Since our relocation has been looming for years with a lot of work going on behind the scenes, let's begin with a recap...

2018

Our need to relocate was confirmed and we were given a deadline for vacating the facility on Chanate. That kicked off the biggest and costliest undertaking in our almost 50-year history.

Our team visited over 20 different sites to evaluate the potential of each as a new home for BRC. These sites included private party and County-owned raw land and buildings in and around Sonoma, Sebastopol, Cotati, Healdsburg, Windsor and Santa Rosa. As anyone who has been involved in rural real estate searches will confirm, we got a crash course in perk tests, tiger salamanders, zoning and more. One by one, as our investigations dug deep, it became apparent that none of these locations were viable for our needs. At the same time, however, we were successful in negotiating extensions with the County, enabling us to stay on Chanate for a while longer.

2019

Early in the year, we discovered a former golf course property in Cotati with a "For Sale" sign out front. It looked perfect—rolling hills, lots of trees, hawks soaring overhead. Approximately 18 acres in all, it already had a parking lot and a building and there were water, septic and power already on site. It seemed absolutely perfect—that is until a call to the real estate company representing the property informed us it had just sold.

With the need to move looming large in front of us, one of our board members, who is self-described as being resistant to asking for donations, threw caution to the wind and reached out to the new owners. After all, she reasoned, "Asking about their plans for the property and exploring whether there perhaps might be some sort of tax incentive for them to lease part of it to BRC wasn't really asking for a donation, was it?"

It turns out there was no such tax incentive. Happily, it also turned out that the delightful and incredibly generous couple who were the new owners of this property in Cotati not only agreed to help, they wanted to help!

These prospective new landlords offered BRC an attractive long-term lease on two acres of the property and even promised to cover utilities. What had been only a dream was now becoming a reality right before our very eyes!

We immediately got to work defining what we would need in the new hospital and education center. We were delighted when two local architects volunteered to get us started. They were excited about our vision, extraordinarily talented and eager to design our new home. Both worked diligently to capture our vision and develop the initial conceptual drawings, at which point the project was left in the very capable hands of one to finish. To this day, he continues to offer his services pro bono.

2020

The giant step forward in 2019 met with a sizable step backward when the Cotati property proved to be way too costly for our landlords to develop as an equestrian center. Flattening many of the hills was a massive—and expensive—undertaking. This news came as negotiations for the sale of the Chanate Campus were ramping up. The pressure was mounting.

As benefactors go, it would be hard to imagine any more caring and generous than our landlords. They put the golf course back on the market and committed to searching for another property that would meet both our needs. They ultimately found a gorgeous, 46-acre parcel in a central Santa Rosa location that already had the proper commercial zoning and dedicated five acres of it to BRC under the same terms as the original lease.

With this new location in mind, we continued designing the new facility. Together with our architect, we visited over a dozen wildlife clinics, education centers, veterinary hospitals and even the Raptor Program at the San Francisco Zoo, collecting ideas to incorporate into our new home. We were looking beyond our current needs in order to build a facility that would "do the job" now and also last long into the years and decades ahead, growing with us as the needs of our avian populations and our communities changed.

2021

We now had many of the key ingredients to create home. We had a lease, architectural renderings of the exterior of the new center, a final layout for the interior, and a place to build it all. The next steps were developing the site plan which involved more of the "non-sexy" things like topographical mapping and soil reports, locating the best spot for a well, confirming those pesky Tiger Salamanders are not present (they aren't!), and working on the overall development footprint for the acreage.

In December, the Chanate Campus was sold. We know our days here on the hill are numbered and so we turn our full attention to raising the remainder of the funds necessary to complete the project.

Invest in the Skies, the name given to our capital campaign to raise the funds necessary to build our new center and facilitate our move, officially began in 2019 with an overall goal of $6.5 million. It was marked in the beginning by incredibly generous in-kind gifts that would positively impact our budget—things like pro bono architectural and engineering services, infrastructure improvements, gifts of materials and services, and of course the land itself! In addition, the Dmarlou Foundation has pledged $75,000 to cover the costs associated with our new surgical suite and its equipment.

To-date, the value of those in-kind gifts is $3.5 million.

As we work to raise the remaining cash contributions needed to complete the project, here are some of the highlights thus far:

2019

In August, the local Madrone Audubon Society seeded a Challenge Match for our building fund with gifts from their members totaling $13,000. This challenge was answered by donors whose gifts raised another $17,107. In total, we raised over $30,000 in just three weeks.

We began receiving individual gifts for the new hospital soon after, followed by our first pledge of $25,000. It was really getting exciting!

2020

We received an incredibly generous seed gift of $250,000 to fund The Mary and David Love Challenge Match. Once again, our community and supporters responded! This time, their generous gifts totaled $268,454 bringing the grand total for the challenge to $518,454—over half a million dollars!

2021

Recognizing we had two huge tasks in front of us—funding our daily life-saving work and funding our capital project—we created our first-ever Dueling Challenges with Team Ops working to raise funds for operating expenses and Team Build setting a goal to raise $200,000 for the capital campaign. Both teams were successful and Team Build supporters gave gifts totaling $225,642 for our building fund.

As of right now, we have received over $1,000,000 in cash donations toward our final goal!

This represents a current grand total of $4.5 million!

Since developing the initial budget for Invest in the Skies in 2019, construction costs and the price of materials have skyrocketed. We are only $2 million away from our original goal, however, due to the increases in construction and material costs, we are keeping our focus on raising another $3 million. This will enable us to complete construction, and provide much-needed new education installations. (Just wait until you see those plans!)

We hope you will continue on this journey with us—you are vital partners. Watch for our next update where we will share more of our vision and progress as we turn the spotlight on one of the most important components of our new hospital, the Nursery, just in time to kick off Baby Bird Season 2022!

Want to make a difference?

Your tax-deductible donations will turn our plans for a new facility into a reality. Invest in the Skies today!

Donate online using the button above, or mail your check to:

The Bird Rescue Center

PO Box 475

Santa Rosa, CA 95402

The Bird Rescue Center | 707/ 523-2473

Email: [email protected] | Web: birdrescuecenter.org