BILLINGS — On Friday night, the Yellowstone Valley Animal Shelter unveiled its plans for the new animal shelter that will be built in Wilson Park at their Movie in the Bark Event.
The event invited Billings residents to bring their dogs to watch a movie under the stars, and also try to break the world record for most dogs attending a film screening, set at 219 dogs to beat. While the record was not broken, with the final count of dogs at 92, the shelter wanted to create the event to unveil their plans for their new animal shelter that will be built there.
The shelter's executive director Triniti Halverson was still happy with how the event turned out and excited to show off what the future of the shelter will look like.
"Not a lot of people know where this park is or this piece of property is, and so bringing everybody out here and then secretly or surprisingly revealing our renderings for the first time, which is a really cool event to tell the community what we're doing and help them get to where it's going to be," said Halverson.
Wilson Park, located on Riverside Road, will be the home of the $12 million project and has so far raised $5 million of their goal. The shelter will feature larger kennels, more natural light, and tons of new improvements for the health and safety of animals.
"We do a lot for the animals in finding them homes, but we want to do even more for the animals that already have homes. We want to be the ultimate animal advocates for our community," said Halverson.
The project is expected to break ground in 2026 and finish by October of 2027.
