Photo courtesy of city of Hoover
A typical Dogtopia day care center
The Hoover Planning and Zoning Commission on Monday recommended the City Council approve a request to allow a Dogtopia dog day care in the Bazaar 280 shopping center near the corner of U.S. 280 and Alabama 119.
Henson and Carlton Millsap, the owners and operators of the Dogtopia day care centers in Homewood and Birmingham, said they want to open a third location in Hoover and need “conditional use” approval to do so in a shopping center.
The business is primarily a day care facility but also would provide some boarding and grooming services, Henson Millsap said. It would be located between the New China restaurant and a space currently utilized by the owner of the shopping center for information technology needs, he said.
The zoning board recommended approval on the condition that the number of dogs at the facility at one time be limited to 120. This is more dogs than normally would be allowed under city standards, which call for only one dog per 110 square feet.
The Dogtopia space at Bazaar 280 would be 5,600 square feet, which would allow only 51 dogs per the city’s current standards. The Millsaps said none of the 280 or so locations of Dogtopia across the country have such a strict limitation, which would make it financially unfeasible for them to operate.
Site plan courtesy of city of Hoover
A Dogtopia dog day care is proposed to go in the Bazaar 280 shopping center near the intersection of U.S. 280 and Alabama 119.
The Millsaps said Hoover’s standard for dog day cares was based on the Pet Paradise facility in Tattersall Park and said Dogtopia is fundamentally a different type of business model with a different type of facility that merits different treatment.
Pet Paradise is a large-format pet resort operating in spaces roughly four times the size of a typical Dogtopia location, they said.
A substantial portion of Pet Paradise’s square footage is dedicated to uses entiredly unrelated to a dog day care, such as a veterinary clinic, cat rooms, large suite accommodations, an expansive grooming spa and rows of traditional kennel runs, the Millsaps said in their application to the city.
“Those are not spaces where dogs are actively playing,” the Millsaps said. Roughly 70% of the Dogtopia space is dedicated to open-play playrooms, where dogs are separated by size and temperament, they said.
The Dogtopia space at Bazaar 280 and the ones in Homewood and Birmingham are similar to Dogtopia spaces across the country, which are mostly in upscale suburban markets like Hoover, Henson Millsap said.
The Millsaps presented a plan for specialized wall designs to abate noise and a plan to handle all the dog waste and odors. Also, a traffic study they submitted indicated that the high-traffic corridors of U.S. 280 and Alabama 119 would be able to handle the traffic from this business and that the day care is expected to fill up 13 parking spaces in the shopping center during its peak weekday time. The existing parking lot at the center is adequate to handle this, the study indicated.
