LEWISTON – The effort to build a $2 million shelter for the region’s pets is about to gallop into its next phase.

Leaders of the Greater Androscoggin Humane Society say they have raised about $1 million during four years of quiet fund-raising efforts.

It’s time to turn up the volume, said Barbara Livingston, the society’s chairwoman of the board.

“We’ve reached the halfway point,” Livingston said. “That’s a very big deal for us. It’s time to get the public involved.”

So the society has named a capital campaign team; chosen a team leader, Joanne Lebel; and rented office space in Lewiston’s downtown to coordinate the whole thing.

“We want the new shelter to open in 2007,” said Livingston, who will lead the publicity initiative. That publicity will start with education, letting people know that current facilities are overloaded.

Built in 1972, the shelter on Hotel Road in Auburn has about 3,700 square feet of space and was designed to provide care for 1,000 animals each year.

However, an estimated 3,500 animals – dogs, cats, guinea pigs and other critters – go through the shelter annually. The crunch forces the shelter to euthanize many animals so space can be made for the incoming ones.

The new shelter, expected to be located on Strawberry Avenue in Lewiston, would be about four times larger, an estimated 14,000 square feet. There would be room for animals to stay much longer. And new amenities would make it a more attractive place.

Artist’s drawings of the new shelter show people peeking into cages and through windows at dogs and cats, just as they would in a pet store.

New features would include adoption interview rooms, a maternity ward able to hold up to six mothers and litters, separate dog and cat examination and grooming rooms, isolation and quarantine kennels, and a special facility for the animals of victims of domestic abuse.

The first $1 million came from a combination of individual donations, bequests and grants. The second will come from the same kinds of sources, hopefully tapping the shelter’s wide service area, Livingston said.

The society serves Lewiston, Auburn, New Gloucester, Minot, Greene, Poland, Leeds, Turner, Hebron, Buckfield and Canton.

Many people will likely be approached at get-togethers, in which friends and neighbors gather to listen to details of the shelter’s plans. There will be other events, too.

All will lead to a hoped-for groundbreaking in the fall of 2006.

“I think that’s the worst-case scenario.” Livingston said. “I hope it will be sooner.”