Joybound wins approval for Liberty Center in Walnut Creek
Bottom line
Joybound People & Pets has received planning approval to move ahead with The Liberty Center in Walnut Creek, California, a new facility that will expand the nonprofit’s campus with boarding, daycare, crisis boarding, disaster-response capacity, and a veterinary behavioral clinic led by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Wailani Sung. The project has been in development since at least June 2025, when Joybound announced plans for a dog and cat boarding and day care center on 1.7 undeveloped acres of its campus. City documents now describe the approved project as a new single-story, 12,577-square-foot building with site improvements, and Joybound says it’s targeting groundbreaking in fall 2026 and an opening in fall 2027. (joybound.org)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, the Liberty Center points to a growing model that blends routine pet services with behavior medicine and social-support infrastructure. Joybound says the facility will include a dedicated veterinary behavior clinic, behavioral boarding, and crisis boarding for pets whose families are dealing with hospitalization, domestic violence, housing instability, or disasters. That combination could help reduce behavior-related relinquishment, improve adoption retention, and create another regional partner for emergency animal response and continuity-of-care planning. (joybound.org)
What to watch: Watch for final construction milestones, fundraising progress, and more detail on how Joybound operationalizes referral pathways into Dr. Sung’s behavior services ahead of the planned 2027 opening. (joybound.org)
Joybound People & Pets has cleared an important local hurdle for The Liberty Center, winning planning approval for a new pet care facility in Walnut Creek that would add boarding, daycare, crisis support, and veterinary behavioral medicine to the nonprofit’s existing campus footprint. The center is designed to be more than a boarding operation: Joybound says it will also serve pets affected by family crises and natural disasters, while housing a dedicated behavioral clinic led by Dr. Wailani Sung, a board-certified veterinary behaviorist and Joybound’s senior director of animal admissions and wellbeing. (walnutcreek.granicus.com)
The approval follows more than a year of public positioning around the project. Joybound first announced the planned boarding and daycare facility in June 2025, describing it as a strategic use of 1.7 undeveloped acres on its Walnut Creek campus. In later materials, the organization framed the project as part of a broader effort to meet growing demand for pet care while also building mission-aligned infrastructure that can support families under stress. (joybound.org)
City of Walnut Creek documents add useful detail that wasn’t in the initial trade coverage. An April 20, 2026 Arts Commission agenda report describes the project as a new single-story, 12,577-square-foot building with landscaping, parking, and fencing, located near Joybound’s existing Shadelands operations. That report says the building will provide designated spaces for pet boarding and training, and lists an anticipated completion date of November 2027. Joybound’s own case-for-support page gives a slightly earlier framing, saying the organization expects to break ground in fall 2026 and open in fall 2027. (walnutcreek.granicus.com)
Joybound’s latest project materials emphasize several service lines that are particularly relevant to veterinary teams. In addition to dog and cat boarding suites and enriched daycare yards, the Liberty Center is expected to include crisis boarding accommodations, dedicated behavioral boarding areas, training and consultation rooms, and a veterinary behavioral clinic. Joybound says the clinic will provide diagnostics and treatment plans for moderate to severe behavioral conditions using evidence-based veterinary medicine, while also supporting adoption matching, reducing returns, and helping keep pets in their homes. (joybound.org)
The behavior component is central to the project’s identity. Dr. Sung joined Joybound in 2024 after leading behavior and welfare programs at the San Francisco SPCA, and Joybound has since highlighted her role across its training, shelter, and community-facing behavior services. In the Liberty Center materials, Sung says the goal is to prevent the human-animal bond from being disrupted by behavioral challenges, emergencies, or other life events. That framing aligns the facility with a broader veterinary and shelter trend: treating behavior support as core care infrastructure, not an optional add-on. (joybound.org)
There’s also a disaster-readiness angle. Joybound has recently been active in animal emergency preparedness, including a June workshop in Walnut Creek with Animal Search and Rescue that brought together more than 70 emergency response professionals, including veterinary teams, shelter staff, animal control officers, and first responders. The Liberty Center’s planned disaster-relief and crisis-boarding functions suggest Joybound is building physical capacity to match that regional coordination work. (joybound.org)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, this project is notable because it sits at the intersection of behavior medicine, access to care, and community resilience. A facility that combines premium earned-revenue services like boarding and daycare with crisis boarding and specialty behavioral care could create a more sustainable nonprofit model for keeping pets with their families. It may also give general practitioners, shelters, and emergency responders another referral destination for cases involving anxiety, reactivity, unsafe boarding histories, or temporary family instability. If the model works, it could offer a blueprint for other welfare organizations looking to integrate behavior expertise into broader pet-family support systems. (joybound.org)
What to watch: The next signals will be fundraising and pre-construction progress in late 2026, followed by more operational detail on staffing, referral intake, and how crisis and disaster boarding will be prioritized once the center moves toward its planned 2027 opening. (joybound.org)