A nonprofit working to fulfill an urgent need for local pet owners and their animals is opening a new, permanent location this week in East Rochester.
For the past year, Rochester Emergency Veterinary Services (REVS) has been operating out of a temporary space on University Avenue in the city.
The new hospital, opening at 7 p.m. Friday at 445 W. Commercial St., will be three times the size of the current location. It will have the capacity to handle more animals and more kinds of emergencies — including pets in respiratory distress, thanks to new oxygen cages. Until now, pet owners had to be sent out of the area for urgent care.
"It's very heartbreaking for us and frustrating for us,” to turn people away, said Dr. Jamie Araki, medical director for REVS. “But that (expanded emergency services) is gonna be one of the things that I'm the most excited about and happy that we will be able to offer here, finally, because it will help a lot of people."
The 10,000-square-foot building also has a soundproof cat ward to ease the stress on feline clients that might not appreciate the sound of barking dogs.
For now, the hours will remain the same: 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Monday through Thursday and 7 p.m. Friday through 7 a.m. Monday. The goal is to eventually be open around the clock, seven days a week.
The new facility is opening in phases, and once it becomes fully operational, REVS officials said they will announce expanded hours and service offerings.
The University Avenue location will cease operations permanently on Friday and all patient care will transition to the new, state-of-the-art facility in East Rochester.
REVS opened in February 2024, filling a void in emergency veterinary care locally, after the Veterinary Specialists and Emergency Services in Brighton cut its hours and eventually closed. VSES' parent company, Thrive Pet HealthCare, cited staff shortages and difficulty recruiting doctors and support staff, reflecting a national crisis.
But in its first year, the clinic has more than doubled its number of full-time veterinarians from three to seven.
REVS' co-founder, Dr. Bruce Ingersoll, credits the nonprofit's mission of prioritizing people and their pets over profits.
"And not trying to necessarily profit off of horrible situations," he said. "We need to take money in because we have to pay our bills, but (we’re) also not trying to, you know, make it out of reach for the average pet owner."
Ingersoll said the practice would like to one day establish a fund to help cover the costs of emergency treatment for people who can't afford it. There also are bigger dreams of bringing in veterinary specialists to diagnose and treat a host of illnesses and injuries, much like VSES once offered.
"That was a specialty hospital that took 20 years to build. People worked very, very hard, and spent their entire careers there trying to set that up," said Araki, a former VSES employee. "We are building this from the ground up. It's going to take us a while to get to that place."
