The new building for the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society is almost done, but when it opens this summer, its CEO, Brad Shear, will be gone. He's resigning as of April 28 for another opportunity.
He gave Spectrum News a tour of the expansion project, and although he won't be leading the organization when it opens this summer, he said he's "just happy that it's happening."
"The building's not for me; it's for the community and it's for the animals," said Shear.
The building they've been operating out of was built in 1913. When Shear started there 10 years ago, he wanted to build a new one, but there were other issues to tackle first.
"We were about to close our doors 10 years ago, we were a couple years from complete failure," he said. "We were euthanizing tremendous amounts of animals, which we have stopped doing; we had no partnerships in the community, we had no corporate support, foundation support, government support. All of those things are in place now."
Vice President of Operations Todd Kramer will take over in the interim. He's sad to see Shear go, but says Shear has left them in a good place.
"He's shown our community that you can't be a humane organization if you don't put human in humane," said Kramer.