LEWISTON – The lobby walls say it all. The waist-high tile and burnt-orange paint, illuminated with natural light, aim to be welcoming.

Walking into the new $2.5 million Greater Androscoggin Humane Society ought to be a pleasure.

“We don’t want it to look like a hospital,” said Donna Kincer, the society’s development director. Colors, like the aromas and sounds, all matter, said Kincer as she strolled the almost finished lobby Tuesday with Steve Dostie, the society’s executive director. “We’ve given it a lot of thought.”

There has been plenty of time.

After nearly eight years of planning – the last five spent looking for donations – the society is about to open its new shelter on Strawberry Avenue in Lewiston.

The first animals could arrive after Christmas. Within the first week or two of January, the shelter is expected to be operating full time, Dostie said.

“People will be surprised with the changes from our current home,” he said.

The 15,000-square-foot shelter will replace the desperately crowded one on Hotel Road in Auburn. The 1972 shelter was designed to care for about 1,000 animals a year. As demand rose, the humane society shuffled its offices and built additions.

Last year, the Auburn shelter hosted about 3,500 cats and 900 dogs. Other animals that end up there, too, such as rabbits, guinea pigs and ferrets, many in cages that overflow into the too-small lobby.

The new shelter, built to handle well over 4,000 pets, has more space for each animal, special facilities for spaying and neutering, space for boarding the animals of domestic-abuse victims and a pet-store-like area for people to view animals for adoption.

Visitors will be greeted by as many as 75 cats, which will reside in cages along the left wall of the lobby. To the rear, dogs will await adoption in 14 kennels. And to the right will be the smaller critters.

All will sit behind glass, separated from the public. Unlike the current shelter, the new building will better circulate the air to prevent foul odors. The glass will deaden the sound of barking.

It won’t have everything in the original plan, though.

High, steel-supported ceilings are gone. And a 5,000-square-foot dog training area could not be built on the old budget.

In 2000, the plan was estimated to cost $1.8 million. The full plan would have pushed the budget well over $3 million.

The humane society is in talks with a limited liability corporation over the purchase of the current shelter on Hotel Road for an undisclosed amount.

“We have the money to finish the (new) building,” Dostie said Tuesday. There will no mortgage to pay off.

Individual donations for the new shelter ranged from $2 to $10,000.

Placards marking some of the larger contributions will go up beside sponsored cages and kennels. Outside, some of the sponsored bricks have already been installed in the walkway.

Among the donors recognized were the family of Sheriff-elect Guy Desjardins and Gipper’s Sports Grill.

The Greater Androscoggin Humane Society serves Lewiston, Auburn, New Gloucester, Minot, Greene, Poland, Leeds, Turner, Hebron, Buckfield and Canton.