficit.
Nationally, special education officials are wary of President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal to eliminate the Department of Education, said Phyllis Wolfram, executive director of the national Council of Administrators of Special Education. Minnesota isn’t alone in its rising costs and demand for services, she said, adding that providers are grappling with challenging behaviors and mental health needs, including for younger children.
“We’re still seeing needs and challenges for students that are coming from a post-COVID era, and they don’t just diminish in one or two years,” Wolfram said.
Meanwhile, there is a shortage of special education staff and schools must rely on more expensive contract workers, said Niceta Thomas, president of Minnesota Administrators for Special Education. She said more families are moving to Minnesota with children who require special education and students’ needs are more severe.
“No matter what ability they come from, all children deserve a free and appropriate education,” Thomas said. “We need to make sure we’re meeting that.”
Willy Boulay and Mike Hudson have a grand vision for building affordable apartments for people with below-median incomes that are as nice as market-rate properties.
Their first buildings, one in Minneapolis that opened in May and another about to open in St. Paul, live up to their plans. Both have fitness centers, balconies on most units, roof decks, solar arrays, EV chargers, community rooms, even indoor playgrounds they tested themselves.
“The slide will support guys over 30,” Boulay said as he and Hudson took me through Canvas, their 161-unit project in northeast Minneapolis. It gets its name from all the original paintings purchased from neighborhood artists to fill halls and other common areas.
The seven-story building cost $71 million and is open to renters of all ages who make 60% of average market income, a level sometimes known as workforce housing. Hennepin County and the city of Minneapolis provided subsidies in the form of tax-exempt bonds and tax credits that will discount rents for 40 years. It’s a typical form of financing for affordable housing to help cover the difference between it and market-rate homes.
As of last week, Canvas had just two vacancies. Well, plus one big one on the ground floor.
To get the project approved, their firm, Broadway Street Development, had to comply with the desires of City Council members for buildings in a so-called “production” district, designated to create employment-focused developments.
As a result, the ground floor was built with 18-foot ceilings and about half of it, around 23,000 square feet, was set aside for commercial use. Perhaps a microbrewery with a taproom will lease it, or a commercial production studio, or a small industrial business that isn’t too disruptive to the hundreds of residents above.
Boulay and Hudson are confident they will get the space filled. They noted, however, that projects coming after them haven’t required as much space set aside. Which leads me to remind readers that, when my now-retired colleague Neal St. Anthony wrote about Canvas as construction was getting underway two years ago, he focused on the years of work Boulay, Hudson and partner Sterling Black of LS Black Constructors had already put in to get it financed.
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