No Paws Left Behind Seeking to Continue Sonsini's Mission

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The former Eleanor Sonsini Animal Shelter is gearing up to relaunch under a new name once it secures a location.

No Paws Left Behind hopes to open in North Adams, carrying on the no-kill shelter's legacy of homing cats and dogs. The Sonsini shelter announced its closing last summer and manager Noelle Howland saved it by taking leadership.

"We're pretty much ready to go but I just don't have a location yet," Howland said.

The municipal shelter in North Adam's Department of Public Works building is a possible location, she said, but it is a multi-step process that has not yet been set in stone. She added that there are "so many pieces that have to go together" for it to be 100 percent.

When the former location on Crane Avenue shut down at the end of August, Howland said space was a main need, specifically more room for outdoor and indoor kennels, a separate space for the cats not located in the office, and a meet-and-greet space.

All of the animals found homes before its closing, except for Knight the American pit bull mix, the last resident who found a happy home not long after.

Howland started a crowdfunding campaign that has raised more than $53,000 toward the effort since July 30 and has held separate fundraising events.

Articles of incorporation have been filed with the state for No Paws Left Behind Inc. and the shelter is awaiting verification from the Internal Revenue Service for a 501c(3) non-profit designation.

2024 Year in Review: North Adams' Year of New Life to Old Institutions

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
05:42AM / Thursday, January 02, 2025

President and CEO Darlene Rodowicz poses in one of the new patient rooms on 2 North at North Adams Regional Hospital.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — On March 28, 2014, the last of the 500 employees at North Adams Regional Hospital walked out the doors with little hope it would reopen. 

 

But in 2024, exactly 10 years to the day, North Adams Regional was revived through the efforts of local officials, BHS President and CEO Darlene Rodowicz, and U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, who was able to get the U.S. Health and Human Services to tweak regulations that had prevented NARH from gaining "rural critical access" status.

 

It was something of a miracle for North Adams and the North Berkshire region.

 

Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, under the BHS umbrella, purchased the campus and affiliated systems when Northern Berkshire Healthcare declared bankruptcy and abruptly closed in 2014. NBH had been beset by falling admissions, reductions in Medicare and Medicaid payments, and investments that had gone sour leaving it more than $30 million in debt. 

 

BMC had renovated the building and added in other services, including an emergency satellite facility, over the decade. But it took one small revision to allow the hospital — and its name — to be restored: the federal government's new definition of a connecting highway made Route 7 a "secondary road" and dropped the distance maximum between hospitals for "mountainous" roads to 15 miles. 

 

"Today the historic opportunity to enhance the health and wellness of Northern Berkshire community is here. And we've been waiting for this moment for 10 years," Rodowicz said. "It is the key to keeping in line with our strategic plan which is to increase access and support coordinated countywide system of care." 

 

The public got to tour the fully refurbished 2 North, which had been sectioned off for nearly a decade in hopes of restoring patient beds; the official critical hospital designation came in August.