Cats play at the Pembroke animal shelter. The Animal Rescue League of Boston is closing the Pembroke site. (File photo)

By SYDNEY SCHWARTZ
The Patriot Ledger

PEMBROKE - Faced with losses topping $1 million a year, the Animal Rescue League of Boston will close its Pembroke shelter on May 1, just five years after it opened.

In announcing the decision, the 108-year-old animal welfare organization said it must close the shelter to ‘‘preserve the vitality of services and facilities throughout the league.’’

The league has more than $100 million in assets and an endowment of more than $80 million, but president Jay Bowen said the Pembroke shelter has lost money every year since it opened in 2002.

The organization plans to sell or rent the Pembroke building but will keep its adjacent 60-acre nature sanctuary and dog walk.

All 16 employees will be transferred to other league sites.

The dogs, cats, rabbits and guinea pigs at the Pembroke shelter will be moved to other branches in Boston, Dedham and Brewster if homes cannot be found for them by May, league officials said yesterday.

‘‘We’ll still be very much in the South Shore community, but just in a different way,’’ Bowen said.

He said the league hopes to expand its mobile operations on the South Shore with several traveling spay-and-neuter and adoption programs.

The shelter, the largest of four league shelters in Massachusetts, cost nearly $7 million to build and the league has spent about $7 million to run it for the past five years.

Bowen, who has been president for two years, said the board decided Tuesday to close the Pembroke branch on his recommendation.

He said he believes resources used in Pembroke would be better spent in other initiatives such as the rescue of animals from suffering, cruelty, abandonment and neglect.

‘‘Animal shelters don’t exist to make money,’’ he said. ‘‘It doesn’t take long when you erode your endowment to over time weaken the institution financially. It is our largest facility and very frankly it is our most expensive facility to operate, by virtue of the design,’’ Bowen said.

‘‘If we were to say, ‘Well, we’ll hunker down and we’ll just continue to expend funds,’ we’d be in a much weaker position financially in five years.’’

The league’s other buildings have been around since before the 1930s, long enough to ‘‘really become an integral part of the community,’’ he said.

The shelter at 599 Washington St. opened after almost a decade of criticism from animal-rights activists who said the league waited far too long to build the shelter with a bequest from Dover millionaire Frederick Potter Jr., who died in 1986. The estate grew from $1.4 million to $4.4 million.

In 1994, the league bought 69 acres on Route 53 for the Pembroke shelter. The organization used $62,000 from the Potter fund to renovate a house on the property for one of its officials.

In 1997, the town revoked the property’s tax-exempt status because officials said the land wasn’t being used for nonprofit purposes. Construction on the shelter began in 2000.

Animal rights crusader Dorothy Checchi-O’Brien of Plymouth, who died in 2001, criticized the league for waiting so long to build the shelter.

‘‘They love to watch the interest grow on their endowment. They hate to spend the principal even though they have such a surplus they could build several shelters all over the state,’’ she told The Patriot Ledger in 1999.

The league’s assets, including cash, real estate and securities grew from $53 million in 1994 to $104 million in 2004.

From 1995 to 1997, the league collected $27 million in investment income, contributions and service fees.

It spent $7.9 million on animal care programs during that period - 29 percent of its income.

But the organization began fiscal 2006 with a $1.2 million operating deficit and predicted a $2.5 million budget deficit for this year, Bowen said.

The league spent almost $9 million in 2004, the last year for which a tax filing is available, and had a deficit of $600,000.

Bowen said the league over the next two months will try to find homes for the 31 cats, six dogs and 30 small animals including rabbits and guinea pigs, it currently houses in Pembroke.

League officials do not know what they will do with other animals taken to the shelter from now until May.

Bowen said no one in the organization wanted to close the shelter.

‘‘We had to set aside those feelings and look at the bottom line and the future of the organization,’’ he said. ‘‘We don’t have the luxury of time unfortunately because of the pressing financial needs.’’

In addition to its shelters, the league runs a children’s summer camp in Bourne and maintains nine animal ambulances, 12 rescue and law enforcement vehicles and a mobile spay and neuter clinic.

Sydney Schwartz may be reached at sschwartz@ledger.com .

Copyright 2007 The Patriot Ledger
Transmitted Thursday, March 01, 2007