Pet Owners Delight

North Park area to get its first 24-hour veterinary clinic and hospital

By Manny Cruz

In years gone by, the ramshackle building on the northeast corner of University Avenue and Mississippi Street had been periodically used as a Jack LaLanne gymnasium, a bathhouse and later as a banquet hall. Today, it stands vacant and ugly, its concrete structure surrounded by a chain link fence draped with heavy green fabric marked by graffiti.
All that will change at the end of the year after the building has been renovated by Dr. Robert Nagell and partner Chris Chandler to transform it into a 24-hour veterinary clinic and animal hospital.
Nagell, a veterinarian, is well-known among pet owners as the owner of Pacific Veterinary Clinic — some 10 blocks west on University Avenue —
which he has been running for the past 21 years but has gotten too small for his growing practice.
Nagell and Chandler purchased the building from the Alma R. Vasic Grantor Annuity Trust after spending seven years searching for an appropriate location. Chandler says the purchase of the building and the cost of renovations will total between $2.8 million and $3 million. They intend to sell the building that now houses the Pacific Veterinary Clinic.
“I am very excited that after so many years practicing in our small office that there is an opportunity to expand into a larger facility,” says Nagell. “We will be able to do many things that up to now we have been unable to do because of facility limitations.”
The men are going to name the new facility the Bodhi Veterinary Clinic and Animal Hospital, a tribute to their white Doberman, “Bodhi.” It is a Buddhist name for “enlightenment.”
“We are working on offering a wide array of services to suit the needs of our clients and their animal companions, including traditional and non-traditional diagnostic and healing modalities,” says Nagell. “Over the years we have done house calls, worked with low income, disabled and  service organizations, offered low-cost vaccination, spay and neuter services while also providing for a full range of advanced diagnostic and medical and surgical care. We are researching several unique services to offer when we open the new facility.”
The clinic and animal hospital will be open 24 hours a day — a service that is not offered anywhere else in the area, according to Chandler. “And those out of the area are quite expensive,” he says.
Rich Rauh, an architect who specializes in veterinary hospitals, was chosen to design the new facility for Nagell and Chandler.
The facility will have three veterinarians and a support staff  of about 15, which would include veterinary technicians, office and kennel staff and a director of the clinic. The hospital is to have six examination rooms, a state-of-the-art surgical room and a dental suite. Solar panels installed on the top of a carport are expected to generate most of the electricity within the hospital. “We’re trying to have 90 percent natural lighting within the hospital during the day,” says Chandler. “This is really important to the animals and the people who come here.”
Nagell says the guiding philosophy of the new facility won’t change from what it has always been. “Our mission has been and will continue to be to provide comprehensive health and preventative care to our patients … We have always held that educating our clients about their animals’ health is the most important service that we can offer.”
After 23 years in the veterinary business, Nagell has treated scores of animals, but not just cats and dogs. Asked for a list, he says: “We have treated ferrets, rabbits, hamsters, rats, birds and fowl, horses, pigs, iguanas, snakes, turtles, fish and the occasional wild animal. Exotic animals are more challenging to treat, but working with them is also very rewarding.”
The most frequent ailments? “We see a lot of allergic dermatitis cases, which I believe is more and more a common ailment among our pets,” says Nagell. “Gastrointestinal problems that cause vomiting and diarrhea are also very common. Because we have been here so long, many of our patients are not geriatric, and we have had a lot of patients over the years with chronic kidney problems, arthritis, diabetes and other hormonal or age-related ailments.
“We have had families with cats and dogs that have lived for 18-plus years, and have cared for them from the time they were very young until they passed awy. It has been a great joy watching them grow and also very sad when we know how much they will be missed as they age and pass on to greater things.”
Nagell received his undergraduate training in biology from Princeton University and attended Tufts University and Cornell University for veterinary school, graduating from Cornell with a doctorate of veterinary medicine in 1986. He came to San Diego and North Park in 1988 and purchased the building for his Pacific Veterinary Clinic in 1989.
“Pacific Veterinary Services opened in 1990 and has witnessed many colorful changes to the community over the years,” says Nagell. “I once met an 80-year-old woman who stated that when she was a child she remembered having Thanksgiving dinner in the Craftsman house in which Pacific Veterinary is located.”