This blog post is part of our week-long Women in Engineering celebration! Join us in thanking women in civil engineering for their dedicated work and in welcoming future women engineers to the AEC industry.
Come four paws, come all! Pet Paradise is slated as the place to be for a doggone good time!
As most of our staff, clients, and neighbors can confirm, we’re passionate celebrators of Take Your Dog to Work Day at Timmons Group. It’s a firmwide holiday, and believe me when I tell you, we look forward to it all year long. Our employees bring their pups around on the last Friday of June every year for an office wide puppy play date. Furry friends are donned with Timmons Group bandannas and their human counterparts raise awareness for our local animal shelters with food and donation drives. Simply put, it’s the best day ever.
As we gear up for Take Your Dog to Work Day, we would be remiss if we didn’t take particular interest in an upcoming dog-related project that our land development, landscape architecture, environmental, and survey groups have worked on called Pet Paradise.
To get more insight on Timmons Group’s involvement with this exciting venture, I sat down with Lee Ann Gudorp, a Principal and Senior Project Manager at the firm. She has been working in her field since 2005 and her expertise includes private land development with a focus on growing the firm’s Retail Development Programs. Her goal with the program is to make the development process for our program clients more efficient by using a tier system to determine the different phases of a project while minimizing risk. Some of her notable retail development project experience includes Publix, Target, Lidl, AAA Car Care Centers, and Panera Bread.
She can now add Pet Paradise to her list!
Pet Paradise at World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Florida. Image provided by Pet Paradise.
Pet Paradise Resort and Day Spa is a dog and cat boarding resort with over 50 locations nationwide. With the mission of enhancing the quality of life for pets, their customers, and their team members, they are known for providing exceptional pet care, outstanding customer experience, and a fulfilling work environment. They have truly transformed pet care and have become a trusted leader in their industry, just ask their furry residents!
Lee Ann told me that Timmons Group’s work with Pet Paradise first started in 2019. “We have two projects with Pet Paradise under construction, one in Henrico County near the airport and the other near the Chesterfield Towne Center in Chesterfield County,” Lee Ann says. She told me the Henrico project is slated to open March 2022 and, while the Chesterfield project has not begun construction yet, they’re prepared to open that location by July in the same year.
Pet Paradise is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida and they contracted Lee Ann’s team directly to work on these new Richmond-based locations. “We’re grateful for the opportunity to be working with Pet Paradise,” Lee Ann says. “My team has been really excited about this particular program because all of my teammates are pet owners and enthusiasts and are eager to work on a high-quality pet focused development.”
“The resort offers high quality accommodations for the Richmond community’s growing pet population,” Lee Ann says. And, as people found themselves home more frequently over the past year and a half, adoptions and pet purchases skyrocketed, meaning that many more people desire features that pet spas like Pet Paradise have to offer. “In 2019, Pet Paradise served 1.1 million overnight pet guests,” Lee Ann added. Both Richmond locations will offer dog and cat boarding, grooming, day camp, and veterinary services.
While every Pet Paradise is designed differently because of each locality’s land development needs, one defining feature of both Richmond locations is the brand’s signature dog bone shaped pool located in the interior play yard.
In addition to a unique investment in their furry visitors’ experiences, Pet Paradise also focuses on the communities that they develop in. “They’ve donated over $350,000 to local pet charity organizations across the U.S.,” Lee Ann says. “It’s amazing to work with clients that are truly devoted to the betterment of their communities,” she added.
Be sure to stay tuned about the grand openings for both Richmond-based Pet Paradise locations. They’re sure to be a hot commodity as soon as they open for business!
Experience what’s to come with Pet Paradise withthis video!
