Animal house
Veterinary clinic expands pet care in Midtown site
The Midtown resurgence fueled by popular restaurants, bars, theaters, live music, new clothing stores and bike lanes is spreading to other businesses. “Midtown is just really booming.” That’s the first thing Dr. Jennifer Karnes said in explaining why her Central Animal Hospital is about to undergo a $1 million expansion.
“There’s so much excitement with everything going on in Midtown,” she said.
The dog-and-cat clinic now occupies an 83-year-old, 3,500-square-foot building at 2192 Central. The veterinary is sandwiched between two pillars of Midtown’s redevelopment success: Overton Square and Cooper-Young.
As if to sync up with the Midtown panache, Karnes and her husband, clinic administrator Stephen Karnes, hired archimania to design a 4,600-square-foot building that will link to the old one by covered walkway.
The architectural firm has reigned over design competitions for years now with its modern creations.
“We cared much about how it looked,” Jennifer Karnes said. “We had long conversations about what we needed medically to go inside the building. Inside of the building dictates what went outside. Function is 100 percent first.”
Construction will start either Monday
or July 22.
The new building facing Central will have the signature archimania look of glass, wood and metal arranged in a sleek, unadorned way that’s elegant in its simplicity.
The new building will be medical space, but also offer an indoor playroom and luxury boarding.
The old structure will be for boarding, grooming and pet day care.
Karnes is a lifelong Midtowner, having attended Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal School and graduated from Memphis Catholic High School in 1988 before studying at Mississippi State University’s veterinary school.
Now her daughter sits next to Todd Walker’s son at Grace-St. Luke’s. He’s the archimania principal who led the design of the expansion.
“There’s kind of a tightknit community in Midtown,” Walker said. “Especially in the area where they are on Central. It’s kind of a hometown clinic, if you will. Community is very important.”
Which is one reason why the front of the new building, which is set back from Central, will have so much glass.
People driving up to the building can see inside to a patient corridor.
“The idea is the customers and patients can always have a connection from the inside to the outside,” he said. “Driving up, you may see someone in the building in the patient corridor that you know.”
The design offers other tailor-made touches for a cutting- edge veterinary clinic. Customers will walk their animals in grassy. areas as they approach the clinic. Vegetation will cover a “living wall” along the connector between buildings.
The animal patients will be kept in separate areas from the doctors’ offices. “It helps the efficiency of the doctors,” Walker said. “You don’t have to worry about the doctors and patients being in the same quarters, don’t worry about cross-traffic. That will help with the stress level of patients and customers.”
The new building will have an indoor play area that can be used for training and other purposes.
The luxury boarding features “suites” with TV, raised beds, and “Web access so people can watch patients while sleeping,” Karnes said.
The day care will be a new service for which there is no space now.
Karnes bought the Midtown veterinary practice in 2005 only about a year after finishing her studies at State.
The distant future is another reason for the expansion. Selling the practice in 15-20 years will be easier if the place has been modernized, Karnes said.
“We have remodeled and loved this space as much as we could,” she said. “At some point we couldn’t remodel anymore.”
Karnes has 12 employees and one associate, Dr. Pam Chandler.
Construction should be finished by January. With the extra space, Karnes plans adding another associate as soon as March or April.