Lansdale looking at sites for dog park

LANSDALE — With the borough’s skate park venture now total, city officials are tackling yet another aim.

And this one’s for the canine, pretty actually.

“We started a dialogue on a pet dog park, and the committee is likely to even further check out that strategy,” mentioned councilwoman Mary Fuller.

For a lot of the 2010s, council’s parks and recreation committee fielded feed-back, held prolonged general public debates, issued numerous sets of bid specs, and finally oversaw development of a skate park at the town’s Fourth Avenue park, which opened in 2020. With that park now complete, Fuller and Parks and Rec director Karl Lukens said Wednesday, they are turning their awareness to a different ask for from people: a committed canine park, for residents and their 4-legged pals.

“This is a little something inhabitants, much more than a person, have brought up. I know other communities have them. I have an understanding of Perkasie has a seriously pleasant a single,” Fuller stated.

“I guess the initial step would be, do we have a space for it?” Lukens said.

Personnel have started researching some others in the surrounding area, developing standards, and assessing all borough parks, and have appear up with a collection of tips, Lukens explained to the committee on Wednesday night time. Recommendations from other nearby parks are that a facility have at minimum a person acre whole of space, about 50 percent each for places for modest dogs and big canines to continue to be separate.

“I appeared over all of our parks, and calculated to see — with out any regard to homes there — if it is a fantastic spot or poor place. There were four I saw that could in fact operate,” he explained.

Fuller proposed the borough’s Hancock Street Park, and Lukens reported that internet site has been discovered to have only about .7 acres of space usable for a doggy park, “so most very likely would be underneath-sized. Is it the end of the globe? It’s possible, perhaps not,” he stated.

Concealed Valley Park, located on the 700 block of East Primary Street just throughout from Significant Heaps, has about 1.5 acres of usable place, but section is now a no-mow zone, and the site has one more possible issue: a tricky-to-location driveway that fronts on Main Avenue, just west of Nino’s Pizza.

“To get in or out, if you’re driving, it’s seriously a just one-lane road. That would trigger more safety challenges, or have persons parking in that community, and strolling across private house to get to it. That would, in my view, not make it a fantastic location,” Lukens stated.

The borough’s Wedgewood Park, positioned adjacent to the town’s very first skatepark that bears the exact same title, does have a comprehensive acre, but an irregular condition and limited parking close by.

“There’s some house there, which is a person acre, but which is using up a whole lot of house, and it would be funky fencing. It wouldn’t be just a huge circle,” Lukens said.

A fourth contender may well not be a surprise: Whites Road Park, situated off of Whites Highway could also be an alternative, in an upper space in which playground upgrades have a short while ago been concluded.

“It’s one more no-mow zone by the tennis courts. We could possibly squeeze out yet another acre there. The draw back? There is a row of residences there,” he said.

Other web pages were being also evaluated, but only one particular other satisfied the dimension conditions, and it offered a trouble: Fourth Avenue does have the ideal acreage, but that place is configured as baseball fields: “you can’t place a canine park in the middle of the baseball fields we use all the time,” Lukens reported.

Councilwoman Meg Currie Teoh requested if the huge and compact puppy areas had to be situated in the same park, and Lukens said that could be up to council and/or group suggestions.

“There’s no legislation, but I would assume it would be far better to have them following to every other,” he claimed.

Councilman Invoice Henning reported he not long ago visited a pet park in the spot that did not have break up regions for huge and compact pet dogs, and Lukens mentioned he based that recommendation on steerage from the American Kennel Club. Fuller mentioned she’d like to pay a visit to every feasible website to wander it and see the dimensions firsthand, and Lukens explained the committee could do so even though also fielding feed-back.

“There’s technically no proper way to set a single in. Some people today, I know of spots that have only 1 dimensions. I know of locations, they’ve had ‘Friends’ teams do all the fundraising,” Lukens stated.

“I’ve observed them in which a ‘Friends’ group were being supplied the land, and they shut up in two decades. I’ve viewed townships have memberships, and you’ve acquired to get a important to get in. I’ve seen them just absolutely free. There’s no appropriate and improper, you just find out from other people’s experiences,” he claimed.

Fuller mentioned she recalled hrs of group meetings to converse about the skate park style and internet site just before it was accredited, and could see a very similar system for a pet park.

“We could even place collectively an intrigued team of canine house owners, and see what their feelings are: what they’d use, what they’d like, what is effective, what does not. Probably they’re pleased just with having area in a focused park,” she mentioned.

Lansdale’s borough council future fulfills at 7 p.m. on Oct. 20 and the parks and recreation committee upcoming meets at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 3, both at the borough municipal making, 1 Vine St. For a lot more details stop by www.Lansdale.org.