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Spartanburg County officials have broken ground on the county’s new multimillion-dollar pet resource center, which, they say, could help owners keep their pets.Members of Spartanburg County Council and other local leaders were on hand for the event on Thursday. “Spartanburg County has a lot of animal resources. There’s just no one to bring us together, and I think that this resource center is going to be the place,” County Council Member Jessica Coker said. The $24.6 million facility is located along Southport Road near the Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport. Officials said it is paid for via American Rescue Plan Act funds and interest earned through county investments.Since 2011, Spartanburg County has been transporting its stray animals to Greenville County as part of a temporary agreement.In 2022 and 2023 combined, Greenville County took in more than 3,100 stray animals from Spartanburg County. “In the past, we’ve really gotten a deal with contracting with Greenville County Animal Care, but it’s time we take care of our own, and so I’m very excited that we are able to do so debt-free,” Coker said. Officials said the pet resource center will have a variety of medical services as well as an adoption center. “For so many years, we taught the public, ‘Bring us all your animals. Bring us all your animals,’ and that was a really terrible idea,” said Kim Sanders, the director of animal welfare services. “There’s no way that one team of 30 to 50 staff members can handle the animals for one county’s population.”Coker hopes the resource center can be another tool to help both humans and animals in the county.”We want to have all kinds of programs in place and ordinances to keep animals with their owners,” she said. “We want to make it hard for people to have animal cruelty.”Coker said the county continues to hire staff who will operate the facility. The center is scheduled to open by the end of next year.