Honigman Miller employee and dog lover Ann Andrews couldn’t find one place to leave her dogs for training and care during her long workday in downtown Lansing, so she and fellow Honigman employees Angela Brown and Robin Hiar, 
decided to build AnnaBelle’s doggie daycare.
They are spending $1.1 million to renovate and transform a doctors office at 600 Capitol Ave. in downtown Lansing into the city’s first full service doggie daycare. AnnaBelle’s will be opened 24 hours a day, seven days a week to accommodate other Lansing professionals who work outside the typical 9 to 5 workday.
“We wanted to offer something in Lansing that bigger cities have,” says Brown.
Andrews says more than half of the 20,000 Lansing commuters don’t know what to do with their dogs during the day. Soon, they’ll be able to bring them to AnnaBelle’s.
AnnaBelle’s will have cameras in the daycare and each of the 18 different 80 square foot overnight rooms, giving dog owners the opportunity to get on the Internet and check on their dogs during the day.
Hiar says this facility will make Lansing a travel destination for dog lovers.
“We don’t plan our vacations without our dogs,” Hiar says. “If the place is not dog friendly, we don’t go.”
The women will likely expand the outdated 6,000 square foot building into a cosmopolitan 9,000 square foot space. The daycare will hold 40-45 dogs a day and is slated to be up and running by September 2008.
Developer: To be determined
Source: Ann Andrews, AnnaBelle’s
Ivy Hughes, development news editor, can be reached here.
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie
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